Outstanding+Student+Teacher

The following is a front page article about my student teaching experiences first published in in the Bloomington, Indiana //Herald Times// on April 13, 2004.

 HeraldTimesOnline.com By Anne Kibbler Herald-Times In School Reporter April 13, 2004
 * Making connections**
 * Student teacher Josh Clark works hard to bring literature to life for high schoolers**

Sylvia Plath's novel The Bell Jar chronicles the brilliant and beautiful Esther Greenwood's excruciating journey into depression and madness.

It's not an easy subject to discuss with 15 and 16-year-olds, but student teacher Josh Clark, at the end of a three-month practicum at Bloomington High School North, is well prepared.

He talks about the chemical roots of depression: "It's not a weakness. It's a struggle, and we all struggle."

He plays a clip of Nicole Kidman in her Academy Award-winning role as author Virginia Woolf in The Hours, as Woolf weights her pockets with stones and sinks to her death in a fast-flowing river.

He describes the climate in which Plath and her character, Esther Greenwood, would have come of age — one in which women were valued more for beauty than for brains and whose only purpose in going to college was to find a husband.

He urges students to go to the Lilly Library on the Indiana University campus and take a look at the collection of Plath memorabilia — her baby book, her first poem, a lock of her hair ("I've touched it. It was creepy.").

He blasts out a crashing, angry song by grass-roots singer/songwriter Ani DiFranco about the disillusionment and abandonment of an unhappy lover.

He strides. He throws up his hands. He jokes. He even says he's sorry: "Have I given you the lowdown yet on how we're reading this? No? I apologize. I just got so excited."

His excitement is not lost on the students. They sit, enthralled, for an hour-and-a-half straight.

His supervising teacher, Bill Hays, calls him "without question the finest student teacher I have ever had the pleasure of mentoring."

"What I love is that he makes all these connections to so many things," Hays said. "That makes it so relevant."

Indirect route to a career

Clark wasn't planning to be a teacher — at least not right away.

He came to Bloomington from Memphis, Tenn., to get away from the South for a while and fell in love with the IU campus.

"I wanted to teach at some point, but I didn't think I wanted to do it this young," he said. "I didn't want to be teaching 18-year-olds at 22."

Half-jokingly, he says one reason for majoring in education was because there was no math requirement.

"Until three months ago I was going to law school," he said. "I was accepted. After this experience, I'm not going to law school. I'm going into teaching. I didn't think I'd love it as much as I do."

Clark said he'd never associated work with fun before now.

"It's like putting on a play for six hours," he said. "You try to be entertaining and interesting. I like how creative you can be."

He also loves interacting with the students.

"When they look at you and you can see in their faces that they're interested, there's a rush," he said.

Clark had intended to be a human rights lawyer, and he sees some of that mission carry over into teaching.

"I think the reason I like teaching so much is because I can accomplish what I want to in a more instant way," he said. "I try to open kids' minds to think about what they believe and what they choose to follow."

He simply loves his subject.

His supervising professor at IU, Richard Ritz, said Clark's number one teaching quality is his passion.

"Students cannot help but become interested in a subject when the teacher demonstrates a love for the subject itself and the joy of passing that knowledge on to others," he said. "I knew from my first observation of Josh that he would be a hit. The animation of the teacher intrigues students and makes them wonder what there is to learn that could so move the instructor."

Students have plugged in

In a senior advanced placement course on British literature last Wednesday, students agreed that Clark's love of his subject draws them in.

"He's very enthusiastic," said Christine Basile. "He does a lot of application and tries to make it more relevant than most English teachers do."

Colin Clune said Clark "leads us in discussion — he doesn't force us anywhere. He lets us discuss things ourselves but keeps us on track."

And Cora Polsgrove said Clark is good at connecting subjects to modern issues and giving them real-life application.

Plus, she said, "he has great ties — good tie and shirt combos."

Clark is aware of the small age difference between himself and the seniors in the AP class, but that doesn't hold him back.

Handing back an essay on Hamlet, he told students how disappointed he was in their efforts.

"This tells me you did this the night before," he said.

According to Hays, Clark, in his dealings with students, "truly speaks their language."

"I find myself returning again and again to the classroom because I enjoy so much his lessons and his presentations, which, as well as being lively, are consistently relevant to the lives of these 16- to 18-year-olds, whether they are reading Hamlet or listening to Pink Floyd," Hays wrote in his final evaluation of Clark.

Mentor teacher valuable asset

Clark said he has learned much from his supervisor.

"Watching Mr. Hays, I've never seen such a compassionate teacher," he said. "He knows something about every kid who walks into the room. I try to do that too. He has an impact on these kids' lives."

Clark also gets practical advice from Hays.

In between classes last week, as Clark went through the Hamlet essays one last time, he consulted with Hays on how to figure out the final grades.

"That is so much easier than the way I was doing it," he said as Hays showed him a simple formula. "Awesome!"

And Hays had some advice for Clark in his first forays into teaching.

"I would start in the next couple of years writing a paper yourself on all the papers you hand out," he said. "You can say, 'That is what the paper should look like.' Then it's really concrete."

Clark isn't sure where he'll go from North. He would be interested in a job there, if the opportunity arose, and some day he might want to go back to the South to escape Midwestern winters.

It's a full-time job just looking for a job, Clark joked, and teaching for 14 weeks has certainly taught him time management skills.

"The amount of work to prepare (for class) is tenfold what I thought it was going to be," he said. "I'm getting up every day at 6 a.m., and I'm in bed by 9:30 p.m. When my roommates are having fun I have to say, 'Keep it down, guys, I'm trying to work.'

"But it's all worth it."

In School reporter Anne Kibbler can be reached at 331-4369 or by e-mail at.

Copyright: HeraldTimesOnline.com 2004