After a pretty relaxing spring break week in New Orleans (where we got many mardi gras beads and souvenir daiquiri cups) we experienced the HELL that was a layover in Memphis. Any notions I had of driving up there from Delta for 4th of July weekend have been completely forgotten. As my roommate kept saying, "its the hateful city in the hateful state". Without getting into too much detail and making myself mad again, it basically boils down to the fact that people in Memphis cannot multi-task and clearly have issues getting their planes off on time. We should have gotten into BWI at 10:30 and we didn't land until 12:40. So after getting back to campus and falling asleep around 2 am, I got up at 8, repacked warmer clothes, got my things together and was out the door by 10. Got into Bayonne around 1:30, which was pretty good time considering the rain and the fact that I was nearly killed by an 18 wheeler who decided to switch into the lane I was moving into with no hint of a blinker. Where is one of those "how's my driving?" bumper stickers when you need one?
Saturday I got up early and drove over to Prep to take the Praxis Exam. I walk into the cafeteria, which is where everyone had to assemble, and sitting at the table next to mine is my friend Bridget from CUA who was in took the same history senior thesis section as me last semester. She was taking the exact same test as me because she's applying to Teach NOLA (pretty ironic, since I was just there this week). So we both took the content knowledge section of the exam. I had to take the pedagogy, but apparently no one else did because I was the only one who was there for that one.
I thought the content knowledge section went really well. I've always bee fairly good at reading comprehension standardized tests. A few questions were harder, like the ones on poetry or identifying the author who wrote a specific passage. Overall, I think I did well on it. I guess we'll have to wait and see though.
The pedagogy section was the one I was most concerned about and focused my energies on studying for. I had to pick a book from a list of eight of nine, list two literary features (theme, symbols, type of work), how students could have trouble understanding these features and what I would do to help them better understand them. Now, if a book, just one book, that I had read and knew really well was be on there I'd be golden. But there was no guarantee of that. In fact, there was a good chance that I wouldn't have read any of the books they offered. Apparently the gods liked me on Saturday, though. Because three of the books I knew best (The Diary of Anne Frank, To Kill a Mockingbird and The Crucible) were on there. I ended up picking The Crucible because I could talk about how ninth graders probably weren't familiar with McCarthyism and may not fully understand what an allegory is. God knows I know all about Communists and Nazis and hate all of them equally. So I could write about them.
Overall, I think the test went as well as it possibly could have. Now, we just have to wait and see if I passed. Hopefully I won't have to take the test again because my hand cramped up and hurt for 45 minutes after I was done. I don't think I could handle doing that again.
