I wrote this post in my online forum immediately after attending Stanford's Admit Day. A few comments that I'm going to put first:

• My biggest concern at this time was the student teaching schedule, which turned out to be utterly unimportant. I didn't teach "up front", but I worked all my classes from the beginning.
  
• The director of clinical practice, she of the OMG letter, chose my cooperating teacher very carefully and he was an outstanding match. STEP does not, in fact, demand ideological purity from its cooperating teachers.
  
• At this time, I was far more worried about student teaching than my interactions at Stanford, which was exactly backwards.
  
• The C&I instructor who comes in for a bit of mockery here became one of my most trusted advisers and within a few months asked me to evaluate some textbooks for him. Staff is required to report back on teacher candidates; he apparently had to be interrogated to express concerns about me when Rachel was trying to get rid of me. (My description of his speech mannerisms, though, is dead on.)
  
• The postdoc who I liked and chatted with was the person who reported immediately back to Rachel about my "ed school" comment, kicking off the entire rescinding mess. Once at Stanford, I avoided her for months out of fear that she'd report everything back to the Head Office, but she, too, treated me well and had excellent advice.
  
• While I'm never going to be a fan of whole-sale manipulative instruction in high school, I found uses for them that probably aren't in the canon but did help some students recall difficult concepts.

I was, in short, wrong about many specific concerns in this post. I'm also shown at my most obsessive and overreactive--I rarely (thank god) do when I'm in this mode, but I talk (or more accurately, write) myself in and out of panics. The talking is what sees me through, but like sausage-making, the process is often best left unseen.

However, I include this account because I should always be humble about my errors. Furthermore, it shows what my state of mind was, and why I gave serious thought to Santa Cruz. For the next month, I visited Santa Cruz, talked to the staff, and thought about attending. This account also demonstrates that I was fussed about cost above all.

Finally, while my specific concerns were all wrong, the tone of Admit Day and my interpretation of it were dead on. Any hope I had that Stanford's program would be less doctrinaire went out the window and rightly so.

So I went to Stanford's open house and very nearly left after an hour, having decided that this was NOT for me.

I really did think I was prepared for the idiocy, and I managed to sit through all the ludicrous presentations on "How Does STEP Ensure Social Justice?" without barfing into my purse.

The fundamental problem was the "practicum". I got the first bad news at the opening meeting: the "teaching" was from 8-11, and the "classwork" was from 2-5, which are exactly the hours of my two favorite summer courses (St. Francis SAT and Elite's book clubs).

But that's okay, because I'd get to teach in schools, right?

Well, no. It turns out that Stanford practicum goes very, very, VERY slowly into teaching. They used to just throw the students in, but while the students became effective, they abandoned it for some reason. We spend the whole five weeks observing and slowly getting around to helping students. We work with the teachers on lesson plans and talking about individual students and fuck me if it doesn't sound like we're "helpers".

It's not just the summer, either. They're going to dip us into the great font of teaching wisdom, molecule by molecule. We work at middle schools during the summer (coincidentally, mine would be Spawn's old middle school--the good one, thank god). Then in the fall, we are placed into a high school or middle school (we do get to choose, they promise, although I'm skeptical). Over time, we start teaching WHOLE CLASS SESSIONS--for some people, that will happen "as early as late winter". By spring, our big project--we plan an entire segment and even teach some of it ourselves. Whoohoo!

The head of the secondary program said that of course, it would take us most of the year--until spring, easily--until we figured out that we couldn't be the students' friends, that we were actually teachers! (A thrill ran through the group--oh, that day would soon be here!) That's why classroom management was in the fall, so they could do their best to help us get to that realization as early in the spring as possible. Even though this meant that the whole vitally important class on special ed would sadly have to wait until spring, it was vitally important that students learn as quickly as possible to identify themselves as teachers and that took a while.

By this time, I was hyperventilating at the surfeit of touchy feely, nobility of teaching, woowoo of it all. Earlier, I had asked the math C&I instructor how many of the class had teaching experience. He said "a third of the math unit" (which sounded like a lot until you realized there were only 12 people in the program). I asked if allowances were made for previous teaching experience, saying (I swear, as delicately as possible) that the teaching practicums sounded as if they were designed for the novice.

He said, and I quote, "No, not really. After all, we all bring our own life experiences to teaching, and previous experience is just one of the many knowledge bases that students have and draw on to become teachers. We've had other students with teaching experience, and they've been so enthusiastic about their ability to learn how to properly engage a classroom. Would you like to talk to them? I'm sure they could reassure you." I was already looking straight down, glancing back up just enough to smile and say that I was sure that wouldn't be necessary.

Later, he was describing his course and the ways in which the class "discussed" methods of teaching to students of "different learning levels". He described the "challenges" of trying to teach algebra to students who didn't know fractions, and how you had to teach fractions all over again--but this time, properly. He cheerily described the value of manipulatives in helping sixteen year olds understand...

I had said "Manipulatives?" before I could stop myself.

"Why, yes."

"At 16, kids have been taught fractions five times--probably with manipulatives."

"Not properly, which will be your job."

"But....never mind." Right then, the aforementioned presentation about the value of learning that we weren't the students' friends began, and so that ended the conversation.

He came up to me at the lunchbreak to ask me why I objected to manipulatives. I sighed.

"It just seems to me that a freshman or sophomore who doesn't know fractions does not need manipulatives. He's not going to be a mathematician..."

"You can't write people off like that. When you're a teacher, you..."

"I'm not writing him off. I'm saying that a kid that age needs a method, a rule to help him past fractions so he can continue on."

"Look, the goal of a math teacher is to teach students how to think like mathematicians. It's not to help them pass a test, or 'get past' fractions, but to help them understand and grasp mathematics."

"I guess I disagree."

"You disagree?"

"Yes. The goal of a high school student who hasn't yet mastered fractions is to pass a test, starting with the CAHSEE, and to move on to other subjects. I guess I don't see the purpose of enforcing a vision on a poor kid who just wants to get through school and needs immediate help with fractions, not round 3 or 4 through manipulatives." (the whole time I am frantically searching for the door. Must.get.out.of.here.)

"The best way to help a student is to get him to think like a mathematician."

"Right. Good. Thanks for your time!" And I was flying to the door ripping off my nametag to get the hell out of dodge and be satisfied with my Stanford acceptance, to hell with the certification and the Master's. Just 20 feet from freedom, I ran into another admit who I happened to know.

That sounds quite casual, but for anti-social me, it was a coincidence of near-Kismet dimensions. To understand the odds, realize that I only know 4 teachers.

Even more amazing (to me), I'd only met [name omitted], the assistant director at the Fremont Elite, last week--very briefly. I didn't know that she'd been accepted, but Walter, the director, had told her at some point after we'd met and she'd been keeping an eye out for me.

Just laughing grimly with someone else about the program and our status as The Enemy had the immediate effect of talking me down. Regardless of my decision, I am extremely glad I bumped into her because my flight mechanism is (ahem) somewhat exaggerated at times, and instead of running away I went with her to our free Stanford-subsidized lunch.

(As I had already ripped off my name tag with my subject specialization, I created some confusion during lunchtime chats. The CSETS were the next day and people were expressing concern about their various tests. There were English, Math, and Social Science admits at my table, and I did the usual bucking up that all the other passees were doing--except I did it in three subjects. Inevitably, one of my fellow admits said "Oh, you're talking about Multiple Subjects! [the elementary school test that covers a simpler version of english, math, science, and social science]" and I said no, I was talking about Single Subject tests. [Acquaintance] kindly said "Michele is doing a fantastic job teaching our US History course" and Stanford postdoc said "Oh, so you took Multiple Subjects but you're in Social Science?" and I said no, I was in Math. Okay, I explained it to her then, but I was feeling ornery.)

So then I went and sat through the financial aid presentation, reminding myself continuously that perhaps--just possibly perhaps--I was being a tad dichotomous in my analysis of the situation. I'm still mumbling that mantra, waiting for insight.

I was worried I wouldn't be able to work in the summer, but was holding out hope we'd have choices as to our schedule and I could work around school at least somewhat. Not.

I have always been terrified about the student teaching component, and that was under apparently idealized circumstances in which I'd be teaching right awy. If I'm not able to instantly demonstrate that yeah, I'm a pain in the ass but I'm a kickass teacher, then I do not see how I will make it through the months and months until that point. If I'm going to have to sit and be teacher's aide, it is a certain bet I will do something, somewhere, somehow, to piss that teacher off. Stanford will have chosen ideologically correct teacher-mentors, and odds are excellent that mine will at worst hate me--maybe even if he think I'm kickass, but certainly if I'm just observing and writing journals or whatever the hell the assignment is. I'll get demoted for improper assistance to students or seomthing.

That was really the combination of data points that had me freaked out and is still giving me the willies. I can't work and the student teaching is fifty times worse than my worst nightmare fears.

If I can't work during the summer, that's a good bit of additional money I'll have to borrow. I'd been emotionally prepared for this possibility, but was not anticipating the poleax, the combined whammy of that knowledge coupled with a student teaching program that never made it out of diapers, much less potty training, piled on with the complete elimination of all hope that perhaps the best ed school in the country would offer something more than a smiling pitcher of Cherry Koolaid.

But the thing is, I knew this. I knew this. I already knew this. I KNEW THIS. People in this thread joked about it with me. I said, I knew this. Didn't I? I did. I swear.

And yet. I am spending (spending? Nay, borrowing) $50K or thereabouts to spend a year in a program whose goals I don't just question, but fundamentally and profoundly disagree with. I think constructivism is naive. I am deeply skeptical of student-directed learning. I am a classic "sage on stage"; "guide on the side" is for working through problems, not instruction.

Will I last? Will they pass me? Will I be able to keep my mouth shut....oh, please. Never mind the last one. Of course not.

So anyway, I'm seriously wondering if I should go check out Santa Cruz. At least I'll have less debt if I don't succeed.

Don't mind me, I'm just having a panic attack.

Oh, by the way: as a good Californian, I did a diversity headcount and if there was a black candidate in the room, he or she has very light skin. There were very few Hispanics. Lots--I mean, lots-of Asians, both Far and South.