“Mr. S, have you taught before?” September 24, 2006
Posted by timschlosser in Uncategorized.8 comments
At the risk of sounding trite, I must say: Teaching Is Hard. I offer my heartfelt thanks to all the good teachers I have had over the years—for their patience, hard work, resilience, and compassion—until now, I have never valued their efforts with any true understanding. Yes, from time to time I would get the sneaking suspicion that I owed them a big “THANK YOU,” but I could always soothe those pricks of conscience with “That’s their job. They get paid for it.”
I was an idiot.
My first weeks in the classroom have seen a couple of rewarding “teacher moments,” but I know that I am not a good teacher yet. I often find myself standing in front of the class pretending to know exactly what I’m doing while desperately trying to generate some way of filling the next thirty-five minutes. I leave my students stumbling from vague writing prompt to vague writing prompt, slogging through swamps of grainy worksheets I stole from the Internet, and sleeping through read-alouds of stories from their textbook. I try to give the impression that I have pondered, planned, and perfected their eighth grade language arts future—yes, students, you’re safe with me, I know exactly where we’re going. Then they say, “Mr. S, have you taught before?” and I know that I’m not fooling anyone.
This is not to say that I don’t have hope. I love my students, and I love the job when it is going well. I taught a lesson on similes and metaphors during which I smashed a raw egg on the whiteboard and had the students describe what it looked like. Egg yolk got on the ceiling, the whiteboard rail, and the walls. The students gasped and demanded, “Mister, can you do that?” I shrugged my shoulders in total honesty. It actually wasn’t a very good idea: despite my best efforts to clean up the mess, I found the room infested with ants the next morning. Still, I got some pretty good descriptions of the explosion from my students (“like a big burst of yellow vomit”).
So, how is my first year of teaching going? It’s exhausting, frustrating, inspiring, and all-consuming. I know I have a long way to go as a teacher, but with family and friends backing me up I am still optimistic about the next two years. Que viva La Revolucion!
PS: Here’s my school’s website: http://www.lausd.k12.ca.us/Southeast_MS/
