Good teaching takes soul. Or heart. Or spiritual stamina. However you put it, teaching takes it. It requires the outpouring of one's personal human essence into a group of much younger people. It looks, therefore, like a little bit of preaching, a little bit of questioning, a little bit of listening, a little bit of wisdom, a little bit of theatrics (didn't you know we're all actors?), a little bit of exhortation, and a little bit of love. By "a little bit," I mean "a lot." It's not easy. It's not impossible, and honestly, it's not necessarily stressful, not in my case anyway. And it is very, very far from unpleasant.
"Good teachers don't repeat themselves" is another lie spoken by yours truly, though in my defense I was parroting what I thought was true. I am very close to being convinced that it is not true (because if it is true, I am a terrible awful bad no-good teacher). I still dislike repeating myself, but I'm replacing that lie with the positive philosophy that "Good teachers find ways to avoid repeating themselves too often." I'm getting very fond of "Ask your classmate" or "Check the board." Here's hoping to saying "Page 165" twelve times in a minute.
Teaching and living here have shown me some interesting things about myself. By interesting, of course, I mean shocking. "I've got this" is a lie I have told myself quite often. Multiple times a day, I have to admit, sometimes to myself and sometimes to someone nearby, that I have no idea what I'm doing. I have to go food shopping. I don't know how to get there. I coach soccer. I don't know what to say (or scream) to my players. I teach English. I don't know how to teach struggling students where the commas go. I greet a member of the maintenance staff at school. I don't know what she said to me, because I am terrible at understanding her accent. I assign my students poetry. I don't know how I should fairly grade their submissions. Yeah. Convinced? So am I. I'm not telling myself "I've got this" ever again.
"I'm not that selfish" is a lie to which I cringe to admit. However, should my reader scan the paragraph above, the discerning eye would notice that the word "I" appears often. Very often. This girl has lots of time to think, which is a wonderful luxury, but too often her thoughts wander to selfishness. What do I want, what am I interested in, how can I be happy today--these and other utterly useless questions knock around in my brain far too often.
Well. Glad we had this talk. Here's to the mortification of lying and putting on of truth-telling.
Teaching is the best job in the world. But it isn't easy.
Teaching and living here have shown me some interesting things about myself. By interesting, of course, I mean shocking. "I've got this" is a lie I have told myself quite often. Multiple times a day, I have to admit, sometimes to myself and sometimes to someone nearby, that I have no idea what I'm doing. I have to go food shopping. I don't know how to get there. I coach soccer. I don't know what to say (or scream) to my players. I teach English. I don't know how to teach struggling students where the commas go. I greet a member of the maintenance staff at school. I don't know what she said to me, because I am terrible at understanding her accent. I assign my students poetry. I don't know how I should fairly grade their submissions. Yeah. Convinced? So am I. I'm not telling myself "I've got this" ever again.
"I'm not that selfish" is a lie to which I cringe to admit. However, should my reader scan the paragraph above, the discerning eye would notice that the word "I" appears often. Very often. This girl has lots of time to think, which is a wonderful luxury, but too often her thoughts wander to selfishness. What do I want, what am I interested in, how can I be happy today--these and other utterly useless questions knock around in my brain far too often.
Well. Glad we had this talk. Here's to the mortification of lying and putting on of truth-telling.
Teaching is the best job in the world. But it isn't easy.
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