There are other teachers, very respectable teachers, who are incredibly organized, and who are firing on all eight cylinders before the kids even arrive. They have the map of the curriculum plugged into the calendar for the year, and they are going to get their students to that place in June where they can look back and say, “We worked hard, and we learned a lot.”
That’s not me. The kids are showing up tomorrow, and I’m exhausted already. I’m still wrestling with the gear-shift and trying to get it into first.
It’s a problem I have each year, that I reinvent myself as a teacher. I create this problem by not saving and filing (and sometimes not recording) what I do in my classes from day to day, and year to year. Dare I say ‘I wing it’? nnnnNo. Not really. I plan. I prepare. I could justifiably say that I ‘fine tune’ my teaching to the needs of my particular classes, students, as well as the times they are living in and the interests they have. I find the curriculum through my classes each year. But it’s the journey, not the destination, that I teach for.
This doesn’t bode well when I try team up with workhorses who are passionate and driven to instill the skills and knowledge they believe, desire, and are obligated to provide to their students. Their minds are like rolodexes, recalling activities, dates, moments and eras in history. They mesh and weave and knead units into weeks, and projects into units, and leave wiggle-room during part of class on every Friday for current events. I get so bedazzled, I have trouble remembering if the Reformation came before or after colonization. And that doesn’t look good when you’re outed, either.
I admire these people. I can learn a lot from them. They are bursting with ideas. I just nod and volunteer to do some of the grunt work, but in the back of my mind, I have the feeling they’re regarding me as some kind of second-chance teacher. I remind myself that I’m a good teacher. And I ask myself, ‘If these teachers are so great, what do I, who teach so differently, have to offer them?’
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My thing is that I know what I want kids to do in my classes--write, read, speak, and think as much as possible--and I know what I need to do--coach, listen, shut-up as much as possible. I run into trouble with the mundane stuff (grading, tracking student performance, dealing with paperwork) and the high-level stuff (how to be creative enough to energize them. So basically, I sound like I'm a complete mess...and yet, it always works. Sometimes it works better than other times, but it always works and works very well for students. It's not hubris that I'm feeling here, it's the confidence I have developed in the simple idea that kids learn writing and reading by writing and reading. Still, I wish I had a secretary who would keep track of everything, type up my ideas, clean up my messes, and so on.
ReplyDeleteI have the same deal as you both... I watch "perfect" teachers and I know their students do well, they respond to those incredibly planned & structured lessons... then I go and shift off-plan at any instigation, usually based on etymology of a word or beautiful metaphor or any paradox that can be written & discussed.
ReplyDeleteBrian's emphasis on R&W is mine... far more writing than any teacher I know of in my building, We also read tons- not always together and not always the same things- but hundreds of pages together still.
I have learned not to worry about how others do what they do, and focus on making sure that in my tendency toward reinvention and reinvigoration that I don't lose the important things.
cheers-
brew