I have become a true believer that much can be learned from reflection. I have also become a true hypocrite in that I don't practice the benefits of the reflection I preach. Teaching has taught me far more than I am able to teach my students within the confines of a year. When I initially began teaching I thought that it would be a joy to speak about reading, books, and writing on a daily basis at work. That and actually using those two degrees in English. Working with young people gave be trepidation, and I was unsure about how "to be" around them. Teaching has engendered in me human qualities I didn't even know were missing from my life. It has taught me more about people and life than it could possibly teach me about reading, writing, classroom management, or testing strategies. I embarked on teaching so I could "use my degree," what I found was a calling, a passion, a part of myself that I didn't know I was missing. Below is merely a snippet, five bulletpoints about what I have learned in the past three years, but probably more specifically this school year.
1. I am awkward, and that's a good thing.
I know what you are thinking: no kidding you are awkward, Shelby. I have known you for __ number of years, and rarely have I had a social interaction with you that either your body language or failure to find words hasn't resulted in some kind of discomfort. Denying or even not acknowledging that this social discomfort isn't part of me would be an elephantine (in the room) failure of acknowledgement. What truly strikes me about this realization as it pertains to my teaching career is that when I initially imagined teaching in my head, I imagined myself as this powerful, awe-inspiring, podium pounding, eloquent imparter of knowledge-- complete with uproarious student applause at the end of each fifty minute TEDTalk-esque, inspirational lecture. Or maybe I have just seen too many depictions of teaching on television and in movies. My fantasy, as usual has no place in reality.
Although I have had a few moments of laudable whole classroom instruction (we are talking maybe a few minutes in a few years), where I find the meaningful connection with my students is one-on-one interaction. When I sit down with one student, learn a little bit about him, and help him, that is when I get those warm-fuzzy-inducing moments where the student learns something. Now this revelation might be something as minor as learning how to write a hook or as large as realizing the importance of an personal idiosyncrasy that bestows true individuality. Both have happened, but they have always happened when talking face-to-face, usually sitting at a student desk or in my rolling chair next to the student. To be that powerful, well-spoken blowhard at the front of the class wouldn't be fair to my students, and wouldn't even be true to who I am. These one-on-one interactions are rife with my awkwardness all the same, and that's okay. My own social eccentricities probably put my students more at ease: I am just a human being, too. I struggle finding the right words at times (especially when speaking) as well as grappling with the decision of what on earth to do with my hands and posture while speaking. Here's the revelation: I don't have to cover for these moments. It is okay to be awkward. It is a human quality I possess. That's right students, regardless of how much I love sci-fi, I am just too human to be from outer space.
Somewhere during my second year, I ceased trying to mask my ineptitude, and wouldn't you know, a whole lot more of my personality began to come out. Students began to connect with me in new ways: come by after school to get help because they wanted to. They began to tell me what was going on in their lives. In short, they started to trust me which translated to the classroom, though I had made no real changes to instruction.
It was just this year that I realized that I had stopped trying to mask that part of myself. It came through three (seriously three) heartfelt and kind notes from students in which they acknowledged my awkwardness. They praised this quality. If they remember me, it is what they will take with them. I realized that it is okay. I will probably never be someone who ever feels completely comfortable standing in front of a group of people and talking, whether I am speaking about verisimilitude in short fiction, fire drill procedures, or especially in a group of my peers. My stutters and slumped shoulders aren't a deal-breaker: I can still communicate effectively enough to get to the fun part, the one-on-one interactions with others.
2. Teaching is hard. Thank God.
Here are my favorite question to answer and statement to address in the classroom-- Question: "Is your class gonna be hard?" and Statement: "This is hard." My simple answer to the question: "Yes!" (enthusiastic exclamation, not angry exclamation). Response to the statement: "I know."
My justification for things being hard: because I have never really learned anything about life, or literature, or math, or relationships, or whatever without it being difficult. Teaching is the most arduous, sometimes thankless, certainly most exhausting professional or academic endeavor I have ever attempted. My experience in figuring out why a Sharepoint intranet calendar wouldn't work, isolating infinite loops in VB.Net programs, managing a group of high school kids trying to prepare food for a lobby full of disgruntled football-goers after a fully-packed 90,000-spectator-attended football game in which the Aggies lost in overtime, and writing a 100-page Master's thesis over a difficult postmodern novel don't hold a candle to the difficulties I have discovered in teaching. But here's the thing: I love the struggle. I love teaching. I love teaching more than I could have possibly loved any of my aforementioned occupational and academic endeavors. My own education was an obvious life-changing experience, but I have learned mountains more in three years of teaching than I learned in the three years of grad school.
I thrive on challenges, and each year, each class, each individual presents a new challenge. A challenge that I often fail at many times before getting it at least partway right. Don't get me wrong, I am not at school to make something so impossibly hard for my students to achieve. I am there to support them along every step of the way. They don't all seek me out to get that support sometimes, but there I am nonetheless to do everything under my power to help. So when my students ask if something will be hard, I am honest, "yes," and thank God. It's a good day to learn something.
3. Relationship reigns over rhetoric.
The content NEVER matters as much as the young people sitting in my classroom. This revelation, like others are things that I have been told, things that I even believe are true, but intellectually believing something is true and spiritually knowing it is true-- knowing it is true through experience and God-given, universe-shattering revelation is something quite different. It has taken experience to achieve this spiritual acceptance that individuals are ALWAYS more important than content. My aforementioned social gawkiness certainly doesn't help me build relationships, so finding ways to overcome the idea that my content is ever more important that acknowledging and treating each one of my students (no matter how much I don't like them, which honestly, I can count these "special" students on one hand after three years) like a human being.
I have figured out ways to cope with this. I know I am better at expressing myself through writing than I am through spoken words. I haven't given up on bestowing praise to students and having conversations verbally, but it dawned on me that I needed to find a way to get to each and every student this year to show them that they were all individuals, and I had noticed something positive about each and every one of them. So, immediately preceding the AP test for those students in my AP classes, I wrote a note, an individually, handwritten, heartfelt, non-bottled note to each one of them. It was time-consuming. It required thought. It required something else that I often have trouble accessing: my feelings. The return-on-investment I received from this simple act, however, was payed back at least ten times over. The mental engagement I received from them and the suddenly blooming relationships that were created from what had been a metaphorical sprig of yellowed grass shocked me. My students showed up ready to take on the challenge of the difficult AP test as well as the rest of the semester. These notes were nothing revolutionary. I am sure many teachers have done this before, but it was the fact that the notes were directly crafted for each student, letting each know that I see them all as individuals and carry unique memories and experiences about each around with me, that broke through a brick wall I didn't even know existed.
The dividends I received inspired me to offer individualized written encouragement to all of my non-AP students before school was out. I hope that my small action will enrich each of their futures, if only in a small way.
4. Summers off are a myth. Woohoo!
Another one of those thoughts that I had when I initially approached teaching was "Sweet! Summers off!" "Ha!" I say to this. Summers off are laughable. Certainly, I have been blessed with certain additional responsibilities during my teaching career that have necessitated copious amounts of workshops and training during the summer. Certainly, I have volunteered to participate in noncompulsory trainings. Certainly, I have volunteered for committees, teaching summer boot camps, and teaching summer school. However, even if I hadn't volunteered and been volunteered for these summer activities, I still wouldn't have summers off because even during times (even a whole month) when I had nothing, I am constantly planning, constantly stumbling across new methods, and constantly pondering my own teaching practices trying to improve them. Why? Teaching is a part of me. It somehow has wedged its way into my genetic makeup. Who knows? Maybe it was there all along.
My Great Grandmother, "Mama Lois" Ratliff, formally taught English for almost 40 years of her life in rural Texas, but even after retirement, it was just too much a part of her. She couldn't stop. Her grandchildren (my mom, aunt, and uncle) recall that Mama Lois always kept them busy: painting pictures, reading stories. I recall much of the same including (mostly failed) attempts at getting me to draw bowls of fruit and reciting the alphabet backwards. Each holiday season would roll around and Mama Lois would order my sister and I the most education-ridden presents you can imagine. I remember a particular gift from National Geographic in which you would insert these large paper disks that would ask questions based on the category of the disk (geography for instance), and there would be a second paper disk where you could bubble the correct answer. The funny part is, even my 11-year-old self realized that this present was supposed teach me something, but it didn't keep me from actually enjoying the gift. I am pretty sure I used all the paper disks of said educational gift before the apparatus itself became lost to the mysteries of time.
I know my Mama Lois couldn't help it, and neither can I. I remain excited about the prospect of something new for the upcoming school year, that I am constantly mindful and even seeking out new things to try in class. Teaching is a part of me.
5. A loud classroom can be a wonderful thing.
I know this statement sounds shocking, but I have witnessed some magnificent learning in boisterous, bordering-on-uncontrolled enthusiastic classroom settings. Granted, there is a time and place for such instances, but a completely quiet classroom can often be the sign on an unengaged one.
Television especially paints this picture: an adult at the front of the room speaking to desks in perfect rows. The adult writes on the chalkboard or, in these modern times, operates a PowerPoint presentation. In the case that these fictional, appearing-older-than-they-supposedly-are students are taking a test (which seems to happen every other episode), the teacher sits at his desk observing the class or attempting to quiet the whispering which is driving the plot forward. All this is inevitably occurs in a remarkably small class of 8-12 students where, contrary to all common sense, students who can't seem to not speak to one another constantly, students with names the audience knows sit immediately adjacent to each other at the front of class surrounded by students who the script has graciously christened "Student 1,2,3, and 4." While my own common sense governs the reality that teaching was never going to be like this Hollywood depiction, I still believe my subconscious mind had trouble letting go of some of these ideas.
I had many experiences this year with successfully loud classrooms, but two seem to stand out most. The first was using some guided reading strategies and annotation strategies in order to guide my classes with a high population of English as a second language students through some particularly tough texts. The strategies required the students to chunk the text and stop to have discussions before moving on in their reading. I was amazed at the volume of escalation in class during these times. I was even more flabbergasted that as I went around to each group: they were on task, holding themselves accountable for their time using the timers I had provided to each group. The reflections and understanding of these texts at the end of these sessions were certainly the most exemplary I have received to date.
Likewise, near the end of the year in my AP classes, they were writing and performing parodies of scenes from Hamlet. These classes were loud, full of laughter, applause, three groups rehearsing simultaneously, props being flung across the room. All I know is at the end of this project, each group had a strong grasp of what happened in their chosen scene, why it mattered, why parody is funny, and hopefully that learning can and should be fun.
These situations always drive me a little mad when they are spinning all around me, a kaleidoscope of sound and thought, but I have learned to let these occurrences happen when they need to. The students, because of their immersion in busyness and technology, can tune out the white noise better than me anyhow. And this whole teaching deal is really just one big lesson in humility anyway. It is truly all about them, the students. Right?
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