Swings and Roundabouts: Life as a Graduate Teacher (atm)

There's something novel about being able to step into a classroom and call it your own. As an inexperienced educator, however, this does not come without its pitfalls. For example, colleagues encourage you to use their lesson plans (unit plans) so that everyone is "at the same level." This in itself would not be a bad thing... until your colleague realises that the seemingly mundane and "automatic" additions to classes, such as silent reading and spelling tests, were not included in their lesson plans.

The teaching game often feels like two steps forward, one step back--especially for myself. I may have a fantastic session with my classes one day, only for the next to bomb so badly I have to wonder why my school hired me to begin with. One of my mentor teachers nodded when I explained I felt a little like I had some kind of teacher's experiential bipolar disorder. "Welcome to teaching," she said.

Is this how it is, now? That at the end of each Monday, I wish to bury myself in the deepest 6-feet-under-the-ground-below hole, only to end Tuesday utterly elated at the success of my classes? Swings and roundabouts, I suppose.

So what is the benefit of teaching high schoolers?

For one, every day is a different day. I often explain to my coworkers that the mundanity of my previous work was part of the reason I sought the teaching profession. Get up, do tasks A, B, C, go home. Short of fire or flood, hospitality and retail work doesn't generally change on a day-to-day basis. Teaching, however? Each day is new content--or at least adjacent content. Students could be having the best day, or the worst day, or something in between. A huntsman spider could scramble onto a desk and derail an entire class for about 15 minutes. The benefits truly are seeing and experiencing these 12-to-16-year-olds either fail or thrive, and to encourage their continued experience of education, no matter how questionable their handwriting skills may be at this point (I should point out: by the time students get to me, they should already be familiar with basic handwriting.)

The cons?

Well... the questions. Not necessarily students' questions; when they're constantly trying to ask what to do next when I'm literally in the process of explaining that instruction. It's more the silent gaze from my colleagues. When a new kid on the block comes in, and they haven't had to teach a teacher for a while, intrinsic things (i.e. the lesson plan incident) tend to be forgotten. I'm hesitant to step on toes as the newbie. Additionally, all eyes in my department are on me. I am, after all, in the position to make or break students for the subsequent year levels they attend, so they are understandably nervous to give these classes to a complete unknown. I am fortunate I'm not the only new-kid-on-the-block, even if I am the only brand-new graduate teacher; having an experienced teacher, new to the school and the school's culture literally seated at a desk behind me, has done wonders.

The point of this post is a writing exercise.

My students are in the middle of organising information based on social issues and biographies. Often they come to me and say "I don't know what to write." This can indeed be a big issue for head-empty students, especially those who start the year believing they don't have very solid skills in the way of English--hence why they are in my class, of course. "The first step," I tell them, "is to write as you're thinking."

Writing as you're thinking is a skill I had to evolve over the course of many fanfictions. It helps if you've a quick hand-writing/touch-typing skill, I suppose, but baby steps. But the point is to overcome the "writing block": just write. Don't worry about if it makes sense right now, that's what we do with a red pen later. Vomit all words, even if your head's empty. Write that your head is empty. I would much prefer a page on why you couldn't write an answer to a question than I would an empty response.

To prove they could indeed craft coherent paragraphs (regardless of their elegance), I had the whole class verbally give me sentences that I wrote on their behalf. We managed to complete a short biography in two sessions, complete with considered emotive language. I didn't make the sentences: they did. As a collective, five students spoke individual sentences, making a paragraph, in the span of two minutes. They were shocked when I pointed out they literally did what they thought they couldn't do, just verbally.

And suddenly it clicked:

Just. Write.

Write the brain-empty essay. The real hurdle is convincing them to put pen to paper.

(Because I'll be damned if I willingly let them type on their devices. "Who the hell thought 12-year-olds were mature enough to use these things?" I say, having been the first of those 12-year-olds to use those things.)

Hence why you're reading this today. I'd realised it'd been a while since I put my own thoughts to proverbial paper and practised what I preach. If I'm able to word-vomit 750+ words about my current experience as a newbie teacher in 15 minutes, then my students can manage three sentences in half an hour.