I can remember exactly when I decided to become a teacher. It was my junior year of high school, and I was working with a stubborn old English teacher afterschool one day. My efforts on a particular essay assignment were below his idea of what I could accomplish, and so he made me redo it. The conversations we had and the effect he had one me resonate still today. The idea that one person can influence so many can be extremely alluring to many would-be educators.
Unfortunately, the best case scenario is not anything close to what I thought it would be. I am back with that same old teacher in that same old classroom but things are much different now. It’s not how it is in the movies, it’s not how it is on TV; it’s not even how it used to be when you were a student yourself. Being a teacher in 2011 is an experience all its own.
That clash between what I thought I was getting into and the reality of the situation came when I was struggling with my classes of juniors this past February. Trying to balance three classes of thirty kids, none of whom seemed to give a crap about the essay workshop we were doing, was pushing me to a breaking point. My mentor teacher and SPU coordinator both saw it coming, and decided to push me into the right direction. I had to break, like a bone that grew in the wrong way, before I was able to be set into the perfect position. I knew I was where I wanted to be but I wasn’t doing what I needed to be doing: my 100% focus had to be the students. I had worried so much about curriculum and classroom management and everything else that I had lost sight of that all-important bullseye of whether or not my students walked out of the room with more knowledge than they came in.
I’ve talked endlessly about that final goal, the end product of determining who benefits. I hammer that point home because it’s the one thing that I have been able to glean from every experience and every hardship. It’s the one big difference between what I thought I’d worry about and what I have actually been worried about in the classroom. When reality finally struck, I wasn’t ready for it at first. The shock of thirty-five faces waiting for a coherent thought at seven in the morning is pretty startling. I can see now why so many teacher candidates have bowed out before the end.
In the face of tremendous adversity and difficulty, I am proud to say that I have pushed on to the end. I stayed in the classroom until two days before my own graduation. It wasn’t about finishing my unit or waiting until I was done with class. It was about finishing what I had started. And that’s something I always take seriously.
