OOF oof oof. Survived. Good god, this profession is something else. I was frantically preparing for class until around 11:30 last night (preparation, for me, involves a lot of hand wringing and moaning that I don’t know what I’m doing), and then woke up totally scared and nervous at 4 am and could not fall back asleep. Those of you who are good with numbers can deduce how much sleep I got. I had a three week break and it was like I’d never taught a class at all. I couldn’t remember how in the world I survived doing that twenty hours a week.
But survive I did, when I finally dragged myself out of bed and trudged into the classroom. Unfortunately, I was kicking things off at 8 in the morning after a huge break with IELTS writing practice, with a specific focus on describing charts and graphs. In other words, about the most confusing, boring, and uninspiring subject you could possibly teach in a foreign language that all of your students are seriously rusty with. I found myself gripping a piece of chalk wishing that I’d somehow selected the stick with magical teleportation powers to get me away from the fifteen pairs of frightened, confused eyes blankly staring at me. So that was the first two hours. Then, I managed to dig deep down into reserves of strength I didn’t even know I had for just a little bit of A-game for my upcoming English class. The first hour went really well - these guys were all about talking, participating, and generally behaving themselves. But by the end of the second hour, I was about to declare martial law on them. I cannot get that class to calm themselves. They’re actually pretty great when I’ve got them all engaged, but the second one student’s attention wanders, they all follow suit, and I’ve got a room full of kids speaking Chinese and laughing at me. And it makes me want to punch them sometimes, honestly.
So, tomorrow, I’ll be extra entertaining for those poor kids who got that IELTS nightmare dumped on them right off the bat, and I’ll be as mean as I’m capable of being for the second group, who are seriously making me rethink my strong stance on corporal punishment.
Right now I’m just tired and cranky- I don’t mean to be so down on my job. But I’m worn out, and this is flat out not easy for me to do. I think I’ve got a few things going for me that make me a decent teacher - I can be very patient, I’m relatively creative, and I’m damned prepared. What I do not have going for me by any stretch of the imagination is the ability to play any kind of an authoritative role. I’ve had this issue in most of my post-college pursuits, actually. Things are great in class when I’ve got everybody’s attention and they work with me, but I’m simply not equipped to fight them when they choose to make things difficult.
I’m not blaming my students for that. I think I know what’s going on - when they don’t understand something, they have a tendency to just tune out my frantic attempts to explain it better, and once they’re gone, they’re all the way gone and I’m not very good at getting them back. And the thing is, I don’t want to be a nazi teacher. I think class is so much more fun when everybody’s participating and laughing and we’re all having a good time. The problem is that whether I like it or not, there’s more to it. Meaning, I have got to figure out a way to get them to listen to me when it’s not funny or easy to understand.
Blagh, I have to admit that part of me really misses the old library job. For the most part, I’d show up to work, do my work, and go home and be done. But this teaching thing is a whole new animal - I can have this on my mind from the time I wake up until the time I go to sleep if I let myself. I know it’ll get easier the longer I do it, but good grief. I’m tired, cranky, and I want the weekend to get here faster.
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Also be aware that not only does it get easier over time there’s also such a thing as good teaching days and bad teaching days. These are often triggered by nothing in particular or really just by your mood going into it. However, bad teaching days are usually followed by good ones if you just determine not to give a damn what happens your next day in class.
I think you’re doing really well as a teacher– just your students are the worst in the school. To steal your own metaphor (for albeit a different situation)– this isn’t the Dead Poets Society and you aren’t Robin Williams. All in all, it’s just a job after all…
It’s also worth remembering that how things go in the classroom is as much the result of the students as the teacher. It never really feels like it, of course, but even when things go badly it’s rarely the fault of any one person.
Also I know that it’s hard to be authoritative in front of people, but in my limited experience of having to tell off my students you’d be surprised how easy it is to get students to treat you as an authority figure. I mean, I usually feel like an idiot whenever I have to tell students off, but they usually fall for it completely. I think there’s a much larger presumption of authority when one is the teacher on the part of students than it feels like from the front of the room. I mean, imagine the teacher most like you in front of the class from when you were in Carleton/etc., and then imagine how you’d have reacted if he/she’d stopped class to tell people they were acting inappropriately and had to do something different. (I know it’s cheap to shame students in class for, say, ‘preventing other students in the class from learning’ and so on - but remember, even when you were a student and old enough that you thought it was a cheap move it still worked really well.)
Thanks guys - you both speak wisely. However, Mark, I can’t help but remember the poor woman who taught me Algebra II in the eighth grade. I kind of hated her at the time - she was really timid, I could never hear what she was saying, and she let the eighteen football players in the class run all over her to the point that we never really covered much material. THAT’S the teacher I’m scared of being. I have no idea what Carleton teacher is the most like me, but dear god I want to be Connie Walker. If she ever spoke a single angry word to me, I’d probably have to kill myself. And now I’m going to sit and happily academically crush on her for a few minutes. Maybe I should ask if I can teach a romantic poetry class.
I guess I did have a writing workshop in which the professor started slamming his head into a desk. It did restore order pretty quickly - maybe I’ll try that.
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