Teachers

My first week of student teaching has been relatively uneventful. I met my coop (cooperating teacher) Mr. K. I also met my supervisor. She is a retired teacher who used to work with inner city kids in Philadelphia. They both seem completely wonderful.

I have been thinking extensively over the past two days about the kind of teacher I want to be. Sitting in the teacher's lounge yesterday and today gave me a bit of a shock. For some reason, I had been envisioning teachers using their 80 min plan period to grade papers, come up with new curriculum, and brain storm ideas for reaching students in their classes who are struggling. I pictured teachers sharing stories about student successes and intelligent things students said in class. What I witnessed was something completely different.

Today, the teachers were grading final papers. They were taking turns going around and reading "stupid things" that students wrote to the rest of the group. Run-on sentences, comments that made no sense, improper grammar, and anything else that struck them as funny. Now, don't get me wrong, some of the mistakes were humorous, and it was quite obvious that some of the students did not put much time and effort into their papers. However, it was the tone of the conversation, and their attitudes toward the students that put me on edge. It was like they were mining through the papers for errors, hoping they would find a funny student failure to share with the group.

Still, they are all very nice people, and I will do my best not to judge them all totally on first impressions. The experience just got me thinking about what kind of teacher I want to be. I want to be the kind of teacher that spends 80 minute planning periods pouring over papers and looking for hints of student brilliance and potential. I want to be the kind of teacher who sees improper grammar or an incorrect fact and feels concern that the student has not learned the material properly. Instead of spending my time googling Phillies ticket prices and coming up with chapters for the hypothetical book I am writing in my head called "Why People Kill People," I want to spend my time coming up with new fun and interesting activities that will enrich my students' learning experiences.

Most of all, I never want to get to the point where I am comfortable. I never want to wake up and go to school knowing exactly what I am doing that day because I am teaching the same lesson the same way that I have been teaching it for the past ten years. I want to be always challenging myself, always finding new and different ways to connect with students.

Who knows, perhaps someday I'll look back on this post and think, "Oh that poor naive and idealistic girl." However, I really hope that is not the case. Whatever I do in life, and wherever I end up, I always want to be out of my comfort zone, and I always want to be pushing the limits. Most of all, I hope that I will always have a passion for the work I am doing and that I will always care genuinely and deeply for the students I am working with.