Teaching
Becoming Ms. Johnson
You all know I’m a nervous and doubting soul. Whenever I do a new thing—the most recent of which was pulling up to a high school and attending a professional development day—thoughts of “Am I in the right place? What door do I enter? Did I have to wear nice clothes, because I’m wearing jeans today and my only change of clothes is gym shorts” cycle through my brain. I thought something similar would happen the first time I got in front of a class full of students who were confused to why their real teacher wasn’t in front, but instead my mind was full of student names and questions I had mapped out the night before.
My student teaching is going well, and I keep waiting for the other shoe to drop. I admire my mentor teacher, the other teachers he works closely with, the students in my homeroom, the students in other classes, and other teachers who I briefly see in the teacher’s lounge. One of those teachers came up to me during the professional development day while I was sifting through emails on my phone and asked, “So how’s student teaching going?” unprompted. I saw two of my students outside of class this weekend, and each time I waved to them and whispered to my housemates, “That’s my student!” The school’s environment feels familiar to me, and being in front of a class feels like a nature outgrowing of all the theory and practical knowledge I’ve ingested explicitly from the last three years of college and implicitly from the other thirteen years of school. I only get nervous when I have to tell other teachers what I’m planning on doing because I know they are going to give me advice and improve on it while I just want them to say, “Bravo! Magnificent! Take my job!”
All my fears about student teaching seemed to come to a head on Wednesday, where I felt prepared enough to take over two whole classes by myself but then spent 3 hours micromanaging and souring relationships with students rather than actually teaching them. After barely keeping it together in front of my mentor while we hashed out the events of the day, I sobbed in the bathroom. A younger student called after me in the hall and asked where some teacher was, oblivious to the tears running down my cheeks. I was able to pull myself together and get something completed, but to some extent my confidence was shaken. My mentor made a comment that I must have felt lonely, and I did—lonely and frustrated and powerless and unprepared. But then I did what I do best: reflect, make a plan, and try again. School went better on Thursday, and I got my sea legs again.
It’s definitely been an adjustment going from the college life of being unable to get out of bed by 6:30 am and only falling asleep after 11:30 pm to the teacher grind of being out the door by 5:50 am and telling my friends at 10:30 pm that my brain has stopped functioning. Sometimes I feel like I have to justify my exhaustion to my housemates when I fail to communicate that being at school from 7 am to 5 pm means working from 7:30 am to 4:30 pm, even if I’m only teaching for 3 to 4 of those hours. I’ve never related more to Mom, who at 6:30 pm would head upstairs to watch TV and fall asleep by 8:30 on weekdays, even though I have yet to watch Monday’s episode of The Bachelor despite it being Saturday. There’s something draining about continually prepping every move you make but also having enough flexibility to strike up conversations with students, which you can never ever really prepare for. There’s also something incredibly rewarding about students knowing my name and seeing me as a teacher and treating me as such (most of the time).
Since I declared education as my major of choice, I’ve wondered if I really want to be a teacher, and I always said to myself, “I’ll know by student teaching.” I’m under no illusions: I understand that the school I’m in is one that is extremely safe and comfortable for me due to my background. That being said, if being a teacher is what I’m doing now, I’m excited for the next couple years at least. Seeing glimpses of the complicated lives of adolescents, grappling with issues of how to best inspire students to learn content and how to be a better person, getting free food, laughing over strange student interactions, bouncing lesson ideas around, calling on raised hands, being surprised by angles that I had never seen before, watching the copier spit out sheet after sheet which will be crumpled in some student’s locker by the end of the day, writing learning targets that make me excited to delve into persuasive writing, and even redirecting students time and time again have all shown me how teaching does consume every part of your life, but it also transforms life into a mission: to pour my professional expertise, my well-intentioned (but not always well-enacting) actions, and my poor poor reflection of God’s love into one person’s life a little more every day. To find is to lose; to lose is to find. How could I ask for anything more?
My awkwardest moment so far:
I led homeroom, a 10 minute time for announcements and getting to be with each other, on my third day of teaching (which incidentally occurred on the start of what was meant to be my third week of teaching). I, trying to be semi-relatable, asked the students what they did over the snow day. The ones who were paying attention to me, which was like 5 of them, stared at me blankly, and the other 20 or so kept carrying on their own conversations. A couple of students raised their hands and gave answers, but no one else was listening. I awkwardly sat there, racking my brain for an option to fill the 2 minutes until 8:10 and blessed freedom, until the room naturally quieted down and all students turned to look at me. Panicking, I turned to my mentor, seated at his desk 5 feet over, and said, “You all are looking at me but I don’t know what to do…?” “You’re supposed to pray,” he whispered. Mortified, I asked if anyone would be willing to pray. A student jumped into a long prayer request about her dog staying at the vet overnight, and another wanted to pray that her family gets power, and then I just prayed. I breathed a sigh of relief once they all had exited.
Best teaching moment:
I had the idea to make the students act out where the different parts of a submarine are in order to review the vocabulary we had been learning about boats (since the book we are reading is about a submarine). I called, “Port!” and they all shuffled to their left. “Starboard!” and they shuffled to their right. “Conning tower!” and some of them pointed up while some of them just muttered their confusion to their friends. I thought the activity went over great.
My student teaching is going well, and I keep waiting for the other shoe to drop. I admire my mentor teacher, the other teachers he works closely with, the students in my homeroom, the students in other classes, and other teachers who I briefly see in the teacher’s lounge. One of those teachers came up to me during the professional development day while I was sifting through emails on my phone and asked, “So how’s student teaching going?” unprompted. I saw two of my students outside of class this weekend, and each time I waved to them and whispered to my housemates, “That’s my student!” The school’s environment feels familiar to me, and being in front of a class feels like a nature outgrowing of all the theory and practical knowledge I’ve ingested explicitly from the last three years of college and implicitly from the other thirteen years of school. I only get nervous when I have to tell other teachers what I’m planning on doing because I know they are going to give me advice and improve on it while I just want them to say, “Bravo! Magnificent! Take my job!”
All my fears about student teaching seemed to come to a head on Wednesday, where I felt prepared enough to take over two whole classes by myself but then spent 3 hours micromanaging and souring relationships with students rather than actually teaching them. After barely keeping it together in front of my mentor while we hashed out the events of the day, I sobbed in the bathroom. A younger student called after me in the hall and asked where some teacher was, oblivious to the tears running down my cheeks. I was able to pull myself together and get something completed, but to some extent my confidence was shaken. My mentor made a comment that I must have felt lonely, and I did—lonely and frustrated and powerless and unprepared. But then I did what I do best: reflect, make a plan, and try again. School went better on Thursday, and I got my sea legs again.
It’s definitely been an adjustment going from the college life of being unable to get out of bed by 6:30 am and only falling asleep after 11:30 pm to the teacher grind of being out the door by 5:50 am and telling my friends at 10:30 pm that my brain has stopped functioning. Sometimes I feel like I have to justify my exhaustion to my housemates when I fail to communicate that being at school from 7 am to 5 pm means working from 7:30 am to 4:30 pm, even if I’m only teaching for 3 to 4 of those hours. I’ve never related more to Mom, who at 6:30 pm would head upstairs to watch TV and fall asleep by 8:30 on weekdays, even though I have yet to watch Monday’s episode of The Bachelor despite it being Saturday. There’s something draining about continually prepping every move you make but also having enough flexibility to strike up conversations with students, which you can never ever really prepare for. There’s also something incredibly rewarding about students knowing my name and seeing me as a teacher and treating me as such (most of the time).
Since I declared education as my major of choice, I’ve wondered if I really want to be a teacher, and I always said to myself, “I’ll know by student teaching.” I’m under no illusions: I understand that the school I’m in is one that is extremely safe and comfortable for me due to my background. That being said, if being a teacher is what I’m doing now, I’m excited for the next couple years at least. Seeing glimpses of the complicated lives of adolescents, grappling with issues of how to best inspire students to learn content and how to be a better person, getting free food, laughing over strange student interactions, bouncing lesson ideas around, calling on raised hands, being surprised by angles that I had never seen before, watching the copier spit out sheet after sheet which will be crumpled in some student’s locker by the end of the day, writing learning targets that make me excited to delve into persuasive writing, and even redirecting students time and time again have all shown me how teaching does consume every part of your life, but it also transforms life into a mission: to pour my professional expertise, my well-intentioned (but not always well-enacting) actions, and my poor poor reflection of God’s love into one person’s life a little more every day. To find is to lose; to lose is to find. How could I ask for anything more?
My awkwardest moment so far:
I led homeroom, a 10 minute time for announcements and getting to be with each other, on my third day of teaching (which incidentally occurred on the start of what was meant to be my third week of teaching). I, trying to be semi-relatable, asked the students what they did over the snow day. The ones who were paying attention to me, which was like 5 of them, stared at me blankly, and the other 20 or so kept carrying on their own conversations. A couple of students raised their hands and gave answers, but no one else was listening. I awkwardly sat there, racking my brain for an option to fill the 2 minutes until 8:10 and blessed freedom, until the room naturally quieted down and all students turned to look at me. Panicking, I turned to my mentor, seated at his desk 5 feet over, and said, “You all are looking at me but I don’t know what to do…?” “You’re supposed to pray,” he whispered. Mortified, I asked if anyone would be willing to pray. A student jumped into a long prayer request about her dog staying at the vet overnight, and another wanted to pray that her family gets power, and then I just prayed. I breathed a sigh of relief once they all had exited.
Best teaching moment:
I had the idea to make the students act out where the different parts of a submarine are in order to review the vocabulary we had been learning about boats (since the book we are reading is about a submarine). I called, “Port!” and they all shuffled to their left. “Starboard!” and they shuffled to their right. “Conning tower!” and some of them pointed up while some of them just muttered their confusion to their friends. I thought the activity went over great.
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