I’ve been teaching for a little more than six months now. When I started I was a bumbling idiot on the verge of a nervous breakdown who didn’t know what he was doing. Now I’m still a bumbling idiot who doesn’t know what he’s doing, but at least I’m no longer on the verge of a nervous breakdown. Part of this is because I am taking medication, but a large part of this is also due to the fact that I’m slowly getting used to being a teacher. Although it’s subtle and with baby steps, I am definitely improving. Having said that, there is a lot I still need to improve before I’m a good teacher. Right now I’d like to think I’m barely passing as a teacher which – with less than a full year of experience – I don’t think is bad at all. So what do I still need to work on then?
Well, as luck would have it, or misfortune depending on how you look at it, I had a coworker observe one of my lessons today to give me feedback. This wasn’t a bad lesson by any means but it also wasn’t my best and this was quite clear. The kids were rowdy as this was their third hour in the same room and they had to work quite hard during the first two hours. I also had a lesson planned that required me to give some kids individual attention and I’m not yet all that good at splitting my attention between an individual and the rest of the class. This led to several kids spending more time on their Ipad than doing work while I was helping out other kids in the meantime. Obviously it is up to me to make sure this doesn’t happen, but I’m clearly not very good at this yet. That was a big part of the feedback I received and it’s totally valid. I have much to learn, but I need to remind myself that that is okay. I’m new at this, my dad often complains that new hires are absolutely incapable of doing anything at his job while I’m expected to know everything from day one. There is a truth to that but I do like to improve because better lessons make for easier work and higher performing students. It’s just all around a win.
While I was writing this post – well, not literally as I was writing it, but between starting it and picking it back up later in the day – I had to intervene with some of my students. It turned out one of them had been insulting the other during class. I’d warned this group of boys several times already and even moved one to a different seat because it wasn’t having much effect. This boy that was insulted turned violent, hitting his classmate twice before I intervened. I spoke with both boys about the incident and made a note to their mentor, but it shocked me a little bit. It turns out they don’t like each other all that much – which isn’t a huge surprise – and it culminated in today’s encounter. They don’t seem particularly remorseful about their actions which is worrisome, but the best I can do is just keep an eye on things and most importantly keep the boys separated.
There’s a lot that comes at you in a very short time when you start a new job. I’m sure that’s not unique to teaching but it is getting a bit old to constantly feel like you’re behind on things. I’m really hoping that this is something I will get better at as time goes on. If I have a bigger library of exercises ready and I know the structure of the school year better then perhaps I can start preparing everything an extra week or two in advance so that my margin for error increases. Now when something isn’t right I’m immediately behind on schedule and I have to frantically fix things. It would be much nicer if I could be earlier, but that’s a pretty obvious problem with being new I suppose.
There’s how work has been going. I hope that my performance has been good enough that I can keep working here next year. So far I’ve not seen any indications that it’ll be a problem but you never know. I’ll go back to teaching now, my break ends in five minutes and I still have two classes to go before the day is over and I can go home and pass out on the couch. Next week I’m hoping to talk a little bit about Critical Role’s new tabletop game Daggerheart, but I couldn’t write that post for today since I feel like I need to dive into it a bit more first. I believe that is all for Monday posts in March, and we’ll continue in April with more Necromancer’s daughter, some anime recaps and the start of my new short story. Look forward to it and thanks for reading!
Opal Kaharis 