A year of teaching

It’s finally July and that means that my first year as a teacher is officially coming to an end. It’s definitely been one hell of an experience and I think I learned more about myself than I was expecting when I first started this job. I have a lot of things that I believe I did well and a lot of things that I believe I could improve on, let’s have a look at all of it, shall we?

First things first, the elephant in the room. No, I’m not talking about the one I see as a side-effect of my anti-anxiety meds, but about those meds themselves. You see, I’ve been quite open about starting medication in November of last year. I wasn’t doing well for a while and the stress was really getting to me. Calming my nerves with the wonders of drugs turned out to be the solution. I’ve long been opposed to using medication because I have this really dumb idea in the back of my head that I want to “earn” being a functioning adult which is obviously ridiculous if we look at it objectively, but your feelings don’t care about facts. That’s right, that dumb saying makes much more sense when we turn it around. Nevertheless, I don’t regret starting medication one bit. I went from barely holding on to reasonably doing well and I’ve seen a serious increase in my mood, energy and productivity. Things were finally looking up for me in late November.

And then I got covid. I don’t believe I had covid before then and man oh man did it hit like a truck. As a matter of fact, I’m still feeling the aftereffects now. I should probably see a doctor about that. I spent most of early December in bed and luckily I got a bit better right around Christmas, but I still felt weak for weeks. So early 2024 was an exhausting period for me and it took some serious willpower to work through the exhaustion. But I was starting to enjoy my work more and more, so I decided to keep going and it ended up being the right choice for sure. 

Then when April came around I learned that I might not get a new contract after summer. This shocked me of course since I didn’t think I was doing poorly. Asking around for support at work I got lots and it made me confident to really defend myself and let them give me another shot. This worked. I remember being taught that those who ask get skipped as a kid, but clearly it’s the other way around. If you ask and push for something, you’re more likely to get what you want. This definitely changes the way I look at some things. So I’ll still be working here next year, teaching second years at a separate location. 

Let’s talk classes for a second. I have four classes this year. My first year class and three second year classes. I got along really well with three of those classes, but one of my second year classes didn’t really mesh well with my teaching style. Now obviously that meant I should have adjusted my teaching style, but I wasn’t very confident yet and quickly built a classroom environment in which things were loud and chaotic. Now this isn’t something that was unique to me, this was a class that other teachers also butted heads with and although they were all perfectly lovely children individually, sometimes they would definitely let things go out of hand as a group and I wasn’t skilled enough as a teacher to get things to go back to normal. I learned a lot from his class about who I am as a teacher and as a person and what sort of things I should learn about to become a better teacher in future years. I’m really bad at handing out punishment because I don’t see it as particularly useful, but sometimes it’ll create a safer learning space if students are well aware of the boundaries and rules set by the teacher. I’m the one in charge of creating that space, and sometimes it felt like my students were actually the ones deciding on what would be the atmosphere that day.

But putting aside that one class, I got along a lot better with my other three classes. Of course there were still things I would do differently with these classes next year, but I’m very pleased with how it went. The students liked my classes – mostly, it’s still school – and weren’t afraid to ask questions or give input during classes. They also all got a passing grade for English. Those two are really my main goals if you boil it down. Creating a fun and safe learning environment and getting everyone to the next year successfully. I would say I reached that goal with three of my classes and next year I’ll make it four classes. One girl even came up to me and said I was her favorite teacher because I let her walk around sometimes to release some energy. Maybe I’m too easy on these kids, but who can say no to the little rascals?

To make a long story short, I am as surprised as everyone else still that this is the path I chose to take in life, but I do think it was the right path. I like teaching and I find myself really enjoying the days where classes go smoothly and kids do their work and have some fun as well. There’s something that Brennan Lee Mulligan said a while back that resonated with me. I’m paraphrasing it but it boiled down to the fact that teaching someone means you have something that someone else wants and you can give it to them without you losing it yourself. That’s a very nice way of looking at it. I want to teach these kids to be good at English but also that it’s okay to be themselves and be kids at times.

Although this post is looking back, I still have two weeks to go. I just finished grading the final tests and will have to hand them back to the students on Friday. Then next week will be filled with meetings about which students move on to the next year and who is getting held back a year. I’m not looking forward to that purely because I don’t have a lot to say about most of my classes and there’s a lot of time between meetings so I’ll be stuck here. Hopefully the weather is nice so that I can find a nice spot to do some reading. Anyway, thank you for indulging me in this look back and if there’s anything you want to know about teaching please feel free to leave a comment. As always, thanks for reading!