Getting My Gumption Back

I lost my arrogance somewhere between leaving St. Edward's and the end of my first six weeks of student teaching. I am not sure if it was visible to the human eye, but it slipped slowly away from me.

Flopping around in the classroom while my mentor flaps her arms around me in agitated dismay is enough to wreck anyone's self-confidence. Students ignoring me, yawning, talking with one another or (gasp) falling asleep in class is pretty disconcerting as well. You never realize how much behavior management is necessary in teaching, how much it dominates your lesson, how much it consumes you your time and steals your nerve. Students who are respectful one on one are monsters in the mob of a class, the safety of the student herd.

I have to admit I was arrogant. I didn't mind tooting my own horn if there was no one around to do it for me. Heck, I still do it sometimes, just to get a little recognition.

But at Crockett High School my self-esteem took a nose-dive. Am I a good teacher? Is this really the profession for me? Do I know what I am doing? Do I really want to see the kids today?

The sad truth is, on some days I would love to kick up my heels, turn tail and run away. Goodbye 9-5. Goodbye apathy. Goodbye rudeness. Goodbye ignorance. Goodbye evaluation. Ahhhh, that would of been nice.

If it was all about education, I would be racing for the doors, but it isn't. Even my educationally brilliant students think they are forced to go to school; even they view it as a chore. I try to empathize and revisit my own high-schoolish apathy, but I can't. I am too passionate and too concerned and too educated and too active and too involved. Those days are gone... Thank God. I wasn't proud of who I was then or proud of what I did. I love me now. I am not the problem - but it is all about perspective, right?

I don't want to change. I want them to change. I want them to care. I want them to work hard. I want them to want to learn. This is the mystery to education. How do you make a person care. You can't. You try, but ultimately it is up to the student to want to learn.
That doesn't keep me from trying.
I try to create interesting lessons, active lessons, thought-provoking lessons.
I offer students a voice in their own education.
I make myself available.
I give pep-talks.
I use pictures, movies and technology.

I am way off topic. What it comes down to is that I started to notice fear creeping into my stomach, into my heart, into my head.

My positive thoughts started slinking to the periphery of my mind and anxieties began to appear. I started to doubt myself.

When you are in an environment where you are treated as incapable, ignored because you reek of fresh, inexperienced flesh, when your optimism and passion is shunned and your ideas shut down because they "wouldn't work", you start to sink in on yourself.; you lose faith in yourself and your own abilities.

Student teaching is a miserable position, a half-way house, a limbo. You are neither a student nor a teacher but you somehow struggling to embody both. It is not your classroom when you student teach. That means you don't get to enforce your beliefs. You simply mimic the style of management of the person you are with. This can be greatly ineffective if that person's style is very far from you own and if the style is ineffective. That guarantees that you will be ineffective too and you can't fix it if it isn't yours. If you didn't know, that sucks. You suck. The system sucks. Everything sucks. I was very angry about this.

I am in the process of readjusting myself to no longer be afraid or angry. I want accepting and attempting as mu mantras now.

So, you have had to sit through these little moaning and groaning paragraphs, waiting impatiently with rolling-eyes and a tapping foot for the good stuff. You want the happy ending. Don't we all.

Well, for the time being there is a happy ending. I went back to St. Edward's and was treated like I knew my stuff. People listened to me. People respected me. People liked me. I was valued. I remembered I rocked. I remembered why people value me and that is because I am a red-boot-wearing, head-thrown-back, feet-strutting overachiever with passion pouring out of my pores and education soaking in.
You say, "Jump ten feet."
I say, "I'll jump 27."
You say, "You're crazy. Don't do that. You'll burn out."
I say, "Watch me and I'll have it in before 10:00."
I love me. I just needed St. Edward's to remind me.

I presented in class and after first but before 5th my oratory skills, my interactive communication skills, my heck-yeah-I'm-a-teacher skills resurrected themselves. They hit turbulence but I remembered they were there.