Teaching and training are exciting and hard

 

My title, "Teaching and training are exciting and hard" won't sound surprising, and certainly is true.

I'm working as a student teacher at a high school in the Bronx this summer. The students are here because they need to repeat a class or two. Naturally, most of them are not happy about being in school in summer, and repeating a course is no fun. I'm impressed and grateful when any of them shows a good attitude about participating. Some of the students understand the material fairly well, and they passed the Regents exam

I'm helping to teach a class in Global History. History and Social Studies were my very worst class subjects when I was in school. I've matured and am able to understand this kind of material now, but thinking as a teacher is still very hard for me.

At the same time, I am taking classes on pedagogy and education philosophy. The work load is considerable, and because of my learning disabilities, writing a lesson plan, hard enough for any beginning teacher, takes me hours. Some nights, I sleep for only four hours.

I understand that it's entirely normal for a new teacher to flop in classes. And of course, that's what I'm doing. The students are bored and disengaged because the focus of my lessons are not clear. Writing is hard! Giving clear directions is much harder than I thought, and it would be hard enough if the students were uniformly interested, but summer school is naturally a downer, and there are nicer things to do in the summer than going to school.

My mentors and teachers here are amazing. They are expert, as they have ushered others through this process. They give tons of feedback, and even when addressing the areas where I need to improve, they are encouraging and motivating. At the same time, getting a lot of negative criticism wears me down, even though it is given with great compassion. It's the volume of it that adds to the challenge. But as I say, bring it on!

But I want to be clear: I'm very glad to be doing this. Teaching History and watching teachers teach other subjects has opened my mind to the possibility of teaching History, English, or Science, whereas I've been picturing myself teaching Math or Computer Science. My certification will be as a Special Education teacher and a subject matter Generalist. Maybe I'll be certified as a subject matter expert eventually, and who knows what subject that will be? This experience has opened my mind to possibilities.

I don't know what school I will teach at in the fall, but I know it will be in the Bronx. I am contacting schools about positions, and some schools are also contacting me by finding me in a database of eligible applicants.