Wow. What a perfect quote to sum up my brain right now. In the last couple of months I have finally started to feel like, while I haven't found the place for me yet I will be a great teacher some day. I am ready for my own classroom. I finally feel ready. Or I did. Until I opened my mail tonight.
I learned a valuable lesson in my first year of teaching. It's ok to ask for help. As a guest teacher, most often I don't know the students and they don't know me. They don't know that I believe that all children should be held to a high standard of respect and responsibility. That they alone are responsible for their learning. I'm there to teach them whatever material their regular classroom teacher has left for them, but I can't do it alone. They have to be willing to learn. So I asked for help and in return I got a negative evaluation. It's not the fact that the principal had something negative to say about my experience that day. It's that she laid the fault at my feet. I "struggled to maintain control." I did. So after all the ways I usually use failed, I called the class to the carpet, away from the pencils they were writing notes with, away from the scissors they were using to cut snowflakes with and all the other distractions they had at their desks. We had a discussion about what their job was, and about what my job was as their teacher. And it worked. For a short time. And then when they were out of control again and I was struggling to focus them I called for help. It's what we're supposed to do, right? Of course as soon as the counselor and principal approached the room the students had settled down. So either I was supposed to call for help sooner, or I shouldn't have called at all. Either way? Message received Principal, to call for help in your school results in being written up for being an ineffective substitute who requires further training.
As if struggling in a different classroom this week didn't already make me feel like "no wonder you don't have a job" this was another nail in the coffin. Let's just mention that the other classroom I was in this week was at a school where they recognize that asking for help is a positive thing and that sometimes students are unresponsive regardless of what you try. You know they saying "it takes a village to raise a child." So thank you Madam Principal, for your support as well as the support of your staff who helped us survive the day and for your reassurance that it wasn't my lack of abilities that lead to the chaos of the day.
It's times like this that I have to remind myself of students like P who asks when I'm coming back. H, who after an OK, but not goal meeting day 1 with me had a great day 2 and 3. Of E who usually has a few "off" days a week who had at least 3 great days. The class who offered me all their class money to keep me from taking an interview for a full time non subbing job. Of my class overseas who I was heartbroken to leave after just a few weeks. My class of high schoolers who were so excited to greet me each day! A whose mom told me that she wished I was her teacher full time because of how much her daughter learned from me. Of N who I supported in such an unconventional way that her father personally thanked me in the little English he had. Of the names which have faded, but the faces that never will.
I won't shatter.
