Check Your Ego at the Curb

I’m now officially 1 month in to my student teaching experience. This coming week I will take “full control” of the classroom. The reality is that I will not be in actual full control as my wonderful cooperating teacher will continue to be there to support me, teach me, remind me and guide me. And thank goodness; because without her – I’d be lost.

If you want to know the real truth, while it has been over 3 years since I made the decision to study Elementary Education I never fully grasped the actual role of the elementary classroom teacher until now. The past several weeks I have worked 11-12 hour days at the school then came home and spent another couple hours working. And this is not me writing innovative lesson plans for every subject. This time is not spent researching brilliant new strategies. This is time spent preparing, grading, analyzing data, and most importantly – reflecting. I have 21 young minds that I feel wholly accountable for and I am committed to doing them justice and not letting them down. My hope is that in a couple of years I will be swiftly completing the daily tasks so that I can use extra time for innovation and research.  

Student Teaching brings your faults to the surface like a big, nasty pimple. The first week that I taught I spent 30 minutes going through a PowerPoint I had intended to take 10 minutes doing. Oops. No time for that nifty, fun assessment activity now, friends. Time management has always been an issue for me and now I can see the aftermath of my flaw. So, my CT (cooperating teacher) and I came up with some strategies: use a timer or get a watch. I use both now. Incidentally, I haven’t worn a watch regularly since the 80’s when Swatches were in style. This week’s reality check: the kids don’t treat me with same level of respect as my CT. They are constantly coming up to me, blurting out answers, asking off topic questions and sharing factoids about their life that are waaaaaaay off topic. Great. I’ve become best friends with a gaggle of 9-year olds. That doesn’t mean I’m going to be able to teach them about the life cycle, subtraction algorithms or writing sequences. So, this weekend I get to reflect more on why they are doing this, what things I am doing to create this situation and what am I going to do to improve my classroom management skills to get us back on track.

I wish I had the opportunity to talk to every high school and college student thinking about a career in teaching. Just to have the chance to tell them that you HAVE TO LOVE KIDS to do this. I mean, REALLY love them. Teaching is not an, “I think kids are cute so I’d like to hear the funny things they say all day,” kind of career. From what I’ve seen so far, teaching is a CHECK-YOUR-EGO-AT-THE-CURB-AND-DO-WHATEVER-IT-TAKES-TO-TEACH-KIDS-NOT-JUST-CORE-SUBJECTS-BUT-ALSO-LIFE-SKILLS-CONFIDENCE-SELF-ESTEEM-AND-PRO-SOCIAL-BEHAVIORS kind of career. And when I say check your ego at the curb, I mean really check your ego at the curb. Because at the beginning, middle and end of each day, you should NOT thinking about yourself. You are thinking about the young hearts and minds you are responsible for. And every action, decision and motivation is made with their needs at heart.

And then, if you are able to decide that you do indeed love kids, you ALSO have to be able to accept and respect their parents. You must realize that their parents know your students better than anyone else, EVEN YOU. And you have to be able to let go and let those kids be their unique, creative, bubbly, unorganized, mopey, silly, scattered, reserved, outgoing, and amazing selves. They are who they are and their parents LOVE that about them. Don’t try to change it.

And once you’ve realized all of this…and you still want to be a teacher…despite the warnings of 12, 14, 16 hour days. Despite the knowledge that you will feel tremendous pressure to dress in current, professional fashion (see Pinterest for details), work out at a gym, have your hair professionally cut & colored, decorate your room in the a darling, cohesive theme (see Pinterest once again) – all on a salary somewhat akin to secretarial work WHILE paying off student loans… if you still want to teach after knowing all that, I have news for you: you will love it.

The first time a little girl who struggles with math cries out, “Oh! I get it now!” The first time you grade a paper and see the strategy you taught a student put into action to help them solve a problem – and they get it right! The first time your heart bursts because one of your students reached out to a peer to give support, help, or just a hand to hold. You. Will. Love. It.   

My husband asked me this week if it was worth it. “Sarah, you’re just 4 weeks in. You look miserable,” he said to me as I half-sat, half-laid on the club chair and ottoman beside our bed. I was covered in materials…laptop, curriculum book, a stack of papers, and my grading pen. I mumbled some sort of reply that it wouldn’t always be like this…that I’m just new, I’m learning, I also am studying for certification exams and doing other assignments for my college. My muffled, half-hearted response to him still swirls around my head. Because the truth is: I know it actually always WILL be like this. There will always be college courses and professional development work to do. Being a teacher means being committed to a lifelong learning process. There will always be papers to grade, assignments to plan, new curriculum to analyze, parents to communicate with…and most importantly, the important task of reflection.

So here's my egotistical self talking: I've known for a long time that I would be a good teacher. Kids like me, they listen to me, and I like them. I find education exciting and am really committed to living a life that honors knowledge. But something had been nagging me for a while because I've been discovering that these qualities I have are not unique. There are thousands of other college seniors graduating this December and next May who have degrees in education, who also like kids and kids like them. What makes me unique are my flaws. My mistakes. My would-of, could-of, should-of 's. Because for every mistake I’ve made, I didn’t think about how my error impacted me, my evaluation, my career prospects or my grade. My FIRST thought was how my mistake impacted my students.  

Here I sit, writing a reflection about what I could be doing better, what has worked and what hasn't, and I end up having my own personal "A ha!" moment. I now know that I have the right stuff to be a teacher.

Stay tuned…