May 25, 2006

• Topic: 2 more days!!!

  It’s a strange but nice feeling to be going through your own life transition. On Friday, I’ll be done with my stint as an office manager, which I’ll probably reflect on in a year or so in a completely different way than it seems now. It’s strange in the sense that I’m the only person leaving, unlike school or most of my previous jobs that were seasonal and so had set end dates.

  I was musing this morning about the kind of teacher I would like to be, and actually had a dream about working at camp again. In the dream, a kid shoved me into the pool with all my clothes on, and I wasn’t sure how to react. I’m not the confrontation or revenge type, nor the lecturer type (when I was about 16, I did respond to another camper pouring a cup of water on my sleeping bag with dumping an entire gatorade tank on his tent while he was sleeping!)

  In my dream, I pulled the kid aside, but I really didn’t care, in the same way I could tell he didn’t care when he pushed me, and didn’t care what I said. Just kind of laughed about it, but tried to reason w/ him why it could’ve been bad, like if I had a phone in my pocket, or something.

  I remembered something I thought about a lot while on my Outward Bound course. That there is often no “one-right way,” to do something. The object is to do something so that it works. There might be better ways of doing things, but often discovering that no your own is as acceptable as having someone show you how.

  I’ll be teaching elementary special ed, and as my mom puts it, “little kids, little problems,” so I’m not worried so much about difficult kids, although I still imagine a classroom of wild disrespectful kids. I think about what it means to be a teacher, what it means for these kids to be students, and what we’re all trying to do as people.

  As someone who has ranted a good deal about education, it might sound strange to hear me say this, but teaching is a job, first and foremost. It’s a way to make a living. If your principal doesn’t like you, he can fire you. The principal is judged based on certain standards, and so I need to stay within those standards.

  I’m beginning to recall more and more the way my friends and I used to test teachers, and how we could care less what they had to say about either the subject, or life in general. I have to know that as a teacher, my job is to ATTEMPT to help as many students as I can.

  The real reason I am interested in teaching, is I love working in social environments. I can’t wait to work in a place where something is happening every day, where I can have my emotions stirred.

  The program I’m in has an online forum where new teachers can discuss issues, and I’ve already gotten a good taste for the different personalities. People who are scared, lost, and overwhelmed by the process. People who have already found schools and are interested in teaching and classroom management strategies. People thinking about part-time jobs to supplement their income. People relocating who don’t know Brooklyn from Staten Island. People just graduating, and those concerned about taking a massive paycut late in their lives. Again I’m reminded, whatever works. There’s no one personality for teaching.

  They say that every job you work, you learn both what you like and what you don’t. A part of me still wants to be everything, and doesn’t like the idea that there are things I’m not good at, or not interested in. This past year has been mostly unmemorable workwise, and although I was in a low-level position, I feel like I do better making my contribution to society directly to people. I would rather spend the next 30 years working with kids, than trying to get into a position of changing education policy. I would rather work with kids, than be in an office talking about them.

  • 10:26 am
  • 7 Comments