A Teacher's Morning Coffee: Do I belong?

Wednesday, September 1, 2010

Do I belong?

A quick note... on if I belong here....

It seams that some of my students are "not getting it." The basic ideas I'm showing them just are not calculating. Is it my teaching style? Is it my lack of discipline in the classroom during the first two weeks of school? Is it the long leash I give my students so that they can learn responsibilty?

Low scores to start the year make me wonder if I'm too hard or expect too much. Or is it that teachers before me have expected too little and I'm finally the first to push them harder than than they have been pushed before.

Ownership in ones own education is a necessity. I teach in such a way that demands my students to take ownership in their learning; right now their lack of success reflects their lack of ownership. I too take ownership for my education as an educator and must continue to modify how I allow my students to take ownership of their learning. Until we find a way to work it out between us, me with higher expectations and them, with understanding an education comes from within, we will continue treading water until we figure something out.

Treading water right now...

1 comment:

UnknownSeptember 7, 2010 at 5:39 PM
As a teacher you have a pivotal role in shaping the minds of your students. You may doubt your methods but never doubt your purpose. Realize, that with the exception of perhaps your parents, no one impacts a person more than you. Thank you for your efforts GPL
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Dear Teacher

Dear Teacher,

Let us open our memory to when we were students seeking our degrees in education. Be it college or grad school, from day one we were taught how to teach. Between demanding methods of teaching, classroom behavior management, curriculum development, and the like, our professors modeled the ideal classroom. We presented lessons to our peers, critiqued deliveries, and role played numerous classroom scenarios until we all had an idea (or at least we thought) of what faced us in our journey ahead.

In the chaos of student teaching, interviewing, graduating, and so on, some of us forgot why we entered education in the first place. We simply did not choose jobs; we chose a vocation that impacts the rest of the word. Our souls have great purpose in what we are doing and there is something within all of us that moved us toward the classroom. Teachers thrive in the classroom, what we have to offer is more than subject material; we long to share ourselves.

Our belief in one student can change the world, yet we were unable to materialize our beliefs in our "how to teach" courses. Believing in students is an understanding of why we chose teaching as our careers. It is difficult to believe any of us chose this vocation without the ambition of changing student lives. Propelling one student beyond the content material is the difference we make as educators. As teachers, we must teach in such as way that our students can reflect upon their education and use us to mark history.

State testing and the bureaucracy that comes with our evaluations, tenure, and outside judgment will continue to haunt us all. Though rarely talked about and certainly not fully developed in our educational training, our desire to reach the adolescent heart is omnipresent. You are not alone in your quest to lead students to a greater peak in their learning, one higher than any state test can measure.

We have chosen an emotional occupation; the days may be long, the journey exhausting, and the victories difficult to see. Throughout this blog we will find meaning in our teaching through why we teach and allow it to transform how we teach our students.

Come on the journey with me to discover why we became educators. There is something deep within calling us to pursue more than the subject we teach. Our hearts long to be part of a story more important than standardized tests and student success hinges upon us being masters of that story. Rarely have we been given a chance to listen to our heart and reflect upon why we teach. Together we will pursue the source of the ever flowing spring of educational desire.

We are in a career in which we receive little monetary compensation. We are frequently berated from lack of tangible success and often blamed for the problems with America’s youth. Yet we are connected emotionally to our occupation. We love it….but sometimes the system kills the passion we had entering education and brings us a new reason to educate, to pass the test.

What happened to our initial motivation? What stole our spirit and how do we get it back? In the end, it is not really about dollars and dimes, what parents think of us, or how well our students remember Romeo and Juliet or the Pythagorean Theorem; it is about giving ourselves to our students. And when we give ourselves, there we will find true joy, there you will find motivation to keep teaching. There you will find the purpose in what we do.