hipteacher

A Hard Day’s Night

I have learned an important lesson. I have learned to feel dumb. Now, I am trying to continue feeling that way.

It isn’t easy.

About six months ago, I started writing songs accidentally. A friend got stuck with the words for a verse and asked for help. The acoustic guitar played, and after staring for a second at my notebook, I started writing. My words didn’t go perfectly with the music, but with some tweaking, the song sounded pretty good. Thus began my new hobby.

Five or six songs later, I started getting the itch—the itch to perform. It felt strange hearing my words from the perspective of an audience member. I didn’t desire the spotlight or the ego inflation. I just wanted to experience the performance of something that I helped create.

Unfortunately, I am no musician. I suffered through a few years of piano lessons as a kid, but that’s the extent of my training. So, I picked up the tambourine, shakers and bells and learned little parts for each of the songs.  Sort of.

After only a few practices, I realized that I am a total moron when it comes to music. I am not a natural. I don’t “hear” where my notes should go. I don’t “feel” the rhythm in an accurate way. I can’t watch the guitar and “follow its lead.” Don’t even think about my inventing my own parts.

Most of the time, I get really frustrated with myself and, within five minutes, I’m crying. I have quit the band about twenty times. I snap at my friend who is attempting to teach me. At the bar after a particularly enjoyable session, I was ordered an “Attitude Adjustment.” Let’s just say I am a royal pain in the arse—just trying to play a couple notes or do a little shake, shake, shake.

Yesterday, I realized why my behavior seemed kind of familiar to me. I’ve seen it from my students a million times. I have been driven crazy by that behavior a million times. They’ve wanted to give up, and I’ve wanted to give up on them a million times. I didn’t understand their strong emotional responses – the tears, pissyness and anger – until now.

I am good at many things, so I’ve stayed away from the things that don’t come easily for me. I hate it when I don’t automatically get something. But what a cop-out is that? I’m never going to work through the tough stuff? How can I expect my students to keep struggling if I can’t do the same?

I have a new respect for those who can stick it out and keep trying.  We can’t be brilliant at everything. So, the next time a kid freaks out in my class because he/she doesn’t get an assignment or can’t understand a passage, I’m probably going to feel and react a whole lot differently.

I started out trying to be a rock star, but I’m learning how to be a better teacher. And hopefully a better, more humble person too.

I'm It!

I got tagged by Mentor Texts.... I feel cool. Seriously.

Teaching Meme

1. I am a good teacher because... I was a total failure as a high school student. I remember all too well how it feels on the other side. Also, I live by my mantra, “If I am bored, then they probably are too.”

2. If I weren't a teacher, I would be... a rock star, a journalist, a poet, a writer of creative non-fiction, a collage-maker, a something-with-my-hands, or a manager/muse to creative types. But probably a teacher.

3. My teaching style is... like a stealthy ninja. We’re having fun…we’re having fun…we’re having fun…we’re laughing at the teacher for running into her desk again…we’re having fun…Oops! I learned something! How’d that happen?!

4. My classroom is... far, far away in some magical and slightly misty world. Until that fantasy reaches me, I share for my two classes and then trailer it in a room of very separate two purposes, which I share without too much pleasure.

5. My lesson plans... were really lovely and detailed when I did them in grad school.

6. One of my teaching goals is…to make kids figure out that they are smart and can learn all by themselves.

7. The toughest part of teaching is...having enough energy to get through the day and still having ten hours of marking to do when I get home at night.

8. The thing I love most about teaching is... how alive I feel when I’m doing it. The kids are cool too. : )

9. A common misconception about teaching is...that teachers are really clean-cut folks. I mean, lots of these folks really know how to unwind. It kinda freaks me out.

10. The most important thing I've learned since I started teaching...is not to let school completely take over your life outside of school. One divorce later, I’ve learned that I must remember to pay attention and nurture my personal life.  But I still have to remind myself.

I'll tag:
David Warlick
Alan November
Hedgetoad
Dana Huff
Mary
Mimi
educat

My apologies if anyone's already been tagged.

so let's procrastinate

from ramblin' educat...

(hope)Fully

I am at a planning standstill because I now have too many jobs. Brain does not compute.

I will teach two ninth grade genre courses. I will start and run a writing center. I will run a learning lab for kids who had less-than-stellar grades last term. I will be yearbook editor for the first time. I will write writing guidelines, like a style book, for the humanities departments at my school. I will finish my tech grant. I will prepare a presentation for a regional independent schools conference.

I will move to my fifth classroom in four years. I will unpack my boxes and find my materials.

I will not lose my mind.

Get Back to Reading

I can’t sleep. I start school in a week.

It’s going to be my fourth year teaching. Why do I still feel brand new?

Some things have changed. I still don’t know what I’m doing, only now I don’t care that I don’t know what  I’m doing as much. That is until I start having my annual School Starting Anxiety Dreams—then I wish I had prepared my butt off all summer.

But I did other things. I started writing songs and played shows with a rock band. I attempted to play Transformers with my new four-year-old, who is unnaturally obsessive about anything that ends with “con". I cooked food in my kitchen without using the microwave. I stopped taking the meds that were supposed to stop me from becoming a depressed zombie and found out they’d been making me a depressed zombie.
I walked my ridiculous Chihuahua and did sit-ups on a regular basis.

I did not, however, read Great Expectations.

Summer reading should be sweet, pleasurable, and thought provoking in a ninja-like way. Summer reading should inspire life-long reading habits in kids. Summer reading should not be like a fist to the gut of a going-on-ninth-grader, who is suddenly longing, nay  pining, for the good old days spent with Atticus Finch and Family. Great Expectations is an incredible book, but it is not good summer reading.

I am tickled by the possible redeeming social value of my very privileged students reading about Pip and his pathetic piece of dinner bread stuck up a pants leg while they lounged on the beach with friends in Costa Rica, cruised to Alaska, and cavorted in Sweden. Perhaps they all suddenly appreciated their exceptional place in society. Perhaps some will decide to throw off parental expectations and become social workers, public defenders and readers for the blind instead of succumbing to investment bankerdom. But, perhaps not.

I’d like to wager that many didn’t get through this novel at all. I am comfortable making this wager because I am hovering at around page one hundred, and I am their English teacher.

I’d rather assign books that would get greater numbers of them all the way through their reading, hopefully encouraging them to love reading and to look forward to reading in high school. Couldn’t we wait to scare and intimidate them with our mighty profundity after school starts?

So, here’s to a summer reading list full of books like Harry Potter, The Perks of Being a Wallflower, and The  Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time! Here’s to letting kids choose their own summer reading books!

Ok. I am not really an English teacher’s English teacher. But I still kinda have a point.

What was my point? Oh, right...

I should get to sleep, so I can read Dickens tomorrow. There's a long road ahead for me and Pip.