One week under my belt and I feel quite overwhelmed. I am teaching in the exact type of school Clark prepared me for (in theory) with the type of population I’d like to impact positively, and I’m feel pretty excited about the fact that I may have found a job working as a linguist for a company in San Francisco.
Ok, ok, that is, well, just an outside thought. That is the fruit of my obsessive compulsive need check out what craigslist has to offer, even after I have a job, a place to live and a life to get started. I think it might qualify for a new type of psychological disorder: OCCLD (obsessive compulsive craigslist disorder). In reality I am a teacher, at least until the end of May, and I have 95 students who are supposedly learning the French language to focus on.
These 95 students are distributed among three classes, one of which has French II, French II honors, three French III students and as of Thursday one French IV student. So while I am a part time teacher, I have enough work for a full time position scrunched into three periods a day. I am also coming in to pick up where someone else left off and it seems that Steve (the guy I’m replacing) didn’t really do very much. The range in where my students are is really quite drastic and while I would love nothing more than to create individual plans for each of them, I just don’t have that kind of time.
So I am feeling disheartened a bit I guess. I am falling prey to the terrible habit of focusing on the students who don’t care and who disrupt class loudly, the ones that are frustrating and seem to have given up. And part of me is ready to write them off and let them waste the rest of the year away to an F. But that seems really quite counter what I was taught to do at Clark and quite counter to what I feel is right to do. Even so, giving anyone individual attention in the hour I have with each class feels really challenging. I do have a block period, but that is a great opportunity to do a variety of speaking activities. And frankly, there are a few kids in particular who are just so clearly uninterested in both the class and in doing any work that I don’t feel like expending a lot of energy on them. Of course I do have to remember that if I fail a lot of students, I will in essence be failing myself out of a full time job. I keep trying to come back to ideas like, “they are teenagers and it is their job to test, to not care, to be immature, to need a kick in the ass, and such” or “love them. Just love them. They need it and even if they seem to think you are the most annoying, irritating, frustrating, dorkiest, lamest, most idiotic person alive, love them anyway. You are the adult, they are not yet there.” Oh how I love the student who hands in his quiz on “to have” in Spanish or the one who spends the entire period with his head on the table and has yet to turn in a single assignment. Love love love! Well, maybe someday . . .
In addition to feeling down on my students, I am also feeling down on my approach to and ability to plan right now. I am doing the exact opposite of what I was taught to do at Clark. I am opening my big ol’ teacher edition of the textbook every night and looking at the lesson we are on to plan for the next day. I have tried to do a little planning more than a day at a time, but I never know how far I will get or how well the students will do. I know that I spend too much time talking and yet it seems like when I turn it over to them for some doing (and me not talking), they don’t understand what I’ve just done. I am struggling to make any of it interesting, finding the focus is heavily on grammar right now, either not keeping the students’ attention or not explaining things well, possibly not giving enough examples to make it clear and constantly going either too quickly or too slowly. And given the wide range of levels in each class, I suppose it will always be too quick for some and too slow for others.
I keep trying to comfort myself with thoughts like, “it’s extra hard because you came in mid-year and you don’t know the book, nor do you know what they’ve done up to this point.” I did, by the way, talk to Steve about where he left off with them and he just gave me a unit and lesson number (not much help). I can see that some students have formed some really bad habits (both in terms of work, attitude and respect for the teacher). I do have the comfort of not having to get through a certain chapter by the end of the year, so I have the luxury of moving at a pace that works and of doing projects and activities outside of the book.
Anyway, I thought I’d be able to get into it much more than this, but I can’t even. I only work until about 12:30 everyday and I have put a good amount of time into planning and working in the afternoons, but I still feel like I’m not getting anywhere or doing enough. I feel like I should be thoroughly going through the textbook so that I am not just staying two steps ahead of the students, but when I go to do it, I don’t seem to be able to get very far. I don’t know. It’s like I am finally here doing what I’ve wanted to do for so long and I’m losing momentum, enthusiasm, creativity, and a feeling of inspiration.
I have had some great moments that have felt really solid and triumphant. Then of course quickly a moment that feels like complete failure will pop up, reminding me that if I learned nothing else from student teaching, it is that there are some really extreme ups and downs in teaching.
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