Professor Noob's Daily Disquisitions
Sunday, February 1, 2009
A Few Helpful Tips
Obviously, I haven't updated in a while. I could cite my frantic schedule, which currently has me waking up at 4:40 in the morning, leaving school anywhere between four and five in the afternoon, and falling asleep while sprawled, fully clothed, across my unmade bed and attempting to have a conversation with Reverend Linus at eight o'clock at night. Not much time for dilly-dallying with one's blog, I think we can all agree.
But the other reason was that I didn't want to write just more of the same. I could whine some more about being a babysitter rather than a teacher, or rant and rave about particularly troublesome students, but that wasn't why I created this blog. This is a "Guide for Commencing Pedagogues," not a "Guide for Convincing Commencing Pedagogues To Major in Journalism Instead." I genuinely believe that the true agony of coaxing, bossing, bullying, and pleading with a classroom of recalcitrant teenagers for five days a week is something that everyone should experience personally, in their own special way and time, and not through perusing some melodramatic blog.
With that in mind, I will desist from pointless bitching and instead offer a few helpful tips and tricks that I have gleaned from my own not-so-extensive time in the classroom.
1) Meditate.
It sounds cliche. It sounds New Age. It sounds like, "What the fuck do you mean I have to get my ass up twenty minutes earlier in the morning?!" But it works.
A few weeks ago, I was struggling with a bad attitude towards my students. I feel ashamed even admitting that. I think it's the teacher's equivalent to post-partum depression, for just like a new mother wondering, "Everyone says I should be happy. Why aren't I happy?", I was thinking, "I know I'm supposed to be connecting with my students, but right now all I can think about is how I'm slaving away, trying to create interesting lesson plans that cater to their needs and will enhance their future lives, and so many of them are just self-centered, nasty brats." While I of course don't condone that line of thinking, I will protest in my own defense that it is very difficult to maintain a loving, nurturing attitude towards people who derive great pleasure in not only making your life more difficult, but also in undermining you as a person. Teaching is, after all, one of the few professions in which you regularly put on the line, not only your physical and intellectual well-being, but also your emotional health; and while I've always been quite nonchalant about the students' attitude while in the classroom, the damage seems to accumulate and surface outside of school, usually in the form of fantasizing about simply hitting everyone with large sticks until they promise to behave.
Hence, the meditation. The first day I woke up early to meditate for ten minutes in front of my "altar" (a bare cabinet-top with a potted rose, a candle, and my lovely wooden tea-box), I could feel the angst and bitterness slough off like so much dead skin. Just taking a few minutes to remind myself of who I was and what was important in my life (tea, mostly) made my feelings of dislike seems so...irrelevant. Now I'm a meditation addict; whenever something goes wrong in my life, a few minutes in the lotus position, staring at the moving light of a candle, somehow puts my problem in perspective.
2) Small moments are big.
Once of the more frustrating characteristics of my teaching career so far has been student apathy. I know for a fact that we are studying interesting stories and doing interesting projects (mostly because Perfect Mentor tells me so), yet they not only display no interest but frequently don't even, despite more than ample time, complete their work - and don't even get me started on homework (doesn't happen. We'll leave it at that.) In the face of all that "Yeah, whatever" attitude, hints of their real feelings can be easily overlooked.
But there is nothing more important than those little moments when they actually open up. When one student asked me to read some poems she'd written, it didn't seem very important at the time; but looking back, that was the first indication I'd ever gotten that the students were beginning to trust me. And these small connections can happen in the strangest places, with the strangest people. I put a girl in in-school suspension for half a day after she was not only blatantly disrespectful and insubordinate but also skipped lunch detention twice. Yet that afternoon, even after I had just punished her, she seemed so excited when I told her that the beginning of her story was excellent and made me want to read more. Remembering these encounters is like accumulating a little bag of gems; they're so tiny, but they're worth so much.
And with that disgustingly saccharine metaphor, I'm leaving you all to go consume some chocolate and mourn the end of the weekend.
But the other reason was that I didn't want to write just more of the same. I could whine some more about being a babysitter rather than a teacher, or rant and rave about particularly troublesome students, but that wasn't why I created this blog. This is a "Guide for Commencing Pedagogues," not a "Guide for Convincing Commencing Pedagogues To Major in Journalism Instead." I genuinely believe that the true agony of coaxing, bossing, bullying, and pleading with a classroom of recalcitrant teenagers for five days a week is something that everyone should experience personally, in their own special way and time, and not through perusing some melodramatic blog.
With that in mind, I will desist from pointless bitching and instead offer a few helpful tips and tricks that I have gleaned from my own not-so-extensive time in the classroom.
1) Meditate.
It sounds cliche. It sounds New Age. It sounds like, "What the fuck do you mean I have to get my ass up twenty minutes earlier in the morning?!" But it works.
A few weeks ago, I was struggling with a bad attitude towards my students. I feel ashamed even admitting that. I think it's the teacher's equivalent to post-partum depression, for just like a new mother wondering, "Everyone says I should be happy. Why aren't I happy?", I was thinking, "I know I'm supposed to be connecting with my students, but right now all I can think about is how I'm slaving away, trying to create interesting lesson plans that cater to their needs and will enhance their future lives, and so many of them are just self-centered, nasty brats." While I of course don't condone that line of thinking, I will protest in my own defense that it is very difficult to maintain a loving, nurturing attitude towards people who derive great pleasure in not only making your life more difficult, but also in undermining you as a person. Teaching is, after all, one of the few professions in which you regularly put on the line, not only your physical and intellectual well-being, but also your emotional health; and while I've always been quite nonchalant about the students' attitude while in the classroom, the damage seems to accumulate and surface outside of school, usually in the form of fantasizing about simply hitting everyone with large sticks until they promise to behave.
Hence, the meditation. The first day I woke up early to meditate for ten minutes in front of my "altar" (a bare cabinet-top with a potted rose, a candle, and my lovely wooden tea-box), I could feel the angst and bitterness slough off like so much dead skin. Just taking a few minutes to remind myself of who I was and what was important in my life (tea, mostly) made my feelings of dislike seems so...irrelevant. Now I'm a meditation addict; whenever something goes wrong in my life, a few minutes in the lotus position, staring at the moving light of a candle, somehow puts my problem in perspective.
2) Small moments are big.
Once of the more frustrating characteristics of my teaching career so far has been student apathy. I know for a fact that we are studying interesting stories and doing interesting projects (mostly because Perfect Mentor tells me so), yet they not only display no interest but frequently don't even, despite more than ample time, complete their work - and don't even get me started on homework (doesn't happen. We'll leave it at that.) In the face of all that "Yeah, whatever" attitude, hints of their real feelings can be easily overlooked.
But there is nothing more important than those little moments when they actually open up. When one student asked me to read some poems she'd written, it didn't seem very important at the time; but looking back, that was the first indication I'd ever gotten that the students were beginning to trust me. And these small connections can happen in the strangest places, with the strangest people. I put a girl in in-school suspension for half a day after she was not only blatantly disrespectful and insubordinate but also skipped lunch detention twice. Yet that afternoon, even after I had just punished her, she seemed so excited when I told her that the beginning of her story was excellent and made me want to read more. Remembering these encounters is like accumulating a little bag of gems; they're so tiny, but they're worth so much.
And with that disgustingly saccharine metaphor, I'm leaving you all to go consume some chocolate and mourn the end of the weekend.
Labels: meditation, small moments, teaching tips
posted by Professor Noob at 7:01 PM
1 Comments:
It sounds like you are getting a handle on coping - which is about 90% of succeeding at ANY new job. Well done!
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