A Positive Posting

It has occurred to me that perhaps I sound very negative and bitter about teaching.

Truly, I am not. Frustrated, sure, but so are most teachers. The teaching profession is under so much pressure these days, it's hard to keep from feeling frustration.

Truth is, I really just crave having my own classroom.

August is a tough time for me. I know teachers are getting their plans ready, starting to think about organizing the classroom, creating their new community, getting their class lists... so yeah, I'm jealous. Those are all the things I wish I was doing.

The cool thing about subbing is that you get to see all kinds of classroom setups, designs, and organizations styles. You get to meet all kinds of students, you get to teach all sorts of curriculums, all grades, different schools, and meet tons of teachers and adminstrators.

I worked in one classroom that was so visually overstimulating to me that I could only imagine what the autistic kid in the classroom thought about it. Maybe that was why he spent his day reading a book in the corner. From that experience, I learned that not every blank space on the wall needed to be filled with a sign, a poster, or a reminder.

I worked in a another classroom that had an organizational challenge. Because I subsitute, I don't feel like it is my job to organize someone else's room. I am the visitor, even though I have been invited. But I learned that having a more organized classroom is what I really need to keep myself focused and not distracted.

It has also been great to work in the same classroom year after year, because you see how the teacher alters the same lesson from year to year. Sometimes it is because the students in one class could handle one method of teaching, and the second year's class was better able to work with a different method. Sometimes the lesson is changed because it doesn't nail down concepts, or the teacher wants to alter it to include or keep out certain things. But I get to see how the lessons and classes change. It's great to see teachers alaways striving to improve their teaching, and striving to meet their student's needs. This is the best part of teaching.

I mostly love having relationships with the students. I had the opportunity to watch the first class I ever taught (my student teaching year was in 3rd grade) grow up and move into fourth and then fifth grade. It was so tough to see them "graduate" from fifth grade. But what a treasured memory I will have about them. I am glad to have had that chance to watch them as they grew and learned and changed. Were they perfect students? No, of course not. And yet they were, in the sense that they were all different, they had different thoughts and learning patterns, different needs and desires. I got to appreciate their humor, their dramas, their fears and hopes.

I look back and think about how this was exactly what teaching is about. The academics are almost secondary to that relationship. I am not saying they aren't important! I think that you can't start teaching because there is an underlying trust that needs to be developed before the students will allow you to truly teach them. As a teacher, those first few weeks are so critical to evaluate and come to an understanding about each student as a person, as well as being a learner. You have to let them get to know you as well as get to know them.

One of the best times I had was with a small reading group, where three kids shared their reading and than answered a specific question they had chosen. One of the kids (who has been in my student teaching class the year before) talked about how he related to the book because he also picked on his sister. All three kids got interested in this topic and either admitted that they picked on their younger sibling or were the younger sibling picked on. I got to learn more about these three kids than I had in weeks of my long term teaching. You never know when that chance to bond is going to come, but you have to always be open to it.

Another kid who was really tough and had a lot of anger finally opened up to me (again in a reading group) because the book he was reading was so interesting to him. I ended up getting a copy to read as well, and I was able to bridge a gap through sharing that book with him.

If I had gotten a full time teaching position, I never would have had those memories or those lessons that are so important to teaching.

So while subbing is not my first choice, I still get to learn. And that is the good news.