For lack on anything better to do, here are
10 Reasons Why I Love Teaching
10. Two degrees in English Lit - What else am I supposed to do?
9. I hate office work - With teaching, I always feel like I'm accomplishing something on a day to day basis, not just shuffling papers around pointlessly.
8. Love of the written word - I enjoy sharing that love with others.
7. Variety - It's the ultimate job for the multi-tasker in me. There's at least 16 things that need to get done on any given day, and that doesn't include the teaching.
6. Freedom - This goes with #7 - as long as the requirements are met, there's a lot of room to maneuver and get the job done. Creativity is prized since it can be hard to keep the kids' attention and have them learn at the same time. There's a certain "magician" quality to teaching - you gotta keep the kids (and parents) watching the left hand so they don't notice what the right hand is teaching them.
5. Fellow teachers - Middle school teachers are a bizarre lot, and the longer they stay, the weirder they get - I love that. I am that. There's a certain quality of interdependence and competition woven into the whole mess. And there's also ALWAYS someone you can turn to for help, support, or just venting when it's all just too much.
4. The kids - For the most part, even the pains are neat in their own way. Since I deal with 12-14 year olds (the occasional 15 y.o. thrown in for variety), it's an interesting and exciting time to be dealing with them. At least I think so.
3. Creativity - Not just mine, but the kids are pretty creative when given the opportunity (and often not on purpose). As an English teacher some of the stuff I'm trying to convey is dull and/or confusing - that's when thinking creatively comes in handy. Then again, sometimes you just have to know when it's game time and have a good one at hand.
2. Autonomy - While I do have to answer to administrators and parents, it's up to me - in my classroom - to get the job done as best I can.
1. It's fun. - Some days you just need to know when to call it a day, play some music, and toss a ball around the room. (All in the name of education, of course.)
Tuesday, June 26, 2007
10 Reasons Why I Love Teaching
A pleasant surprise
Today's been okay so far - caught on the freeway in a torrential downpour, not so great but hey, I didn't crash or die so that's a win. I finally find a place to nest at my favorite coffee haunt (or at least one of my favorites) and decide to check a semi-defunct email address - why do I have three email address(FOUR if you count the one at school)?
SIDEBAR: I know I have one for "throw away" spam-esque mail - for years Hotmail was so regularly and heavily spammed I quit using it for anything except junk mail, you know, the kind where companies and websites insist on having a "valid" email address. END SIDEBAR
Anyway, I check my gmail account and one of my students has sent me photos that she and her best friend had taken on the last day of school! And she reminded me that they love me. Wow. This is ONE of the reasons I teach...it's so cool to know that they remembered I'd said I wanted copies of the photos. Neat, huh.
That made my day.
Monday, June 25, 2007
One Month into Summer
I did not anticipate being bored this summer...but I was totally wrong. I cannot find anything to do other than work on my lesson plans for the upcoming school year, read blogs, and drive around wasting gas. I clearly need to find something to occupy my time. On the other hand, my first six weeks is planned and I'm going to start working on my second six weeks sometime this week.
AISD middle schools participate in a program called Laying the Foundations (LTF), a study/prep program to help get Pre-AP students prepared for the Advanced Placement (AP) classes and testing they'll have to do in 11th and 12th grades. Teachers attend workshops and in-services to help us better utilize the study materials and lesson plans LTF provides. I didn't make much use of the LTF stuff last year - hell, I had no idea what it was about even though I attended the in-service trainings during the year. It came as a huge surprise to learn that the kids were going to be tested over what they should have learned using LTF. Oops - my kids didn't learn that. Sorry, didn't have time to squeeze it in. Darn.
Well, at the beginning of June I got a chance to go grade the LTF written exams (a paying gig, too!) and learned a lot about LTF and it's goals/expectations for the students AND the teachers. They actually provide materials to make teaching the lessons easier and more manageable. I also got a chance to speak with my department head about the level of rigor the 8th graders are getting - we both think it's not challenging enough for them. So now I'm working on writing my lesson plans to be much more rigorous - more reading/writing opportunities each six weeks. The great part is that using the lesson plans LTF provides, I won't have as much work to do or have to scramble to find work for the kids and they'll do much better on the End of Course exam in May. It's also part of my goal to become a better teacher.
