Chet’s Year End Reflection
This year has been one long, continuous, learning process. Coming into this year, I knew that I wanted to continue being a teacher, but I always felt like I wasn’t quite doing it right. I had two years of high school teaching under my belt, and yet I felt like I had a bunch of bad teaching habits I was just repeating over and over. My classroom management skills weren’t up to par, my projects were fun but seemed to only engage a handful of students, and I wasn’t good at keeping kids accountable to their work. I was generally liked at school, but often was seen as the “easy” and “chill” teacher, a reputation I didn’t know how to escape while still being authentic to who I was. I generally think of myself as a laid back person, and almost always keep even keel, so the personality that I was assigned at school seemed to fit the bill. I came to the GSE with hopes of learning how to teach in a way that still allowed me to be authentic while also upping my teacher game.
In comes Juli Ruff. Working with Juli this semester has been a blessing. She taught me a lot about what it means to be a good teacher, not by instruction or by unsolicited advice, but simply by being consistent, present and positive. One teaching superpower that Juli seems to have mastered is the art of taking the win. After any given day of turbulence with many ups and downs, Juli is able to walk out of the class, and instead of fixating and perseverating on the students who didn’t do their work, or said something mean in class, or actively took another students’ attention away, she focuses on the positives, regardless of how small. “Roger read 20 minutes at home each day this week. That’s a win. Amaya stayed in during lunch and got her writing assignment submitted. That’s a win”. One of the most unsustainable parts of teaching seems to be taking the baggage home with you. It’s hard not to, but it also seems like an easy way to be broken. And if you can take a win home? Well, if I can learn how to do that, it seems like this whole teaching thing actually sounds like a decent job.
One area that I do excel in is bringing the fun to class. This year, I felt like I had positive relationships with nearly every student I taught; and when conflicts did arise, we were able to come through the other side for the better with patience, conversation, and trust. I’m able to connect with the students and am genuinely interested in what they have to say. One of my favorite parts of the day is having lunch in the classroom, and either having a meaningful conversation with a student, or listening in on a student conversation between friends and joining in with a timely dad-joke or a silly pun. There was a lightheartedness that both Juli and I helped create in the classroom this year that made every day worth it.
Though my personality fit in really well as a student teacher, I worry that the transition into a teacher-teacher may pose some new challenges. In general, I tend to lean towards being avoidant and non confrontational, and when I see an action I don’t like or hear something that I don’t want to hear, I usually lean towards not doing anything in the moment, but instead talking to a student after class by pulling them aside aside and asking them about what was going on. The problem is, sometimes, caught up in the whirlwind of the end of class, I even forget to do this. I worry that students will see that I'm a younger teacher, somewhat inexperienced, and that I don’t have that tough edge, that confrontational approach that will create a meaningful and important power dynamic in the classroom. In other words, I’m afraid of being a doormat. More than that, I’m afraid of trying to be something I’m not (an aggressive and dominating teacher), getting caught up in it, and questioning what it is I’m even doing. I know it’s not good to worry about things that haven’t happened yet, but I am worried. I’m nervous. I take solace in the fact that I know the first years of teaching are hard, and that I’ll work through whatever issues arise (I hope!)
I’ve always been impressed by teachers who can balance intrinsic and extrinsic motivation for doing meaningful work in the classroom. I’ve found that Juli was able to do this by creating a culture of hard work. One way that Juli does a great job of this is by making sure students always have something to do. In my classes in the past, when a student says, “I’m done,” and then sits in their seats and fires up a game on their phone, I’ve always felt at a loss and knew that even if I took their phone away, I didn’t have any meaningful work for them to do. One reason I feel this is so vital is that when you allow a student to sit in their chair, play games on their phones, and mentally check out, it signals that this kind of behavior is tolerated and that others can feel free to do the same. I used to think that once students put in some good work, they deserved a break, and I didn’t care what that break looked like or where it was they took the break. Now, my feelings have changed. I’m not entirely sure I have the bandwidth to make sure that 33 individuals always have something challenging and meaningful to work on in front of them, but it’s definitely a good goal.
For my M.Ed I’ve thought of a few areas I might be interested in studying: I’m interested in the positive and negative effects of technology in the classroom, I’m interested in teacher burnout post covid, I’m interested in the way that classroom cultures directly affects learning, I’m interested in social emotional learning being incorporated more directly into content and curriculum, and I’m interested in the benefits of students of different ages learning together in the same space. This year has been go-go-go, and so I haven’t honestly given as much deep thought to what I’ll be looking into next year, but I plan on thinking more seriously about it this summer.
In conclusion… at this point, I’m just trying to not be too hard on myself, take it one day at a time, and get excited to have my own classroom next year.