This Teaching Thing

Back in June I was nervous. I had heard how tough summer school was and I wasn't sure if I could handle it. Once I was immersed in the grind of my summer schedule, I realized that it wasn't that hard to run on no sleep, and while I wasn't very good at teaching yet, I felt that I could get the hang of it soon enough.  By the end of summer school, I had gotten more confident, but as the two weeks before real school slipped away, I started downright dreading it. It seemed like so much. It seemed nearly impossible. It seemed like it wasn't worth it.

I put off my departure from Ohio for as long as possible. I ended up leaving at 4:00 am the Wednesday before professional development - Monday. I got to Byhalia around 1 pm, and oddly, as soon as I walked into the school, my nerves eased. I walked into my classroom for the first time, saw the pile of old books, stacked desks, a garbage left by the previous teacher, and instead of getting even more overwhelmed, I got excited. Maybe it's my competitive nature, but by the end of the day, it looked like a classroom. I had sanitized every desk... twice. I included two pictures of my room at the end of day one.

The view from the back of the room

The view from my desk toward the right side of the room

Since then things have really been good. Of course I've had bad days. It wouldn't be natural if I hadn't. I'm new at this, so I take everything with a grain of salt. Sorry to throw a cliche at you. I don't expect things to be perfect, and I think that has kept me sane. My mindset now is so much better than it was before I started. I really enjoy my kids. They make me laugh a lot. Even in situations like today, when I wanted to get angry at one of my students, I couldn't help but just stand up there and laugh. He was being funny! I'm sorry, Teacher Corps, if it is not recommended to show your cards like that. I'm sure I should have given him a consequence. But I
have to stop and enjoy myself (or my students) at least once daily.

So has this been easier or harder than I thought? Easier. So far.

"Is the teacher fair?"

So I chose my best and worst-behaved classes and passed out a survey asking if I was a fair teacher. It's obviously a simple yes or no question, but I told them that they could elaborate if they felt the need.

I assumed that my "bad" class would be really negative. I knew there would be a couple kids who said I was fair. There are a few good eggs who got stuck in my 6th period class... poor things. What was shocking though, was that a lot of the bad kids also said I was fair. I would love to dive deeper into why that may be. But I'm baffled. Obviously I know I'm fair. I don't hand out undeserved consequences. I don't hold grudges outside of class... or even inside of class. I try to call on kids to answer questions after they get in trouble. I don't want them to think that I think they're bad and unworthy.  But we all know how kids are, especially when they get in trouble. "Fair" is not a label they normally give authority figures.

I guess what was less surprising was that my "good" class also labeled me as fair. I hand out next to no consequences in there. No need to expand on that.

What I expected to get but didn't get a lot of was negative feedback from the trouble-makers. The kids who usually say, "Ms. B be mean," are the ones who ALWAYS get in trouble. No! I'm not mean... only to you... because you refuse to behave. And only if you define mean as handing you the consequences listed on the wall at the front of the room. You know, the ones that correspond with the rules posted on the wall at the front of the room. But I digress... while I allowed their responses to remain anonymous, the shockingly low number of "unfair" responses tells me that a lot of the bad kids know why they get in trouble.

Maybe there's hope that they will trace the cause and effect back far enough to stop themselves before they disrupt the class....