So, after my first week of teaching 11th Grade English at Bronx Prep, my kids are still debating how to pronounce my last name. I hear them trying to ask me a question, but they usually have to spend 30 seconds asking each other what my name actually is. From day to day, it varies from Mr. Way, Mr. Huwai, Mr. Who?, Mr. Wee... It's pretty funny, and yes, my kids are pretty awesome.
My first day of teaching - ever - was a horrible mess. The school assigned us to teach the wrong period, so my students were sitting in the classroom for half an hour before someone came and got me and told me that they had given me the wrong class assignment. I had to run up to my classroom and immediately begin my lesson. Needless to say, it was a mess. I didn't really know what I was saying, and all I did was keep giving my kids worksheets to complete. I had totally forgotten that I never really introduced them to the material, or told them why we were doing the work. They probably walked out of that classroom lost and bewildered, unsure of what they just went through (at least that's what my advisor told me). That wasn't a good start, and I clearly didn't leave a good first impression of myself with my students. But the second day came, and the third day came, and soon enough, I was getting into the rhythm of teaching these kids reading comprehension.
The next day, my lesson was much better - the kids knew what we were doing, and they followed along, and actually learned something! Now, for a teacher, that really is the first step - if you teach them a whole bunch of stuff, make it really fun and all, but they don't learn anything, you're not really doing much. I was told I lacked energy and passion for my teaching, that I didn't really convey my love for literature. I should've told my advisor that yes - I really didn't have much of a love for literature, but I didn't, so I just told them how much I loved the text, how much it meant to me, and blah blah blah. Way to use those bullshitting techniques I learned from college. To make up for my lack of energy at 8 in the morning, I played videos for the kids and used song lyrics to demonstrate key ideas. Bruno Mars, Eminem, Will Smith, Sandra Bullock and a bunch of other people starred in my multimedia presentations as I taught my kids how to make inferences, write about themes, and all that. I have no creativity, so I let other people do it for me. Thanks YouTube.
By the end of my first week of teaching, however, I feel at home in front of the kids. Someone told me that teaching is a performance every single day - you're front and center in front of a restless audience, and you need to deliver a perfect performance every single time, or else your kids pick up on it. It's so true - there really is a lot of pressure as you step up in front of that class and teach them something new. I'm scared of screwing up, of saying the wrong things, of teaching them concepts the wrong way, but in the end, you just learn to deal with it. As I walked into the classroom every morning this week, I did feel the pressure, and I did feel how all the attention was on me - I had to do well, and could not be faultless, I thought. However, I learned that it's not about delivering a 'perfect performance,' but engaging your kids in such a way that if you screw up, you have the respect to work through that, and of course, you also have the ability to talk your way out of it. Now, it really does feel right. I love being in front of those kids, and I'm not worried about screwing up, because that really is just part of teaching sometimes. I love being up there, and after the hell that was the first day of class, I'm getting into it, and it's pretty awesome. I have been blessed, too, that I have extremely well-behaved kids. I came in worried about dealing with behavior problems, but if the worst is falling asleep in class, things really aren't too bad, especially because other corps members have had fist fights and pepper spray incidents in classrooms. So, I'll just say that I've been really blessed with a bunch of great students, making my first week of teaching much easier than it really could have been. There's still a long way to go - my students are still kind of bored, they barely care about their homework, and they fall asleep in class - but it takes time, and I'll learn. I'll learn to be a more interesting teacher, to make them laugh (I tried a few times, and they didn't dig it), and to really convey to them that I care. At some point, I guess, I'll figure it out.
The training part still involves, for the most part, a lot of sharing and reflections. I love teaching, I love my kids, and I love the classroom, but coming out of my classroom at 11am and going to training right afterwards isn't exactly the most exhilarating thing ever. Some of it is really useful - how to manage behavior, how to deliver a good lesson plan - but some of it really is a waste of time. We're all motivated, so we don't need motivational reflection sessions. We're all capable people, so we really don't need time to peer-edit our lesson plans. Also, we're all working 20 hour-days, so why spend an hour on some days reading our lesson plans to people when we could be actually planning a lesson? After talking to a bunch of Teach for America corps members from around the country, old and new, I think our corps has come to a conclusion - that even though training may be useless at times, it will help us someday, and most importantly, it gets us to where we want to be - to teach our kids as fully certified teachers. So, I guess it's gotta be done, if only for the most important thing to us right now - the students.
The unexplainable mess that is training aside, some of the people I've met here are truly amazing. They really embody what service and sacrifice is all about, and they go so far beyond what is expected of them for their kids. Some wake up before 5am to go to Dunkin' Donuts to buy breakfast for the kids to incentivize them to get to school early, some spend hours on end perfecting posters to aid kids' visual learning, some dress themselves up in aluminum foil to demonstrate the FOIL method in Math, some call their kids at home to give them homework guidance, and many others spend hours personalizing every lesson to every student, so that all of them can learn in their different ways. I've been inspired, no doubt. I didn't even think of doing some of the things people are doing; hardly had I imagined some of the sacrifices people are making, but this is what teaching really is all about. I've had to learn how to make these sacrifices, and while I can do the bare minimum to get by, it really isn't enough, and I've seen that through the people around me. They've inspired me to work even harder, to sleep even less, because our kids deserve our very best. I'm not just trying to be cheesy, but it really is true. Our actions will inevitably impact someone else's life here. It's a life, and you really don't mess with that.
Today, I received a letter in the corps member mail. It was a letter from a public school student in Detroit. She told me why she was so excited for me to come to Detroit, how teachers have impacted her life, and how her school so desperately needs teachers who care. It was the broken language, misspelled words, and the barely legible writing that got to me - she could barely write, but she spent all this time to write letters, showing how much she cares, and how great the need is. This past week, walking into my classroom and seeing my kids, and hearing in person the stories of my students and students in Detroit was more inspiring and motivating than any statistic, video, or motivational speech I heard. All through training, we talked about why educational inequality needed to be fixed, and we were pumped up to change the status quo, but it was only this week that I realized this: nothing came even close to the excitement I had for the future when I met my kids. Their lives and stories speak more than any statistic, speech or video will, and I'm constantly reminded that despite getting 5 hours of sleep a night, it's not about us anymore. It's so much more than that.
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