The. Hardest. Thing.

So, first I'll explain the pictures I posted last time. Students nominate a monthly "teacher feature" which I guess is like a student-choice teacher-of-the-month. Those three nominations came from my homeroom, so it's very possible that when I told my homeroom to make their nomination, they didn't feel like thinking and just wrote down the teacher who was standing in front of them. This was the first week of school, when they had known me for four days and I had taught them literally nothing yet. They had no idea whether I was a good teacher or not. But I hope and like to think it's because they could already see how badly I want to teach them.

Here's what will happen almost every day: they drive me insane at school. Half of them don't want to do anything in class, and they disrupt the other half from learning. More often than I'm thinking about what or how I'm teaching, I'm thinking about classroom management. Sometimes I can't wait for them to leave my class, and often I can't wait for the end of the day. Then, when I go home, I kind of miss them. And I dream about teaching almost every night.  I spend most of that time at home planning for how best to teach them the next day. So I hope that they could see, even in the first week, how hard I am working and willing to work so that they will succeed. I want them to do well more than they do...I get nervous before quizzes and tests. Will they study? Did I give them the tools to do well? Did they even learn anything??  Even if I fail miserably, at least I know I can make a difference to someone just by waiting for him when he writes slow. But soon, even that becomes harder to do. You have an objective to teach, you have to stay on pace, you only have 55 minutes and you lose a lot of class time just trying to get them to do what you want--increasingly I start to feel like we don't have time to wait for slow writers! Timing is the hardest thing about teaching.

And teaching is the hardest thing I can think of to do. Literally. I'm sure that's a first-year thing, but I honestly can't think of anything more difficult than this. You can put everything you have into it, and still suck. Or you can even be kind of good, but your kids still might not learn. They might not be prepared, or they might not want to that day. And your success is measured by how you affect them. It's nothing like college, where you can put your all into studying for a test and know you'll be rewarded with a good grade and personal success. If they don't learn it, you've still failed...no matter how hard you worked or creative your lessons were or what kind of good feedback you've gotten from your principal. In addition, you have pressure from the students, from the parents, the school administration, the district, the state, the federal government and in my case TFA, telling you how and what to teach, and what you can and can't do. You have students who are already ready for the next level of learning, and some who are terribly behind; somehow you need to teach them both in the same class. Finally, you have to not only teach the standards but also teach your kids how to be responsible, respectful, organized, self-motivated people so that they can be successful. And you have to love them. Dedicated teachers deserve to get paid about twice, or more than twice, what they are actually paid. As one of the TFA staff members said at a meeting yesterday, "A teacher could work for 24 hours a day and still have something to do." The overwhelming nature of it all is about to put me in the "survival" stage of first-year teaching. Here's to a full Sunday of schoolwork!

P.S. Usually I am literally just teaching in my dream, but last night I had a dream that one of my male students smacked me on the behind when he came into class and said "What's up Miss K?" Thank the Lord that nothing like this has ever happened...