Success! A Story!
I feel pretty blase about any success stories I might have.
I feel like a failure all the time. I feel like I let down my kids all the time. I feel like I disappoint the zillion people who come to observe and evaluate me. Then of course I run some errands to other teachers' rooms and witness that their classes are eleven times worse than mine or have a conversation with a good teacher about how he or she doesn't hand in lesson plans or write objectives either. This gives me some momentary satisfaction. And then again, it hits me: I along with several other teachers am the gold standard for these kids. And what a gold standard I am.
But that's my next blog.
I do take solace in something I am doing down here right now: my homebound tutoring. One of my students (I'm not sure if I told this story yet or not...) was in a pretty major accident at the state fair a few weeks back and won't be back to school until next August. They asked me to be the homebound teacher, largely because not only am I the only person in school who can teach Latin but also I'm one of very few willing to take on the extra work. It's really another depressing story from many perspectives, but it provides me a satisfaction I find lacking in this profession so far.
Elgin thinks very highly of me. Why? Because I'm over-educated. He listens with joy when I talk about anything, be it history or philosophy or Latin, soaking in everything like a sponge. He was dumbfounded just last week when I taught him how to solve systems of equations for algebra class by hand. Apparently, Mississippi deems it worthy to have students trained like monkeys on a calculator but largely does not trouble itself with learning math. He's learning a great deal more with me in every subject for six hours a week than he ever did in school all day everyday, and this is a guilty pleasure I'll take with me for the rest of my life. It's kind of like a big "Piss off!" to this sytem that places a higher priority on decorating one's room than ensuring whether a teacher is even smart enough to teach and has a passion for it all.
But that's another blog, once again, and I'm going to write it presently.
I feel like a failure all the time. I feel like I let down my kids all the time. I feel like I disappoint the zillion people who come to observe and evaluate me. Then of course I run some errands to other teachers' rooms and witness that their classes are eleven times worse than mine or have a conversation with a good teacher about how he or she doesn't hand in lesson plans or write objectives either. This gives me some momentary satisfaction. And then again, it hits me: I along with several other teachers am the gold standard for these kids. And what a gold standard I am.
But that's my next blog.
I do take solace in something I am doing down here right now: my homebound tutoring. One of my students (I'm not sure if I told this story yet or not...) was in a pretty major accident at the state fair a few weeks back and won't be back to school until next August. They asked me to be the homebound teacher, largely because not only am I the only person in school who can teach Latin but also I'm one of very few willing to take on the extra work. It's really another depressing story from many perspectives, but it provides me a satisfaction I find lacking in this profession so far.
Elgin thinks very highly of me. Why? Because I'm over-educated. He listens with joy when I talk about anything, be it history or philosophy or Latin, soaking in everything like a sponge. He was dumbfounded just last week when I taught him how to solve systems of equations for algebra class by hand. Apparently, Mississippi deems it worthy to have students trained like monkeys on a calculator but largely does not trouble itself with learning math. He's learning a great deal more with me in every subject for six hours a week than he ever did in school all day everyday, and this is a guilty pleasure I'll take with me for the rest of my life. It's kind of like a big "Piss off!" to this sytem that places a higher priority on decorating one's room than ensuring whether a teacher is even smart enough to teach and has a passion for it all.
But that's another blog, once again, and I'm going to write it presently.
posted by David Jones | 16:51
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