I just have 2 and a half more weeks of subbing. Some days I can't believe it has gone so fast. Other days... I have wondered if this is really what I want to do with my life! We've definitely had our share of good days and bad days (mostly good), but February 14th was the all-time low. It seemed like everything went wrong in every class that day!
1st hour: Prealgebra. "Why don't we every do anything fun in this class? I hate math!" This was after I had spent the weekend agonizing over the lessons I would teach that day and planning something that I thought was fun and not just another boring day. Oh, and to top it off, the Smartboard in the classroom was glitching so I couldn't write on it. I had to wing a geometry lesson for the first 2 classes on the chalkboard.
2nd hour: Prealgebra. They would not SHUT UP! :) Sorry, but that's exactly what I felt like saying. This was the worst class of the day by far. It was the same lesson as first hour, but they just did not seem into it and were doing everything to resist the different teaching style I was bringing to the table. I finished the lesson by just writing without talking so those that were paying attention might get something out of it. I gave them the assignment, but most had already given up at that point, they didn't care to try.
3rd hour: Prep time. Finally a break...feeling completely defeated and hopeless. They hate me, have no respect for me, I don't know how to teach them... these were just a few of the thoughts going through my mind as I began to cry. Something I never did when I was student teaching. I pulled myself together enough to go talk to the Assistant Principal. He had great ideas for me to try out for that class the next day... "It won't be an easy fix, but it won't be impossible either." ...thanks. At that point, I was desparate for any ideas because they sure weren't coming to me in my desparate state.
4th hour: Algebra. Praying for at least one class to go well today, just one! Different lesson this time. I did some examples on the board and the class was completely confused. Another disaster. Another something to fix tomorrow.
5th hour: Algebra. Scrambling to figure out a different way to teach it. I think it worked, but they were still confused. I was so out of my element at the point I wondered if anything I was saying anymore made sense.
6th hour: Prealgebra. Almost done! Oh yeah, this class has the toughest students of the day. I'm so exhausted at this point, looking back, I don't remember much about it. I think it went ok, but could've been better. At least it was better than the first 2 classes.
After school, I felt like CRAP. There's no other word to describe it. There aren't very many days where I have felt so awful and hopeless. I didn't stay long after school. I didn't have much brainpower to accomplish much anyways. I was beginning to wonder if I really wanted to be a teacher... if I could be a teacher. I even thought about quitting as a long-term sub and letting someone else deal with it. There was no way I could survive the next 5 1/2 weeks with every day going the way this day had.
Well, those feelings continued through the evening and all night long. I didn't get much sleep thinking about the challenge that lay ahead of me the next day to turn things around. I did a lot of praying and even got a blessing. The main thing I remember from that blessing that I was blessed with progress. Things would get better...
...and they did. The next day, I used the suggestions I had been given and they worked! It wasn't perfect by any means, but the day went 100 times better. I had fixed what I could and was glad I felt some sort of success that day to keep me going.
Even though I have had some bad days, most days have gone well and make me sad that I'm almost done. I'm thankful for those bad days, though because they have taught me things about myself and teaching that I never learned as a student teacher.
Things I've learned:
1st hour: Prealgebra. "Why don't we every do anything fun in this class? I hate math!" This was after I had spent the weekend agonizing over the lessons I would teach that day and planning something that I thought was fun and not just another boring day. Oh, and to top it off, the Smartboard in the classroom was glitching so I couldn't write on it. I had to wing a geometry lesson for the first 2 classes on the chalkboard.
2nd hour: Prealgebra. They would not SHUT UP! :) Sorry, but that's exactly what I felt like saying. This was the worst class of the day by far. It was the same lesson as first hour, but they just did not seem into it and were doing everything to resist the different teaching style I was bringing to the table. I finished the lesson by just writing without talking so those that were paying attention might get something out of it. I gave them the assignment, but most had already given up at that point, they didn't care to try.
3rd hour: Prep time. Finally a break...feeling completely defeated and hopeless. They hate me, have no respect for me, I don't know how to teach them... these were just a few of the thoughts going through my mind as I began to cry. Something I never did when I was student teaching. I pulled myself together enough to go talk to the Assistant Principal. He had great ideas for me to try out for that class the next day... "It won't be an easy fix, but it won't be impossible either." ...thanks. At that point, I was desparate for any ideas because they sure weren't coming to me in my desparate state.
4th hour: Algebra. Praying for at least one class to go well today, just one! Different lesson this time. I did some examples on the board and the class was completely confused. Another disaster. Another something to fix tomorrow.
5th hour: Algebra. Scrambling to figure out a different way to teach it. I think it worked, but they were still confused. I was so out of my element at the point I wondered if anything I was saying anymore made sense.
6th hour: Prealgebra. Almost done! Oh yeah, this class has the toughest students of the day. I'm so exhausted at this point, looking back, I don't remember much about it. I think it went ok, but could've been better. At least it was better than the first 2 classes.
After school, I felt like CRAP. There's no other word to describe it. There aren't very many days where I have felt so awful and hopeless. I didn't stay long after school. I didn't have much brainpower to accomplish much anyways. I was beginning to wonder if I really wanted to be a teacher... if I could be a teacher. I even thought about quitting as a long-term sub and letting someone else deal with it. There was no way I could survive the next 5 1/2 weeks with every day going the way this day had.
Well, those feelings continued through the evening and all night long. I didn't get much sleep thinking about the challenge that lay ahead of me the next day to turn things around. I did a lot of praying and even got a blessing. The main thing I remember from that blessing that I was blessed with progress. Things would get better...
...and they did. The next day, I used the suggestions I had been given and they worked! It wasn't perfect by any means, but the day went 100 times better. I had fixed what I could and was glad I felt some sort of success that day to keep me going.
Even though I have had some bad days, most days have gone well and make me sad that I'm almost done. I'm thankful for those bad days, though because they have taught me things about myself and teaching that I never learned as a student teacher.
Things I've learned:
- Not to take things so personally. It's not my job to have every student like me or like math for that matter. It's my job to teach them in the best way I know how.
- There will always be bad days, but things would never get better if we didn't have bad days to learn and grow from.
- Live in the moment. I can't fix every problem by agonizing over it. When I have time to relax, I'm going to take it and not think about what could go wrong. One or two hours of the day should not ruin the rest of my day or weekend.
- The best classroom management tool is to let the students know you care. While I care about each one of my students, I'm not perfect at communicating that to them all the time. On the days I do succeed with that (even if it's just one student), I am a happier person, and the day seems to go much better.
I know now that I do want to be a teacher. The successful days are so rewarding and there is always something to learn and opportunities to grow, especially when things don't go as planned.
3 comments:
Hang in there! You are learning fast, and you will be a GREAT teacher!
I am so proud of you! I don't know if I would have the willpower to stick with it. I'm glad that things are going a little better for you. Hang in there!
I'm glad that you're feeling better. Teaching a bunch of hormone driven/imbalanced teenagers can be rough! You're doing great. Kid's can make you crazy. It sounds like Valentines was just driving these kids nuts because they were already pre-occupied with other things (expectations or lack of for the holiday maybe?). Caring is really important. If you care about the students first and then protray your caring for your topic second, those students who care about you as well will try harder to learn.
I have some thoughts on your topic that you may not care to hear, but I'll put them down in case you may find them helpful.
Math is a tricky one because it's one of those topics that from an early age, students get stuck in a mindset that either they are "good" or "bad" at math or even worse that math has no real application to "real life" (the same thing happens in music classes when students are learning tabs or theory or whatever may be a little more complicated at the moment). Another thing that's difficult about math for ordinary minds like mine is that I don't think in the same manner as most teachers. When teacher used to skip steps at all, it would make me totally confused and I'd feel like such an idiot because I couldn't just "know" to skip a certain step and what the magical answer was. The best teachers I had never skipped steps and wrote down everything and had the students come up with the simple computations without going on and leaving the students behind (even on simple addition, multiplication, fractions or whatever). I had an AMAZING math teacher who made us keep a binder that she would check at the end of each two weeks for 100% of the notes (or examples in this case w/o skipping steps). That notebook was worth 50% of our grade so though it was a huge chunck of our grade, those who had a REALLY difficult time with math still had the ability to have good grades even if they didn't test well or do great on their own with homework. I LOVED that teacher. She seemed a little OCD but I really "got" it when she taught. Another thing about math is that whole real life application thing. I always have done really well whenever stuff is related to money because, let's face it, that's pretty much a #1 motivater in anyone who has other needs met in life. If you can find the application to real life without making everything sound like some kind of "story-problem" which teenagers have a difficult time understanding the language of (unless you have a glossary for the meaning of each word for story problems), it may help motivate the students more.
You're doing your best and I'm sure that your student's love you. The day you leave there will be students who will be so sad to see you go...and sometimes it ends up being those who drove you the most crazy because they're the one's who really want attention. Good luck. Teaching is very rewarding and such an adventure where you always have to go back and do some "tweeking" in your style.
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