New Teacher Diaries

No punches pulled

Oct 6, 2005 1:01 PM

Rookies join the parade

EDITOR'S NOTE: The UFT blog, Edwize (www.edwize.org), features several entries by new teachers describing some of their agonizing, baptism-by- fire experiences. Here are excerpts from two of them. All new teachers are invited to submit brief articles to Edwize by e-mailing them to blog@uft.org. All writers will remain anonymous.

Feeling Defeated

Week two, day two: two changes. Today my program changed. Today my outlook and feelings on my ability to teach changed.

I had just learned all their names. I had just organized my grade book. I had begun to feel good about my lessons and my “teaching persona.” I had ideas on how to help Aaron read and how best to handle Danny's behavior in class. I felt as if I might really be successful with these students. Now they’re gone; I lost two of my favorite classes.

What’s worse is that the classes I was given don’t want me. The students don’t understand why they had to switch classes and are therefore very rambunctious and insubordinate.

“Miss, why do we got a new teacher? I like Mr. [so and so].”

The kids are confused and angry and it seems they take it out on me. It’s not a good situation for them nor is it for me. I had to call a dean twice today. The first time, the student would not stop talking. He just simply would not listen to a word I said, after repeatedly asking the class as a whole to pay attention, and then asking individual students. I had to take action, didn’t I?

The second time was maybe a bit more necessary. It was a double period, my last class of the day, and I was tired, cranky and on the verge of breaking down. I heard a bang and when I turned around two kids were hanging out the window attempting to get a bottle of whiteout that another student had thrown across the room. I had just closed the window. I had just asked them to sit down. I had instructed them at least five times to begin the assignment. What else could I do?

I don’t know if I did the right thing today. I don’t know what tomorrow will bring. I don’t know what to expect from the rest of the year. I don’t know if I love my job so much anymore.

How do you help students who refuse to do anything, students who ignore you when you speak to them? I have to let go of my yearning to get through to each student. I feel as if I’m fighting a battle for kids who don't want to be fought for.

I feel empty and defeated.

(The writer teaches in Queens.)

Teaching: The new waiting tables?

Last night, I was out with [friends] and one of them asked me how my job was going and if it was still as difficult as I had imagined it.

Embedded within that question is a not so secret, rather overt accusation: “You must be either desperate for work or just plain retarded to choose to teach.”

… This inquiry into my daily life as the adult who corrals and tries to educate 75 8th-grade girls is more of an intense wondering of why would anyone want to corral and try to educate 75 8th-grade girls? Or, “you must have just given up on life and any artistic goals since you ended up here.”

… Each time I am asked in that accusatory manner, “How is teaching working out for you?” I think about why this profession is now viewed with such, dare I say, superior sympathy. Once, the profession … was viewed with some sort of honor and respect. There were people in the community who thought you had “arrived” if you had completed college, then a master’s program and were earning a teacher's salary…

And when I go out with my artistic, well-educated friends with cool NYC jobs that allow them four-day weekends, there sometimes arrive in our conversations … moments. Brief pauses when we discuss requisite work drama. Pauses that are filled with questions most of them are respectful enough not to ask. “Why have you regressed? Why have you gone into something that is now left for those who are not good enough/smart enough/ ambitious enough to do anything else?”

… “Why have I regressed” sometimes crosses my mind as I work and work to the point of exhaustion and watch how much my work is questioned or taken as heart-warming missionary work to be admired by others, but definitely not chosen by others.

Was the profession always viewed as the easy way out? If it was, I can think of no better example of comic irony. The hardest job on earth being considered the easy way out? Perfect!

(The writer is an elementary school teacher in Manhattan.)