Nov 15, 2007 3:38 PM
My principal, who is somewhat of a visionary given today’s principals, puts up quotations every morning for the staff to read. This morning’s quotation talked about how education changes quickly, and what we do now will seem primitive 20 years from now.
I smiled when I read this, because this thinking is what brought me into teaching in the first place. For years as a student I felt as though my own education was primitive, stifling to my creativity and failing to engage me. The reality I now face is the challenge of bringing the highest educational ideals into my own classroom.
I recently discovered a book written by a first-year teaching fellow named Dan Brown (“The Great Expectations School: A Rookie Year in the New Blackboard Jungle”), and I heard an interview with him and educator/writer Jonathan Kozol on NPR. Listening to the two of them speak, I recognized in their voices some of the struggles I am now experiencing.
I am like thousands of other teachers, energetic and idealistic about education. I am trying to focus my teaching not on the tests, but on my students’ learning and development. But I am also faced with the same reality that other teachers face, a reality that drives 50 percent of new teachers out of the profession in the first three years. And it’s not so much the challenges of student behavior or clerical work or lesson planning, although it is in part all of these. What to my mind is the biggest challenge is developing a culture and community that nurtures teachers’ ideas and idealism.
This year I’ve been tinkering at the margins, trying to mine the potential of our school’s curriculum to spark real changes in our students’ minds, attitudes and behaviors. I have found many teachers who share my vision that our school can be a model of urban education, but at the same time I’m battling the feeling that this school year is sliding away and it’s only November. I think about my principal’s quotation and wonder, “Are we primitive?”
As a second-year teacher, I struggle with self-criticism. I need to accept what I am capable of doing and I need to link to people who can support me in my teaching. I don’t know how tomorrow is going to turn out, but I need to hold onto my commitment to provide the best possible education to my students, despite the overwhelming challenges of planning, assessment and classroom management.
I’ve learned that I’m not perfect (no teacher is), and the goal isn’t to be a heroic teacher. But I do hope to be in this thing for 20 years, as a teacher or otherwise, and I’m hopeful that my experiences today will be a history lesson for tomorrow.
mildlyoptimistic is a second-year elementary school teacher in Brooklyn. “New Teacher Diaries” is a regular feature of the UFT blog, edwize.org. If you’re interested in writing for edwize, send an e-mail to sperez1@uft.org.