Currently I'm in the last semester of a teacher education program, Residency 2. The purpose of this course is to provide classroom experiences for student teachers. When I began, I was so excited to have this opportunity! However, my experiences so far have been, well, what NOT to do as a teacher.
I have been met with abounding chaos from this team of teachers and I do not know what is expected of me. I do not have the experience to pull from as seasoned teachers do. I have been expected to teach without the basic needs met in order to teach. I have wrestled with this through this placement due to the majority of content is teacher created, provided most of the time the day before the lesson is to be taught and is often confusing. In another lesson I used the teacher created material to compare and contrast two stories. One question posed was what was the same about a certain event in a story. The teacher who made the questions later said this question should have been what was different, not the same. I managed to make that lesson work.
There are changes taking place in this grade level and I happen to be with the new teacher on the team who was placed there by the principal to raise the bar of instruction and get things straightened out. Honestly, I feel like I am in the middle of a mess and in survival mode. Teachers are disagreeing, arguing over content, claiming to be experts in particular subjects, getting offended and shutting down communication. My mentor teacher is maintaining her professionalism, but this situation has brought even her to tears at times.
This situation leads me to wonder, where is the principal? Why is this level of confusion and inadequacy being allowed to continue? Who is advocating for the students? I have tried, making mention to my mentor but I am in a "student" role and am limited in what I will say. As an adult, as a parent, I will say that if I were a teacher on that team my patients would be worn thin, I would be exasperated with the drama, infuriated with the inadequate materials used to teach with and disappointed in the principal's leadership abilities. Unfortunately, I have found myself in a similar disagreeable situation, unable to make changes for the better and hating my helplessness.
As I reflect on this situation, I remember professors have also said, teaching is not about me, but the students, I must be flexible, I have to roll with things and so on. I am very capable of these things in relations to the students. I am very passionate about students being the main focus in education. I am adamant about educators doing their job as best they can and providing them with whatever they need to make learning happen. I was not given what I needed to make learning happen. I tried my best, to make it work through planning with the resources I could locate, but failed. I failed the students.
What am I to learn from this experience? I am not sure. I do know this experience has confirmed my belief that teachers need support in order to teach efficiently and effectively because it is the students who reap the rewards, positive and negative. I have learned that I do not want to be in this teaching situation ever again as long as I live. The discouragement, feelings of defeat and lack of excitement I experienced, although I tried my best, has no place in my teaching because of the price my students must pay. I will continue doing the best I can with what I have, taking advantage of my time with these students. But that type of best is settling for an outcome, not reaching for the stars. I wanted to reach for those stars!
No comments:
Post a Comment