My first year of teaching, I was hired the Thursday before back-to-school meetings started. I had a total of 12 days to adjust to the fact that I was really going to be a teacher, I had my first ever classroom, and I was going to be responsible for teaching groups of students about literature and how to write.
Eight years later, I have just began yet another first week of school. For the first time, I was not nervous for the year, and I haven’t really stressed the little things. Don’t get me wrong, I spent a ridiculous number of hours making beautiful bulletin boards for my students to appreciate, and I already warned the little darling who doodled what he swears wasn’t a penis on one of my bulletin boards that if I ever catch him drawing on my stuff again he will spend every day after school making sure my room is flawless. Yep, don’t mess with my walls. I’m proud of them, and they likely won’t change for months. (Thank you pinterest for the book trailer idea.)
Instead, this year my job is producing new challenges. Over the summer I was asked to prepare a presentation for the high school teachers on “close reading”–a strategy that has students reread passages multiple times in order to analyze every little piece of what makes a text a text. (Side note: I’m not a huge fan of this idea since it often kills the fun of reading, and I believe it should only be used with certain texts, but I was being paid to present on the topic, so I did. And don’t worry, I shared the pros and cons.) Originally when asked, I thought that I would be presenting to just my high school staff, who I am very comfortable with. Then about a week before the presentation my boss emailed me to get an update for the superintendent of schools for the diocese. That’s when I realized I was presenting to 3 high school staffs. Nice, right. Much anxiety and 16 hours of research and preparation later, I survived.
Another challenge that this year is presenting is my reading class. Last year I began working with a mixed group of 7th and 8th graders twice a week for about 25 minutes. We focused on reading skills with a program called Jamestown Reading Navigator. The students were not impressed with the online program, and really preferred the classes when I gave them material and we sat and talked about the reading. This year, we are not using the online program anymore, so I’m adding figuring out how to help this group of all boys (at least for right now) become successful readers to my to-do list. I’m also going to attempt to use interactive notebooks for the first time (gulp). Two classes in, I’m realizing that I really don’t understand 7th and 8th grade boys very well, but I think that we have choosen our first book: The Maze Runner by James Dashner. Now to reread the book quickly so I can make sure it’s a good choice for the group and get it purchased.
My final challenge for the year (well at least as far as I know so far…we are only one week in) will be finishing my master’s project while doing everything else. I start classes for that next week Wednesday…which also happens to be back-to-school night. Is it bad that we are only one week into school and I’m already a little tired? I foresee the need to go out for drinks on Fridays after work on a weekly basis.
Finding Direction 