In my first blog I jokingly said that if I had a dollar for every time someone asked me why I wanted to be a teacher, I’d have enough money to just sit on the beach all day and sip on drinks with umbrellas in them. Searching for a job in this economy is like trying to find a Sonic in Chicago. Ten weeks ago when I began student teaching I had no idea if I wanted to be a teacher. I was plagued by self-doubt. Would I be good at this? Would I enjoy it? Would the students respect me, or would I just be a giant joke to them? Now that I’ve actually done it, I can’t believe I actually had doubts. Taking risks is a big part of teaching. Any good teacher will tell you that you have to be willing to take risks. You have to try new things. If you don’t, you’ll get caught in a rut and stagnate. You also have to give students control of their own learning. Over the last few weeks, I’ve had some good lessons and some bad ones. My second week of lessons has gone considerably better than that first day I wrote about in my last blog. I can tell that I’m improving every day. I’m learning more and more about how to be a good teacher. During this past week I have started to actually teach in the classroom. My first lesson fell a bit short of the amazing success I expected it to be. This past week was my first week of student teaching. The class I’ll eventually be teaching is 7th grade Social Studies, but this past week I’ve just been following the different homerooms around from class to class, getting to know the students and the school. I’ve never been good at math. Strike that. I’ve never been good at golf (assuming that never shooting below 100 on 9-holes qualifies you as “not good”). I’ve always been god awful at math. I was so bad at math that when I came across this answer on funnyexamanswers.com, I had to do a double take and wonder if one of my old teachers had uploaded an old test of mine. Why do you want to be a teacher? If I had a dollar for every time I’ve been asked that question, I wouldn’t have to be a teacher. I would be sitting on the beach on my own private island, sipping on drinks with tiny umbrellas in them. |