You call yourself a teacher?

Upon entering my first year teaching, I envisioned myself standing confidently and self assuredly in a classroom full of driven and motivated students who sought to excel academically and socially as world citizens. They would ask difficult questions. They would raise their hand. They would say “thank you.” They would reach out to their classmates if they needed help or assistance. I would be their teacher who was in charge of teaching them about great literature and challenging their young, growing minds to question the world and society around them. Isn’t this what all teachers of English literature and composition envision?

I was a teacher, wasn’t I? No. I wasn’t teaching kids, not yet. I was attempting to engage them. I was attempting to teach them vocabulary. I was attempting to teach them grammar and reading skills, but I was failing (and attempting to learn at the same time).

While attempting to teach, I took on so many roles, roles I never imagined overtaking-- a disciplinarian, a motivator, a stand up comedian, a counselor, a coach, an encourager. The problem was, I had no idea how to be all of these things while also trying to teach. For most of the year, I can’t say I was a teacher. I was a young woman who was valiantly attempting to teach and instruct and motivate and encourage and challenge and inspire.

I suppose I am learning almost entirely through trial and error, but isn’t that how one learns to teach? You try something. If you fail, you attempt to learn and grow and reflect on how to improve that attempt. If you succeed, you try to lean and grow and reflect on how to improve that success. This was one of the most challenging things for me this year: failing a thousand times. I can only hope I have learned from some of my failures so I fail a thousand minus one hundred next year.

Throughout much of my first year I struggled to find my place in the classroom; but, somewhere during that tumultuous yea, I learned that I was so much more than a teacher (or my attempt at one). I suppose that’s the beauty of teaching. You are never just a teacher. You are so much more than that, and most people cannot understand that until they are there, standing in front of a room of 34 often unwilling participants who would so much rather be out in the hall talking to friends. But that's high school, right?