weak won post

personally, i reject the notion that all teachers belong in a classroom and that everyone in front of the classroom is necessarily a teacher and anyone not in the classroom can't be a teacher and teachers who teach that run-on sentences are bad are good. i prefer to view teaching as a universal process whereby one provides "information" to another person in an ideally reciprocal relationship. however, i understand that, socially, we have people who are "teachers" just as we have people who are "plumbers" or "doctors" or "actors" (and for some reason there's an odd mutual exclusivity among these professions, but that's another entry). therefore, with regard to my own perceptions of myself as a teacher, i would have to say that i am confident in certain areas and nervous about others. having taught college composition for a number of years, i have grown confident in my ability to quickly and efficiently establish a rapport with my students predicated on mutual respect and fluid communication. i have taught myself how to balance between grading, working, marriaging, teaching, and living a healthy lifestyle. i've learned how to deal with discipline problems, how to handle unmotivated students, and how to respond to low classroom morale. i love teaching college and in that respect, i'm not nervous at all about continuing teaching in high school....

but alas, as i am so frequently reminded, college is not high school nor are the types of students to which i am accustomed similar to the types of students with which i'll interact in high school. discipline in high school is not discipline in college nor is motivation, morale or teaching in general! it is a different world entirely and i am just now (or at least in the last year) beginning to realize that...perhaps my two biggest concerns about teaching high schoolers are the very things i have never had to deal with in college: parents and utter apathy. regarding the latter, for the most part, college kids want to be in college. there isn't the feeling of simply waiting until graduation before abandoning any continued education. college kids choose to be there and while they may whine occasionally at having to get up early for a class or write a long paper, they rarely get too out of hand. similarly, i've never had to deal with parents. in fact, it is illegal for me to even converse with a parent about anything! it's great, honestly. if a parent emails me about their child, i forward that to my boss and that's it. i'm nervous that this has maybe desensitized me to the "real world" of high school teaching wherein i'll not only be required but also expected to contact parents, respond to their concerns, listen to them yell at me, and probably cry myself to sleep sometimes. i don't take criticism well....personal criticism that is...i'm very sensitive.

so, all in all, i feel that teaching is largely instinctual and rightfully so. for, without properly tuned instincts, what social benefit can a teacher possibly serve without eventually being consumed by their own anxiety? a teacher is not a lesson plan. a teacher is not a textbook or a worksheet or a state standard. a teacher is not a test or a chart or a number or picture. a teacher, like a student, is a living, breathing, dynamic person whose job it is to harness the books and the charts and the pictures and the tests and make them accessible to others. that's what a teacher is to me. but you don't have to take my word for it!