My educator footprint

The media buzzes with news of our carbon footprints as drivers, eaters, consumers, Americans, etc.. This is merely the lastest sphere in which we humans are beginning to realise our impact on our surroundings. Our impact begs to be qualified as good or bad, desirable or undesirable, permanent or temporary, unavoidable or frivolous. We argue until blue in the face and watch the data roll in from countless surveys and studies. Once it's all in, we argue some more about whether it's fair and accurate, and then we get down to the business of doing something about it.

I'm told by many credible sources that I will change the lives of young people if I work as an educator. I'm going to assume that this is true. During those moments when things just don't seem to get through to my students or when I'm feeling completely ineffectual at work, I have my doubts.  Mostly, though, I hope that they can take something of use from the lesson even if only that school is a safe place and that reading can be enjoyable. With any luck my educator footprint will be sustainable and positive. We all remember the good teacher we had growing up, but we also remember the bad teachers, the ones that squelched our interest in certain subjects or possibly even school in general.

As my second year of teaching unfolds I find myself keenly aware of what sort of impact I will have on students. At the end of my first year I spent some time jotting down notes on how the year went and how many goals for the year I achieved. My main goals were to 1) learn to manage my students behaviour effectively and 2) produce exam scores on par with more experienced teachers. I figured that if I could pin these down in the first year the other things would fall into place.

At the end of last year I could not speak for my second goal, as the exam scores for half of my students wouldn't arrive until the beginning of the following year. Classroom management is basically an immediate feedback cycle, though. At the end of the year I realized that I hadn't done as well as I would have liked. In fact, I didn't do nearly as well as the other first year teachers in my department with one of my classes. Student reviews of my class were fairly negative of my management style, and by the last few months of the year I had completely lost control of this group. Homework return rates sunk through the floor, a core of about 8 students in the class routinely challenged my authority during lessons as a group, and looming exams added stress to those students who were doing their best to behave and get down to business. Because I had such a difficult time reigning in this small group of rebels, the rest of the class lost respect of me. Peer pressure kicked in and before I knew it things were beyond my control. My only option was to remove students from class to other classrooms, dole out detentions for the smallest infractions and rule the class with an iron fist. The fun end-of-year unit wasn't nearly as fun because I couldn't trust them to work in groups. No teacher wants to end the year on that kind of note.

I realised that this was my educator footprint for this group of students. My reputation with them is one of a pushover who cannot earn the respect of students. I let a small group of students ruin the class for the majority. Other teachers knew this group of students and confirmed that they behave poorly in other classes, particurlarly with female teachers, but that doesn't erase the other students' perceptions of me.

After reflecting and discussing and resolving to the best of my ability, I thought I had finally come to a point where I felt comfortable with my mistakes and knew what to do should the situation arise in the future. These things happen and I can't control the attitudes of my students, right? This acceptance went completely out the window during the last period of the day a few weeks ago. I was assigned to fill in for another teacher and when I got to the class I noticed that many of the students in this Core 8 were in this class. I walked into the classroom and set my things on front desk to a chorus of loud complaining, grousing and laughing. Once again, they pulled the rest of the class into their game: get the teacher's ire up, distract the group from the beginning of the lesson and then watch others play up and talk back to the teacher in a one-upsmanship game of sorts.  After some time and a few tricks learned last year, I managed to get this Core 8 on task and making good progress on their graphing work.  The other boys, though, had taken this hooting and hollering to mean that the other students were up for a show.  There are leaders and followers in boys schools, and in this case the leaders (read Core 8) decided to wind up their classmates and set them loose on me after backing out of the way.

I'm fine with the idea that these boys didn't enjoy my class last year.  It happens.  The thought that they may be harbouring negative opinions of English as a subject because of last year, though, is what really bothers me.  It's surprising to see how the other half lives on this topic: could those teachers that I really didn't get along with recognise that they turned me off to a subject?  And did they manage to pick up that I really didn't care about it at the time?  I think I saw a few of those faces on that day and it bugs me.