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.   

First Day Jitters

We just had our first week of school at WBHS. It was a short and odd week that started on Tuesday with a teacher-only day. I spent most of that day either in meetings or in front of the copy machine. On Wednesday we met with our form classes (the equivalent of homeroom) for a full day of geting-to-know-you style games and activities. This year we have a different setup this year that required a full day of teaching the kids the new ropes. Instead of having a form class made of students of the same age, we have a mix of students aged 13 to 18 years old. This is meant to mix the students up and introduce them to other students that they may not ordinarily meet. It also takes a bit of the load off of me, as I will be placing the older students in leadership roles. During our thrice weekly meetings the olders students will help out the younger and new students when it comes time to exams and studying and other sorts of things. They'll be able to get help on their homework from other student that took that course the year before or from other students who are just good at that subject. The kids seem to like this new system. It was really cool to watch them trading tips and offering information about different parts of school life like I've never seen at this school before. I think this was a highlight of the week for a lot of the kids, espectially the younger ones. We took about an hour break in the middle of the day to play some team-building games. We had chair races and even a few games of Bullrush. Even the too-cool-for-school types (which I can now spot a mile away) let their hair down and joined in on the fun.

Thursday was the big day of the week for me, though. This was the day that I met my English students for the first time. I barely slept the night before. Yes, I came down with a case of the first day jitters. I kept thinking about what the students would be like, and how I was going to introduce expectations to avoid some of the problems I had last year (a bad start to the year caused major year-long issues in two of my classes last year). I knew that I would have a few of my students from last year and I found myself wondering how they were going to act in class this year. Would they try to buck the rules because the already knew me? Would they assume that they could behave like they did last year because they are in my class again? As I lay in the dark I wondered how many students were awake at that point thinking about school, just like I was.

I had nothing to worry about, though, because the day went very smoothly. The prep work that I had done paid off and my students seem pretty nice. I even threw some homework at them on the first day and got a really good return on Friday. Most kids are pretty good on the first day, though, so I know it doesn't mean much. I am glad that I don't have many larger-than-life personalities. Those guys can be a bit hard to manage in a room of 30 boys.

The first week finished off with a staff competition afternoon on Friday in which we had to compete against other staff members for a House Cup. As mentioned in my previous posts my school has initiated a House system in which every student and staff member belongs to a "house." These are akin to the houses in the Harry Potter books and are a very British invention. Each house has a name, emblem and colour that we wear during competitions. The Staff House competition pitted house against house in a variety of team building exercises. We went to a sport complex off school grounds and had to do a variety of tasks for points. I was expecting the worst going into it. Most people have to endure this type of thing in private sector jobs. These events typically involve making a structure out of office supplies or mastering trivial trivia pulled from teammates like so many wisdom teeth. Our team day didn't turn out to be that bad but did drag on a bit. We mostly got to hang out in the sun and do the silly stuff that teachers tend to do, except that we were able to be silly with the staff of other departments. Most people at our school are really friendly but we're such a numerous lot that we don't get to really meet many people outside of our own departments. This was very good thing. The last event of the day - market a product (soap powder) with a presentation - was particularly fun. Most people decided to take the piss out of some aspect of the school. My team came up the the idea to poke fun at racist attitudes that can pop up in New Zealand and in the South African community we have on staff. One group even composed a full satire on the TV interview our Headmaster did just that morning on a controvercial initiative our school has put in place this year. The whole event was quite entertaining and let us all make complete asses of ourselves. Where else but in New Zealand?

Next week the real work starts. Fun and games aside, I now face the task of collecting writing samples from each of my students and figuring out where they stand. I'm also teaching completely new curricula this year. I'll be able to recycle some of the units I did last year, but not many. I'm basically building up 200% more original content than I did last year, and I say that with no exaggeration. Whereas last year I taught a nuber of groups in Form 4 and Level 1 (9th and 10th grade in the US), I'm teaching four other age/level groups this time around. It'll be challenging, but after this week I know that I have a lot of good students and staff to help make the job enjoyable.