Should I Teach?
Published January 25, 2004
I come off sounding like I hate parents. That is not my intent. I only meant to point out how negative and frustrating some parent interactions can be (these low times seem to outweigh the others in my mind). But when I think about it, I have had many great interactions with parents. There are some awesome parent volunteers at my school who are largely unappreciated. Without them, some of our overlooked students (ESL, special needs, etc.) would fall through the cracks. More power to nice and helpful parents. Down with parents who treat teachers like subordinate pieces of shit.
Kids are fresh. They surprise you. I have fun almost every day. I try to make my classes fun—for my students’ sake and for mine. My teaching approach is not dictatorial (contrary to my jokes in previous posts). In many ways, I am a constructivist teacher. A group of students, collectively, has more experience than I have. They don’t have the wisdom, or the adult experience, but the eyes of any class have seen a lot. I try to bring this out in my classes as much as possible. For any text that we consider, my students have to put it up against their own experience and knowledge and construct their interpretations of the text while they try to apply the text to our world—their world. I hope this doesn’t sound too wishy-washy. I only bring it up because it makes my class so much more interesting. I love stories. Humans love stories. Kids hate “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,” but through the connections that they make to their own experience and stories, it becomes more interesting in some way. Now, I could follow the ways of some other teachers and lecture all hour about books and about writing. I could give a lot of multiple-choice tests and avoid student experience and opinions altogether. But to me, that would make for a career that I would rather bury in the ground. If you become a teacher, make sure that you design your classes and teaching style so that you will be stimulated and interested/entertained—in addition to your students. When you lose interest, they will follow suit.
People warned me about the paper-load for English teachers—that it is terribly time consuming. I just knew that I loved to read and write, and I sort of blew of these warnings, saying, “Yeah, yeah.” Well, I was an idiot. Outside of dealing with parents, my other least favored aspect of teaching is just the total time that I spend reading student work, writing comments on it, and entering and preparing data. In sociology and political science, if you want to be a good teacher who makes his students write and interact with texts and ideas, I’m thinking that you will have to spend a lot of time as well. In fact, and it’s obvious, the great teachers whom I know spend a lot of their time away from school on teaching. You should try to get some experience with the grading ritual now, so that you know what it’s like and the time it entails before you commit to being a teacher. That said, I have modified and adapted my teaching approach so that my students do a significant amount of writing while I don’t have to grade and write in-depth responses to everything they write. I had a heavy, overwhelming paper-load my first few years because I didn’t exactly know how to deal with it. I’ve learned how to do what I want with a class while cutting down on the paper-load.
- Should I Teach?
- Published: January 25, 2004
- Type: Opinion
- Section: Culture
- Writer: Dirtgrain
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Very generous and honest appraisal, Dirtgrain. I haven't taught at the high school or elementary levels, but I know people who have or that do. I have taught at the college level, which is much easier going. Let me second your opinion that it's not just the students that color the experience but also the administrative staff and the rest of the teaching staff.
That was pretty good Dirtgrain. One question, what grades do you teach?
I teach composition and literature classes to students in grades nine through twelve.
Cool. I just wanted to know. I'm a high school freshman.
I am reading your book lives on the boundry and I am woundering if I could email you sometime.
I'm not Mike Rose.
You're right - it takes all kinds. Glad to have you aboard, Dirtgrain.
I know that you wrote this forever ago, but I want to say thanks for writing it. It has helped tremendously, and I will make arrangements to sub:)
Thanks Brenda. I just re-read it, and I wouldn't change what I wrote. I'm in my tenth year now, and I still like it (and suffer with it at times).
People tend to see substitute teaching as something negative. I think we can all remember when we had a sub in one of our classes--and a lot of kids planned on taking advantage. While I did have some tough subbing experiences before I became a teacher (and I still sub now and then during my planning period), I also had some great experiences. Even some of the bad ones are memorable.
I once subbed for a special ed. teacher at a middle school. In one class, I saw that she had three students. "Three students," I thought, "that's going to be easy." I was mistaken. The three students, Larry, Willie and Joe (sounds oddly like the Three Stooges), were the most foul-mouthed, delinquent seventh graders I have ever seen. They had to be escorted by a teacher from class to class. I was told to call immediately to call for help if they gave me any trouble. As soon as the escorting teacher left the room, these three kids start putting swear words together in combinations that I had never heard before. One of the kids walked right up to the window, picked up a book and threw it out the window. I didn't call for help. I was too stubborn. So, I did my best, and by the end of the hour, I had managed to get the kids to sit at the table and talk a bit about the assignment that they had. Nothing else was thrown out the window that day. I was shaken and drained after that one class period, but I felt a degree of success. That was my toughest substitute teaching experience.
A more positive experience came at another middle school, where I subbed for a music teacher. She had left me pages and pages of typed, single-spaced notes and instructions. It was ridiculous. I couldn't even finish reading them before class started. Before I knew it, I found myself in front of an orchestra of about twenty five girls, conducting them as they played through several pieces of music that they were working on. I had no experience in conducting an orchestra--only my own experiences as a choir student in junior high school. That didn't stop me, and while I made some mistakes (there's nothing quite like a group of twenty five middle school girls simultaneously getting pissed off at you for messing up on telling the bases when to come in), it was a great time for me. I don't think I'll ever get an opportunity to conduct an orchestra again.
I am currently going to school to become a teacher. I have encountered some difficult times that have made me second guess my decision. I've read books that are supposed to inspire me to become a teacher but they've achieved only the opposite. They encourage teachers to become revolutionists and to fight the system. That is not my intentions and your words have helped to light the flame under my feet again. I appreciate your honesty and your writing style. You should write a book... Thank you!
I have been debating whether or not I should go into teaching i've been thinking about i for a whole year. Today, I googled the question "should i teach?" and you're blog popped up. I received an answer. Although teaching has it's negative points, i believe your description is true and refreshing. Thank you for being honest and giving me a heads up as I continue the path to teaching! I agree with the previous comment. You should write a book if you haven't already:)
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This is heartfelt, practical, honest and overall outstanding. Thanks! We need teachers, but we need them for the right reasons.