Teacher Talea 2.0

I have always had a high respect for teachers. I didn’t think I could have any more respect for them, until this year. That respect has grown a lot.

Now the tables are turned, and I am the teacher - scary. I try my best to help my students learn and I try to explain the difficult concepts, but sometimes I have trouble. Sometimes my brain doesn’t know how to explain something because that’s just how it goes, that’s what that means, that’s just the subject of the sentence.

Our students are great kids, but for most of them, English is their second language, which makes learning in English more complicated and difficult.

8th & 9th graders, Year 3 student, and Laurel.

As I’m grading, I find myself willing the answers written to be correct, only to have my heart fall as I see wrong answers and see the red ink fly across the page, intensifying the incorrectness of the information. I frantically look for ways in which I can give them more points or offer them more opportunities to raise their grades. I find myself wanting to physically get into their brains and just plant the information inside. I find myself pushing a few day’s worth of material back to give more time to study for the test.

And it all seems to be for nothing. I try to help, I do what I can, but when I grade the work, quizzes, and tests it at times seems that my red pen does more work than their pencils did. I feel like they don’t learn anything from me, and if I’m not careful, I start asking, “What’s the point?” But I’m here to teach, and they need to learn. So day after day I try, and day after day I grade, asking myself all the while, “What could I do to improve things?”

Teaching is hard work. And it can be discouraging. But it can also be very rewarding. One of our students who struggles with spelling got 100% on his Spelling pretest, and I about danced for joy! Another student did really well on another test, and I wanted to throw a party. And that local kindergartener who didn’t speak any English? He’s learning, doing well, and knows his whole alphabet, without having to sing the song!! One of our students loves to bake, and when I gave her an extra credit assignment of turning a recipe into a science experiment by changing an ingredient and applying the scientific method, her face shone with pleasure and her excitement was more than evident. 

I caught Alyssa "reading" a book. She doesn't know how to read :)

Teaching is hard, but it’s worth it. Seeds of information are planted, though not as physically as I sometimes wish.  I can tell that when their questions move beyond the beginning stages of the subject to the more complicated ones, that the seed is growing into a plant. Watching the students grow in their knowledge, watching them do well, and getting them excited about learning is such a cool experience.