“I admit I didn’t always love teaching. I was out of my depth. You’re on your own in the classroom, one man or woman facing five classes every day, five classes of teenagers. One unit of energy against one hundred and seventy-five units of energy, on hundred and seventy-five ticking bombs, and you have to find ways of saving your own life. They may like you, they may even love you, but they are young and it is the business of the young to push the old off the planet…But if you hang on you learn the tricks.” -Frank McCourt, Teacher Man
For better or worse, its true, I am a teacher. Teacher CATE! To my students. Do I love it? Well… its complicated.
Classes have ended for the year. And, although there is still work to be done in the school with grades, exams, etc, this leaves me with a little more time to relax and read (preferably on the beach). I just finished Teacher Man, a memoir by Frank McCourt, which recounts the decades he spent teaching English to teenagers.
As I read, I began to notice how the sandy, sweaty salas of Chidenguele seem strikingly similar to McCourt’s experiences in the New York City Classrooms.
Ok, instead of five classes a day, I have six. And about 300 students in total. We have classrooms and desks and not much else (most students have never touched or perhaps even seen a computer, and rarely come across books). But my not-so-little African students are just as sweet, vicious, disillusioned, socially awkward, rude, intelligent, “stoopid”, and enthusiastic as McCourt’s New Yorkers.
But as I noticed McCourt continuously referring to his own “doggedness,” which helped him survive classroom chaos, and really life in general, I couldn’t help but wonder… is there anything dogged about the little white girl in skinny jeans and pearls as she steps into the Mozambican classroom and off the edge of the earth. So how did I make it through my first year? And will I eventually thrive rather than inch by without being obliterated by the teenage hormones/failures/criticisms/cynicism/ and general troublemaking?
He’s right you know. Once you enter the classroom, it’s you against them… ok, but here is where it gets tricky. At the same time, you aren’t against them at all. You are for them, trying to help them. But the little brats just keep standing in their own way and at the same time making your job more difficult.
Well, now that I’m up against the masses, controlling the chaos, trying to conjure up some wisdom to impart, but finding my mediocre nuggets of possibly bright ideas becoming dingy, worn , and then misunderstood entirely before just plain smacking me back in the face. I really have to rely entirely on myself and my ever diminishing creativity and just try to simplify everything so as not to confound entirely the little befuddled minds.
But if McCourt is correct in asserting that the job of the young is to push the old off the planet, where is my place in all the hullabaloo?
I am not older (nor much wiser, but that is a big fat secret I will never tell my students), than a majority of my students.
“Teacher CATE, how old are you?” – inquire the group and 18-26 year old students.
“47”, a response received by a warm chorus of giggles, and confused disbelief
But, at the end of the day, the teacher is boss (even at the tender age of 23), and I have forbidden myself to forget it.
I did make a few discoveries while witnessing the flying chalk, squealing testosterone, and general carnage of my own embarrassment in my first teaching year. Here are the things that I learned a little late, but in the end got me through:
Don’t take anything that teenagers say personally, a) they are usually lying, b) they want to get a rise out of you, and c) who cares, they are zit-faced, hormone driven, teenagers.
What works for one teacher, fails another. What one student comprehends, another misses completely. What works? Trial and error. Just do it. Fall on your face, and then have the courage to get back up and teach with a broken nose and black eye.
Other than that, I am just hanging on, hoping to learn the tricks.
For better or worse, its true, I am a teacher. Teacher CATE! To my students. Do I love it? Well… its complicated.
Classes have ended for the year. And, although there is still work to be done in the school with grades, exams, etc, this leaves me with a little more time to relax and read (preferably on the beach). I just finished Teacher Man, a memoir by Frank McCourt, which recounts the decades he spent teaching English to teenagers.
As I read, I began to notice how the sandy, sweaty salas of Chidenguele seem strikingly similar to McCourt’s experiences in the New York City Classrooms.
Ok, instead of five classes a day, I have six. And about 300 students in total. We have classrooms and desks and not much else (most students have never touched or perhaps even seen a computer, and rarely come across books). But my not-so-little African students are just as sweet, vicious, disillusioned, socially awkward, rude, intelligent, “stoopid”, and enthusiastic as McCourt’s New Yorkers.
But as I noticed McCourt continuously referring to his own “doggedness,” which helped him survive classroom chaos, and really life in general, I couldn’t help but wonder… is there anything dogged about the little white girl in skinny jeans and pearls as she steps into the Mozambican classroom and off the edge of the earth. So how did I make it through my first year? And will I eventually thrive rather than inch by without being obliterated by the teenage hormones/failures/criticisms/cynicism/ and general troublemaking?
He’s right you know. Once you enter the classroom, it’s you against them… ok, but here is where it gets tricky. At the same time, you aren’t against them at all. You are for them, trying to help them. But the little brats just keep standing in their own way and at the same time making your job more difficult.
Well, now that I’m up against the masses, controlling the chaos, trying to conjure up some wisdom to impart, but finding my mediocre nuggets of possibly bright ideas becoming dingy, worn , and then misunderstood entirely before just plain smacking me back in the face. I really have to rely entirely on myself and my ever diminishing creativity and just try to simplify everything so as not to confound entirely the little befuddled minds.
But if McCourt is correct in asserting that the job of the young is to push the old off the planet, where is my place in all the hullabaloo?
I am not older (nor much wiser, but that is a big fat secret I will never tell my students), than a majority of my students.
“Teacher CATE, how old are you?” – inquire the group and 18-26 year old students.
“47”, a response received by a warm chorus of giggles, and confused disbelief
But, at the end of the day, the teacher is boss (even at the tender age of 23), and I have forbidden myself to forget it.
I did make a few discoveries while witnessing the flying chalk, squealing testosterone, and general carnage of my own embarrassment in my first teaching year. Here are the things that I learned a little late, but in the end got me through:
Don’t take anything that teenagers say personally, a) they are usually lying, b) they want to get a rise out of you, and c) who cares, they are zit-faced, hormone driven, teenagers.
What works for one teacher, fails another. What one student comprehends, another misses completely. What works? Trial and error. Just do it. Fall on your face, and then have the courage to get back up and teach with a broken nose and black eye.
Other than that, I am just hanging on, hoping to learn the tricks.
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