Something Fresh

Teaching is a lonely profession. 

Especially when you are an English teacher. 

This weekend, I spent about nine hours grading essay questions from a poetry test.  Grading them well takes my full attention.  Oh, I can listen to some instrumental music while I grade, but I can’t have the distraction of a television program or music that might tempt me to sing along.  It wouldn’t be fair to students to have my mind wondering if Bigfoot is real or when Meghan Trainor will release a video for “Dance like Yo Daddy.” 

Teaching is lonely at school, too, because mostly we teachers close our doors and carry out our plans.  Once every few weeks an administrator might wander in and observe for a few minutes, but mostly, we are on our own with our students for 45, 55, or 85-minute chunks of time each day.  And we repeat this several times before we go home.  If we have a prep period, we often spend it in our empty classrooms planning, grading, and creating new materials for the next day, week or unit.

That’s why having a student teacher is such a blessing. 

A student teacher gives a seasoned teacher someone to talk to, someone to reflect with, and someone to plan with.  Having a student teacher reminds teachers of why they went into the profession years ago.

My student teacher and I talk about pedagogy every day.  We discuss our students’ needs, both individually and collectively, and how we can best meet them.  We discuss the time we have to address specific skills and topics, the range of abilities our students have, and how best to engage our students in those topics.

We kick around ideas and generate new approaches together. And something fresh always results.

Last week, my student teacher and I were looking for a new way to use vocabulary flashcards with
our students.  Here was our conundrum: We know our students benefit greatly from physically making their own flashcards with color- coded words, but it takes them two or three sessions to create them. How could we have students produce them more quickly to get more use from them?

As we chatted together, I had an inspiration about how to vary an approach we were already using.  We kicked it around, tested it, and plan to implement it this week.  I am eager to see what happens.

The point is that often it takes a little give and take to be inspired. That’s the benefit of having other colleagues to chat with, struggle with, and challenge us. 

If you aren’t lucky enough to have a student teacher, find other ways to seek out teachers to challenge you.  Write or follow a teacher’s blog, join a discussion on a professional forum, like NCTE, or come to an event like Indiana Writing Project’s Write Time.

Just find a group of teachers to kick around ideas.  You, your students, and your colleagues will be the happy beneficiaries.