The Self As Teaching
The conditions upon which I entered the teaching profession became burdens I had to fight past in order to continue my pursuit of a worthy career in education. My most exciting classroom moments have included students trying their hardest to grapple with difficult concepts, getting better awareness of themselves and peers next to them, and finally being able to express themselves using speaking and writing skills. As an English teacher, I always have tried to use my linguistics passions to drive my desire to create pedagogically-informed curricula that hopefully continues to resonate with students throughout the school year. Unfortunately, I might have inherited an institution that was preparing a certain level of student awareness not conducive to my own growth as an instructor.
Though I am an educational psychology graduate student, I have had to ruminate my decisions for initially beginning a career with enough challenges to confuse even the most adept science minds. I consider myself a studious and self-starting person, but unfortunately such skills do not transfer well over into classroom situations. Horror stories aside, the culture of students I was unable to win over during my in-setting stint made a deep enough incision into my psyche and mental health that altogether foregoing progression as an instructor has become my only recourse to sustain growth within the industry that makes sense for my type of mind. The private services space, whether via educational technology or practitioner-augmentation services, seems a bit premature to delve deeper into for opportunities, yet is the area I am lately gravitating towards.
Recalling student memories, the classroom recollections I have did not help me generate enough stability to (so far) professionally function within the institution. It feels as if I continue to return to my reasons teaching could not work. There have been worrisome experiences that have caused me to question what success in the classroom is meant to be or what it could represent. During the long hybrid school days causing my burn out, I thought about how I had not been a culturally aware-enough student growing up to do enough to produce personalized success academically for students undergoing even worse disruption and pandemic-transition stress. There is a level of commitment that being driven assumes to hold and I plainly could not expect a needed outcome out of any time period students had spent learning. There were not steady habits remaining or motivation that could enact a further striving for more. What could you expect from students with an amateur millennial teacher during the most disruptive time period for both of their lives?
However, when the exact trial of life introduces a full-on expressiveness, moments to find peace remain. Throughout pandemic-teaching changes, many of the complete worries that could ruin other personal moments did not affect a need to achieve, though these easily were judged as occurring outside of the learning space, and yet those are where wisdom and sense can be brought to bear. If the actual life of the student-teacher does not grow more by way of opportunity, perhaps there exist different modes of trying to evolve.
Beyond setting out to teach and trying my hand at instruction, the qualities that one cannot learn to be a teacher have been presented as “teaching senses” in the grad school material I have been working through. I did not want teaching to be my ultimate goal if only to be exposed to unknown variable-culminations. To do what I can’t, I have tried to find further expanded senses of self. I began teaching not to evolve but instead for single reactionary reasons of teaching as my only option for parental independence and a healthy application of subjects I thought I could be passionate while helping others with. No one can project the complete whole necessary steps on the path to success, though many are available to those who try to do enough for themselves, as convoluted as life paths may be.
An unengaged male instructor, I could seem aloof and inept at making my class one that caught everyone’s interest and, starting out, this caused me undue anxiety. Students outnumber us and can instill fear in a teacher who loses control over the group. Unfortunately, I could not expect much from my own abilities when learning to teach my level of intelligence in my favorite subject while in school so having access to state-supporting resources was not a natural byproduct of welcoming difficulty myself as a gifted student, nor were my own anecdotes any sort of learning content sources. In a nutshell, my class was not so fun. I never felt the classroom constraints that I was expected to promote in mine while first starting teaching. By no stretch of the imagination am I the top-IQ performer in classrooms but if I set my mind to it I can get pretty darn close. I had never learned enough to aid each student-reaction that initially impacted my inner psyche. As a lot in the field can attest to, unanticipated reactions of students can affect classroom climates if such buffets occur over long periods. My predispositions for which natural actions would never work in a classroom enacted the tendency toward not becoming a teacher but hoping I could remain as a millennial in education.
Yet, I sometimes wonder if my hardwiring predisposes me to welcome rejective experiences. Among routine awareness and accomplishing mastery, it was difficult to segregate where I was over-committed and what was necessary professionally, nudging myself towards the directions that could produce the most positive outcomes I had anticipated while entering the educational field. The long-term commitment to teaching is an endeavor I hoped to cultivate as I gained more efficiency in the classroom. Granted, my experience is not unique, for the dearth of support statewide, evoked by headlines describing teacher shortages and turnover, is a difficult reminder that students and teachers are lacking support to improve everyone’s distinct experience during normal school days. The pandemic offered opportunities for positive disruption, yet I witnessed clear-cut student disconnection first-hand, which disheartened me enough to realize some professionals are simply predisposed with the temperaments to handle extreme curveballs by way of mass class rejection and precarious demography ratios on rosters. Beyond the host of problems I was forced to address in order to function normally and actually instruct, I knew burnout would eventually come back to bite me with the technological landscape dynamically altering what traditional learning structures newer and existing teachers could not yet render obsolete as the field professionally figured itself out.
As dramatic as expertise becoming obsolete may seem, many of the concerns that made me sense a lack of professional support can be traced back to what makes me unable to differentiate myself as a teacher from being a student. The state initiatives to improve oneself may as of yet not kept up with inflationary pressures, with retirement cushions instilling my own disillusionment with my state legislature. And though I cannot justify my fight to remain relevant as an educator without earning stripes within a teaching practice, I can instead harp back to natural gifts I could pedagogically include were it not for this new desire for educational discovery. I entered the teaching profession excited for my newfound profession and the rosters of students I could have continued to make a huge impact on. Like many of my previous endeavors, I will continue immersing my efforts into finding out if perfect curriculums in fact exist, no matter where I land in the private space.
