Notes from a Teaching Novice
A High School English Teacher Looks Back on Her First Two Years
Maybe those teachers do exist — the ones who know they are going to be amazing as soon as they step foot into their own classroom for the first time — but me and everyone I knew weren’t so sure. In the credential program, they tell us the statistics: half of you will leave the profession within five years. We look around and think, “Not I,” but deep down there is a voice saying, “I hope it’s not me because I really, really want to be a great teacher.”
And that’s the thing — we go into teaching because the helping professions draw us from some sense of duty: some are idealists driven to save the world; others were lucky enough to have great teachers who passed the torch, and, still, some of us simply liked our majors so much that we want to help kids like it too. Whatever calls us Millenials to teach, my first two years in secondary education have confirmed for me that the old adage is true after all:
Teaching is a calling. But it’s a call that leaves some of us wondering if we should have pushed it straight to voicemail.
In California, where I teach, the state requires an aspiring teacher to complete a year-long credential program. Then they issue you a preliminary credential, emphasis on the preliminary. They never tell you that your credential requires you to go through a two-year induction process before they give you your real credential.
That’s basically two more years of credential work: homework, classes called “meetings,” and something they call “Teacher Action Research.” Whatever you it call, it adds up to hours and hours of extra work on top of your new job!
Somehow, I survived the induction process and wrapped up my first two years of teaching at a pretty ordinary California public high school, with a population of just under 2000 students. (Is it just me, or does it seem like a bad idea to put so many teenagers together in one place?) School let out a few weeks ago, summer’s first heatwave is already upon us, and here are some of the things whirling around in my mind as I take stock of my first two years as a high school English teacher. These are the things I did NOT learn from my credential program.
Students are like dogs (or is it bees?): they sense fear.
If you’re too much of a pushover, they’ll attack. I saw this happen to one of my colleagues who really had his heart in the right place (one of the idealists), and who was really brilliant in his content area, but the kids shoved him around and he never gained control over his classes. He connected with what I will call the “high level” kids — creative, curious, sharp.
Unfortunately, in a diverse place like California, unless you’re teaching honors classes, you’re going to have a little bit of everybody, a gumbo of a classroom, and you have to command respect from all of your students. I’m not saying I’ve mastered this whole “command respect” thing, but, hey, I’m still standing.
Tomorrow is another day.
Scarlett O’Hara was right on this one, and it’s one of my favorite teacher mantras:
No matter how bad today went — bad student behavior, lesson plan fail — you can start fresh the next day.
Teenagers don’t usually hold grudges. They’re moody and hormonal, and they have a million other pressures in their lives. As adults, we forget that trite teenage concerns are like FEMA disasters for them. That your English teacher yelled at you is like a 2.o earthquake. That Ciara texted your boyfriend, on the other hand, is an 8.0 seismic destroyer.
Practice your poker face.
Do this for many reasons. For one, there is always that kid who will test you. I had one kid ask me if I wanted to “lick [his] fingers” after he finished a bag of Cheetos. Some days I would rather pretend that I didn’t hear a thing and go about the classroom (although it would have been great to make this kid call home. Can’t you just hear him repeating this to his parents?).
More than anything, perhaps, kids like to get a rise out of us. My cousin Aaron told me that he and his fellow seniors loved to taunt their music teacher just so they could see her turn red. As a teacher, you’ve got to play it cool. Which leads to my next point . . .
Pick your battles.
I could probably write a referral or give detention every day of my teaching life. If I did that, though, I would most likely get fired. You have to decide what’s going to be important to you and what you’re going to let slide. For me, I’ll pretend not to hear certain conversations (and I’ve actually gotten really good at tuning out non-academic talk), but for another teacher it might be wearing a hat in the classroom.
I also have to remind myself that teenagers dwell in a world of conflict, and as much as it sucks to admit — I’m now on the other side: I’m a part of the system that has to be tested. That said, refuse to argue with a student. They are so good at trapping you into “fairness” arguments.
What I’ve learned is that talking to a student one-on-one works best.
Case in point: on the day of finals, a male student kept interrupting and arguing with female students who presented on feminist or LGBTQ issues, so naturally I had to ask him to leave. But get this — he didn’t want to leave. He refused. Rather than argue and feel my blood pressure spike, I simply threatened to call the campus supervisor, and the student scurried off to detention. Later on that day, he came to talk and brought a hearty, honest apology with him. He even presented his project. You could say we figuratively hugged it out (I would not advise literal hugging, as that could be misconstrued as a chi-mo moment).
You can’t save all the kids.
A veteran teacher told me that once, and now I know what he meant. Some kids make this impression on you, and you do whatever you can to help them, but in the end you feel like you didn’t do enough. Just this year I had a sweet, African-American student who put up a tough front, sagged his pants, refused to do work, but always wanted to give me candy.
If a kid comes to school every day, it’s a pretty good indicator that someone is looking out for them.
Well, in his case, he had two strong parents, who had always been married (they were proud of this fact), who had raised him in the suburbs, and they didn’t know what to do about this “gangster act” he put on. When they told me he wrote endlessly in his journal at home, I was shocked. Really shocked. In the end, they put him on independent study, but I still don’t know how a writer escaped my class without joining my Creative Writing Club.
You will have a student who will die.
No one ever told me that one. Looking back, it seems kind of obvious. We all know how reckless teenagers are with their underdeveloped frontal lobes.
In my first year, there was a fatal car accident, two kids died, and one of mine nearly died, and her sister was one of the kids who didn’t make it.
That was hard enough, visiting her at home, seeing this beautiful teenage girl, wrapped and bandaged and scratched up. She taught me something really important (see next point).
I wish I could say that was the worst of it. The day before school started the next year, another student was killed in a car crash. That following October, when I was checking email during morning announcements, I got the worst news of my life:
My favorite student had been murdered. He was shot in the head.
I don’t remember anyone dying when I was in high school — I guess we just got lucky during my four years.
Students are your teachers.
It’s kind of like that Crosby, Stills & Nash song, “Teach Your Children,” in the line where it goes, “children, teach your parents well.” My students have taught me well, indeed.
From the student who lost her sister, I learned the true meaning of grace. She mourned openly, kept a sense of humor, and was determined to be happy. I’ve seen the Instagram postings of her travels, FFA work, and love for nature.
Not all lessons, however, are so profound. Mostly, your students will teach you new slang and give you make-up tips. When I came into class wearing my new Birkenstocks, one of my students remarked, “ Ms. MC, where did you get those Jerusalem Jordans?”
Give students a break every now and then.
Sometimes, it’s okay to let the conversation float to something totally unrelated to the learning objective for the day.
I’ve bonded with kids over the most basic stuff, like American Horror Story and the Oakland A’s.
Some teachers are private and share nothing with kids from their private lives. I get that, but I’m an open person. As long as kids are appropriate, I let let them ask me questions, and I let them follow my Instagram page (not my real one, but the one I made for my pets: @Dino_and_Frankie).
It turns out that kids are pretty resourceful when they can reach you on social media.
I’ve had students take pictures of their rough drafts and send them via Instagram, for example.
Figure out a system that works for you.
I suspect that most teachers burn out and quit teaching because they worked too damn hard. I could work 12 hours a day, six days a week and still never be completely caught up. Eventually, you have to draw the line.
During my first year, I thought I had to grade everything my students did. Then I realized that if I was actually reading everything I assigned them, they probably weren’t writing enough. It was all very frustarting.
By my second year of teaching, I figured out a system of collecting and grading work that made a lot more sense, and gave me more time to create engaging lesson plans. Who knows, maybe I’ll completely change it next year.
A good teacher is always a novice.
I don’t mean “novice” in the sense of being inexperienced. Rather,
I believe we should approach teaching as if we are starting anew each year.
Some teachers have that freshness about them, no matter how old or long they’ve been teaching. My lovely teaching supervisor, Chris, was a third generation teacher, and so inspiring and energetic after 30+ years in the classroom.
So much of what happens in education is dictated to us by policy makers and zealots who have not taught a day in their lives. Laws get passed about what we can and should teach; trends come and go much in the same way. It didn’t take me long to see that in education the pendulum swings back and forth (I’ve estimated at about a 7–10 year cycle).
If I want to be relevant and fresh, I will have to learn to go with the flow, but retain some center, some authenticity, of my own pedagogy and experience. I am always reading some book on education.
If you haven’t read The Smartest Kids in the World (Amanda Ripley), This Is Not a Test (José Vilson), or The Teacher Wars (Dana Goldstein) — I highly recommend you check these out. Education blogs and the California Educator magazine keep me feeling connected and up-to-date. Playing around on Pinterest is super fun. I’ve gotten tips on everything from graphic organizers to classroom decor from other teachers on Pinterest.
I won’t lie, though. Sometimes, the last thing I want to think about at home is teaching. That’s why it might take me three months to read a book on education, but I figure — at least I’m attempting to learn something about my field.
In conclusion (just kidding — I will not let my students conclude their essays with this lazy transition), these last two years have been crazy. I have struggled to find balance, I have made many mistakes, I have cried from tension in my back, I have gained weight, I have been more exhausted than I’ve ever been in my whole life, and yet I have to admit that I like my job: I’m coming back for a third year.
As I write this, I wonder if my third year will be three-times-a-charm, or more like three-strikes-you’re-out.
That I’m leaning more towards the former makes me think I did indeed answer the right call.
Jenny McClelland is a high school English teacher in California. She specializes in California literature and has contributed teaching materials to the Center for Steinbeck Studies at San Jose State University. Follow her on Twitter: @jenilola
