diary 1: the unfortunate realities of student teaching
One thing that I need to work on when it comes to my teaching style and teaching students who could give a rat's ass about doing work or lacking motivation or not wanting to do anything but sit on their phones and kiki at Tik Toks or Snapchat is that I can't take any of it personal. Setting aside your personal feelings is a challenging task for this teaching thing. They always say that you can lead a horse to the water, but you can't make the horse drink it. It will be a battle and a half trying to make a student do something they don't want to do – they don't find it meaningful or treat it like their life depends on it. You can preach and preach and preach until you start preaching to the tables, empty chairs, and lights. Knowing when to step back and allow students to have ownership over their education, advocating for themselves, and doing the work to make sure their grade is where they want it is critical. Their lack of motivation or disengagement has more to do with them and less with me. I'm not excusing what I offer. If my lesson weren't engaging, I would constantly find meaningful ways to engage students in what we are learning. I could try new strategies and reflect, evaluate, and change.
I remember in a screening interview for an English teaching position, one of the questions was "if you could break up in percentages how much teaching/learning goes on between you and the students, what would it be?" and my answer was, "30% of it is me. 70% of it is the students." The teaching style of transmission of knowledge is excellent, but it can only go so far. Constructing meaning and providing students with choice and democracy seems more realistic. Students build their knowledge. They are the ones who take what they want and leave what they don't. I would be running in circles if I tried to make students care about something they don't want to. Creating through the roof expectations and getting mad when they don't meet a "standard" takes energy. The energy I could be used towards something more valuable and productive. Students are human beings who don't really know who they are yet. Shit, I don't even know who I am fully at times. They have pressures from home, friends, and social media that can dictate their lives in powerful ways. We may not see the fruit that we plant yet. They may bear good or bad fruits from the seeds we put in.
When folks first come into this profession, regardless of whether you're white, black, brown, or yellow, we come in with a savior complex. I mean, can you blame us? When you're in a teacher education program that emphasizes that students of diverse backgrounds need the "most help," you come in thinking you're teaching to "broken" students when you're really teaching to human beings who are flawed. Some human beings who have been institutionally and economically and racially and systemically oppressed. It is not our job to save them. Some students just need to get by. This reminds me of something my godmother told me when she tells her countless stories. The people in our life are just like bus stops. Each person we meet can take us to our next destination, but sooner or later, they'll need to get to another bus stop and get to a different destination. I'm just a stop in these kids' lives. Let's be honest. I'm only student teaching. These wonderful human beings called students are not my students. I'm sharing a classroom with a teacher who's been teaching for 16 years. Well-seasoned. I haven't established any policies, procedures, or norms with them.
I'm building on a foundation that I have not set.