I'm still sifting through memories as I catch up to the present. Presently I am teaching again, part time. I have a seminar and a rhetoric class for college students and a "Laudato Si in Practice" class for my middle schoolers. I had made some notes about what I want to continue to do and what I want to do differently from my time teaching middle school that I'd like to write out as a reminder to myself.
First, I really need to do a better job of doing what's important now (WIN). My husband attributes the acronym W.I.N. to a motivational speech given by Lou Holtz years ago when he was coaching Notre Dame football. He may have made it up or borrowed it from someone else, I'm not sure, but regardless of the provenance, it is a guideline I should follow more frequently. Even now, here I am blogging when I should be raking leaves. But it's cold out there! It's important that I drink coffee and write NOW before I go back outside!
Ah, there's the difficulty: there are so many important things! But one of the things I learned over the last two years, was to prioritize my time. I don't know that I did this well, but I was improving. I needed to get to school earlier to start the day before students arrived - that was important, and I did it. I got up earlier, got ready faster, and readjusted the start of my day by 45 minutes. This is a basic teacher practice, but in my time teaching college, it wasn't as pressing. Having my copies made and my first emails of the day answered before students arrived set the tone for the rest of the day. Then I could stand at my door where I was supposed to be and greet students and converse with them a little. Was I always successful at this? Absolutely not, usually because I didn't get myself organized the night before. But I kept trying.
So what is the MOST important thing while teaching? Taking care of the people. Taking time to get to know students and to attend their events and to meet with them. Taking time to support my fellow teachers and to greet the people working around campus in all kinds of roles. I tried to be positive and to be present each day - to not check email when students were in the room. To spend the 30 minutes of lunch duty visiting with students, not checking my phone or talking to teachers - unless something was pressing, like a schedule change or upcoming field trip, etc. And although I didn't always succeed at being bright and chipper, I do think being optimistic was one of my strengths, although not a natural gift. Our school had experienced some challenges and morale was low when I first started, so one of the things most needed was a can-do, positive attitude.
Planning ahead was another practice that always set a better tone for the day. My second year was so much easier than my first because I had a better idea of what we could do in a class period, and I had some resources to use. I didn't reuse many of my lesson plans, partly because we were encouraged to write them differently my second year, and also because my original plans needed revision. But I did spend more time focusing on what needed to be done and how much time it might take. I paid more attention to standards of learning and to scheduling the lesson than I did my first year, when we were always running out of time because I didn't move us along when our 15 minutes, or whatever, was up.
The challenge for planning was that I often didn't plan enough time for planning. Story of my life. I also needed to remember that less is more and not to let perfect be the enemy of the good. (I am full of clicheed aphorisms today.) I not infrequently set myself back by spending way too much time searching online for resources to teach a concept, when I would have been better served by creating a resource myself or just going with one that was fine. While there are many amazing English content creators online, not everything works, and searching for just the right thing takes precious time better spent grading, or devising an activity that would work for our specific unit. I loved looking at other resources for inspiration, but in between the specifics of our standards, our text, and our students, I found that creating my own resources was easier than using someone else's.
I also learned to try to incorporate a choice activity for differentiation and to incorporate more review opportunities, either for openers or closers. A single lesson was not enough time for most concepts to sink in, and I had to remind myself that even if a concept seems obvious or simple to me doesn't mean that I taught it clearly or that a single day of practice was enough.
Another lesson: routine is my friend. Monday vocab. Tuesday grammar. Wednesday writing. Thursday reading. Friday review. Patterns making planning easier and help students know what to expect. Block scheduling was not ideal, but breaking the block into chunks of time helped.
The biggest lesson I learned was to appreciate teachers more. They have a lot of personalities and problems to deal with. They have admin responsibilities, concepts to teach, parent communications, faculty team work, data analysis, grading, planning, managing dramas and materials. So much stuff. It was exhausting, but also exhilarating. I'm glad was I able to spend a couple of years in a classroom, and I miss it a little now - the involvement in students' and colleagues' lives that isn't present in the adjunct position. I don't miss the exhaustion, but I do miss the mission. I am enjoying the balance I have right now as an adjunct, especially with the work of moving, but I feel a little like an empty nester twice over - my children are grown and my students have graduated. Moving on to my next mission.
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