While working as a Teach for America teacher in Baltimore, I kept a journal of my experiences during my first year teaching. We didn't have blogs "back then" so I used to email the journal entries to a lengthy list of folks. As a blast from the past, I will repost some of my more humorous journal entries here on this blog on Flashback Fridays. Some of you will remember some of them and I hope you enjoy it as much the second time as you did the first. What follows is an entry from the first month of my first year teaching.
September 29, 2004:
Today was out of control. With one section, they became so unruly that I found myself saying, in a very quiet voice, that I would teach the lesson in that voice and people who wanted to listen but couldn’t hear, were allowed to move to the front. (AUDIENCE PARTICIPATION – how many people moved?) Correct - Nobody moved. (AUDIENCE PARTICIPATION – how many people stopped talking?) Correct - Everyone kept talking with the exception of about three. I kept teaching. It took every ounce of energy I could muster not to lose my cool.
And that was only the first period.
Today was supposed to be a wrap-up day on the “Egg-speriment” that we were conducting to explore cell membranes. We were going to organize our data in nice graphs in order to better analyze it. Quick and efficient, right? Rather, it turned into part graphing and part lets-watch-Mr.-Artinian-as-he-goes-around-the-room-shaking-his-hands-and-repeating-in-a-flight-attendant-voice-stop talking-stop talking-stop talking-stop talking-DAY.
Icing on the cake: University supervisor observing one class and my assistant principal giving me my first official observation in another. What am I doing here? I am nothing more than a behaviorist – an underpaid, under-resourced, under-appreciated, baby-sitter who spends more time trying, fruitlessly, to get students focused instead of on the exciting exploration of science.
Get me outta here!
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