As frustrating as the teaching process can get sometimes, it’s important to look back and reflect on the reasons why I joined the profession in the first place.
There’s been plenty of times in my teaching career where I have faced crises of whether I chose the correct path or not.
Student teaching was a struggle, for some aspects of it. I could never get classroom management down. My first year in Vegas was rather rough, and the revelation that I was probably too nice hit me the day my flash drive got stolen from a student, which led to a prompt response.
And yet, I’m still here, and I need to firmly establish the reasons I teach so that I can continue to work as hard as I’ve been doing. The problem with teaching is that it’s never instantly gratifying, and you never see the result of what you’ve done as a teacher until maybe months, or years later. Kids are mostly ungrateful too, but I think that’s just the way the world works now.
Anyway, the first reason I got into teaching was because of STUDENTS. As much as I pretend to hate them (and probably do hate some of them), my primarily goal in becoming an educator was inspiring youth. And though I’m not really an inspiration anymore to anyone, I hope that I have connected with enough students over the years to establish clear relationships.
My first direct experience working with students was during the summer of 2011, where I taught math and film at a summer camp. It wasn’t necessarily the material I was teaching the students that mattered. It was the relationships I established with some of the students. Ironically enough, these students were middle schoolers who enjoyed giving me daily gossip. Reflecting back on it now, middle school was the perfect age for me to start with.
After college, I worked at the YMCA after school program for many years to build more relationships with kids. It was difficult though because I got moved around several times, eventually landing at Katella High School. It was there that I kind of struggled to connect with kids because I had to run after school detention there. And that’s difficult because I wasn’t a teacher, had no authority, and definitely had no management. That lack of management problem would plague me for several years as an educator.
I worked at Fairmont Summer programs for several summers, interacting with mostly elementary age children. They were okay, but I’m not so sure they could handle my sarcasm or understood my personality that well. We went on many field trips though, which I thoroughly enjoyed having not experienced many “life experience lessons” as a kid.
Even though my student teaching experience (working with high-schoolers) wasn’t the best, I did make some connections with them and had fun along the way. They were pretty honest with me towards the end though saying that I was definitely too nice and hadn’t yet established an authoritarian presence.
Eventually, realizing my ability to connect with middle schoolers allowed me to connect with various middle schoolers from Cram Middle School in my first year of teaching. As rough as some aspects of that year was (flash drive getting stolen, dealing with many belligerent children, bad management), I did have good relationships with many of the students, which allowed me to move onwards towards a new setting back in California.
My first year at Rise wasn’t the best, in that I was still trying to immerse myself into the charter world. As a result, I didn’t really have the time to connect with students as well, and thought teaching would mostly do half the work for me. Unfortunately I taught Technology which had no set curriculum resulting in a mismatch of my abilities appropriate for the time.
Luckily my 2nd year at Rise allowed me to establish new connections with students both inside and outside of the classroom through teaching them history, having fun in Advisory, and doing community service on various weekends with Builder’s Club. I definitely hit my peak last year teaching a great cohort, having good relationships, and not really being stressed over everything.
https://www.instagram.com/p/BSmMC0ABXVi/?taken-by=mrtranrise
https://www.instagram.com/p/BUXVmeTBef2/?taken-by=mrtranrise
I definitely do think teaching is important, and giving students the content knowledge needed in life to succeed is important. In terms of helping students, I do think getting to know certain students will improve your relationship (and their behavior) inside the classroom.
And so, to summarize, students are the first reason that I have chosen to teach.
