Noelle Herrera is a friend from Fairmont Summer Programs.
People like to say those who can’t do, teach. However, those people do not know what you have to go through just to be a teacher and once you are one it isn’t easy. First, there is so much testing beforehand where you have to spend hundreds of dollars before you actually become poor from being a teacher.
Being a new teacher presents many different challenges that start to take over your mind 24/7. Once you have a job, you have to get used to your school and your new responsibilities. Maybe they changed curriculums or placed you in yearlong professional developments. Maybe you were voluntold to be in charge of clubs, decathlon, or a sports coach. You have to start to find out which teachers you can go to for help and which ones you shouldn’t cross; after all, you will be working with these people for at least a year. You have to lesson plan, lesson plan, lesson plan, especially when you teach more than one subject every day. You start to think if you will ever have time to do anything else besides lesson planning. Then, there comes decorating your classroom. Nowadays, you have to come up with a “theme” for your classroom. Is it an animal? A beach theme? College-themed? Chalkboard or Burlap? Is it a color schemed room? Prison Pipeline or 13 Reason why themed? Oh, wait those last two were John’s ideas. So, if you are John, you should ask for help from friends so you do not decorate your room offensively. Finally, the school year starts and it is time to start teaching for the first time.
You walk up to your first class and see your kids’ faces. You may think to yourself, whoever decided to put me in charge of this many kids and teaching them all year long. You take these 31 plus kids in a small room and awkwardly introduce yourself for the first time. Everyone tells you to not smile until December. John can do this very well, however, I just couldn’t stop smiling, I just wanted my kids to feel welcomed and not afraid. You start to get to know your kids and their personalities. Some are really shy and some are just bouncing out of their chairs struggling to stay in one place.
Now, if I only had to work with kids, I wouldn’t have any complaints. However, these kids have parents. Oh, parents. They make this job even harder and as a first-year teacher, any parent coming near me gave me anxiety. I mean they could tell that I didn’t know what I was doing right? Well, anyway. This is definitely the hardest part of the job. Everything is your fault and nothing is their child’s fault. You name it and it is your fault. Kid’s homework is messy? Your fault. Didn’t they put their name on their homework? Your fault. They didn’t write down their homework? Your fault. Did they leave their books on their desk? Your fault. Any complaint… I have heard it these past two years. Too much homework, not enough homework… I see my kid is missing supplies, but you haven’t told me what they are missing…. But you have to address all these concerns and anything else because after all, it is their child they are entrusting you with.
Although this job never seems to end. I continue to work before 8 and after 3 because I want my lessons to be engaging. I want my kids to be excited to learn. Seeing my kids every day makes my day. Kids tell you the weirdest things and just love drawing you pictures. They just want to be heard and some just need to be loved. This may be one of the hardest jobs, but I wouldn’t want to do anything else. Even going through all of this, I couldn’t imagine myself being anything else. It helps to have people in your life that you can connect with these experiences. It helps to have people like John where you can compare stories and just talk about school or anything but school. So, people think that those can’t do, teach, then they have obviously never been in a teacher’s shoes.
