Wow. It is November. I am a teacher with 24 years experience, and I have returned to a regular public school classroom. I began my teaching career in 1991. It is now 2015.
I am just coming up for air. We have been in school nearly 3 months. I am surviving.....just surviving. For the last 20 years, I have been in gifted education, and it has been my passion. But, last spring, I felt that I needed to grow, and part of that growth was returning to a regular classroom. I wanted to see what was going on, how things have changed, and I wanted to demonstrate to myself that I could go back and take a group of students from September to June and be a strong influence on their learning. I wanted to embrace the new BC Curriculum. I wanted to round out my professional skills and have the concepts I've worked with in gifted education, work with all my students.
I thought:
1. What is good for the gifted is good for all students!
2. I could work in a near paperless environment and have the students engaged in higher level thinking skills and use technology with ease!
3. I could reach all learners!Here is what actually happened:
1. I have stopped using ideas from gifted education because when I tried, the students were so unable to follow along, so out of their comfort zone, that it was disastrous. I felt like a first year teacher, with mayhem on my hands. Goodbye gifted!
2. I have used more paper and photocopied everything that the idea of going paperless makes me laugh. I am back to fill-in-the-blank sheets. Have I ever used fill in the blank sheets in the last 20 or so years? Now, the photocopier is my best friend. Technology....I try but it is challenging when the internet doesn't work and you have 28 kids starting to loose it and your presentation is too wordy. Use wikispaces for assignments? Not all the students have access to computers after school! Use iPads in the class...yes when I can sign them out and they are not being used by other classes. A Bring Your Own Device classroom is a great idea in theory, but most of my class would not be able to bring in their own device because they do no have said devices. Technology has not come gracefully to my class!
3. I haven't been able to reach all learners. Right now, I am thinking may 10 out of my class of 28.
Don't get me wrong: I enjoy teaching and working with students. I am not a complainer. But, the game has changed. The nature of the profession has changed. And, the state of affairs in my classroom is a day by day adventure.
I now know why teachers are so stressed. I also know that this profession is so underfunded and undervalued. We've heard this all before! I can now attest to it. Most surprisingly, I now understand why people take their children out of the public system. There are way too many needs. I can no longer fix them all. I can only do so much.
So what have I done to survive? I've changed my game plan. I've had to relearn what it is to be a teacher in the 21st Century. I am still promoting academic excellence, but it is categorically different for each student. For some, that may be writing a sentence, or finding the right word, or being able to concentrate for more than 2 minutes on a particular assignment. For others, it might be facing the day without a meltdown.
And yet, through it all, when I am feeling like I have not reached one single student, and that I am still operated in "gifted la-la-land", I will have a few of my students enthusiastically great me and share with me their little surprises, or their ideas, or something related to a lesson I have taught. They are there, and they are learning, and they are moving forward!
It will be okay. Now onto report cards! Wish me luck!
Marielle
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