It’s All Just a Bowl of Soup

When I think about teaching I can’t help but think of a bowl of soup. As a preservice teacher you hear of all the tasks and traits and dispositions that are required of teachers. Those are a whole lot of ingredients that each teacher has to bring to the pot if they want to be successful.

When looking back at my time in PK-12 I can really think of all the things that I would want to bring to the classroom if I choose to teach. The first big idea I would want in my classroom would be that I should never think of myself as above the student. Yes, I am there to facilitate learning but that doesn’t mean I cannot learn from them.  I would also want my classroom to be a place of facilitation. I want my students to be engaged and I would change my lesson plans and teaching style to keep them engaged. It is all about their learning and in the long run if my students are not learning from being engaged I don’t believe I am doing my job right. I want to care for my future students. They are all people too and I feel like that is something that some teachers forget about. Students are people that are trying to learn the ways of the world, and so they deserve to be treated like respect.

Teaching is like a soup. If a teacher just skates by and does the bare minimum the soup will probably taste a little more like soap. On the other hand, a teacher who cares, excites, and talks to the class in a professional manner could have an award winning soup on their hands. So the real question is that if I were to be a teacher, would I want to be stirring water in a pot, or be a chopped level master chef?

The Best of Times, and The Worst of Times

When learning about what it will be like to be a teacher, pre-service teachers are taught to always continue their learning. This thought gives me a chance to think about some of the best lessons I have learned from my time in school.  Although there were some great learning experiences, I also had moments where I felt like I was doing it all wrong. These different experiences really allowed me to see that I am constantly learning, even if it seems like I messed up.

One specific situation that I can label as my worst learning experience was back in my eighth grade algebra course. I remember that this was a specific moment in time where I thought I could skate my way through school with minimal effort. I stopped doing my homework and even started not participating in class. I had gotten to a point where I was getting in trouble at home because my grades were suffering. I stayed after class to meet with my teacher, and I remember my plan of how I was going to lie to my teacher for sympathy. I walked up to him as he was erasing the white board and told him some lie to account for my missed homework. I will never forget the look of disappointment on his face. He just looked at me straight in the eyes and said “Liam, you can sit here and tell me that you have all the problems in the world, but I know you and your family. There are no problems at home and honestly I can see that you are making excuses… Let me ask you something. Do you want to be the only person holding yourself back?” even typing this out I am reliving that moment. It was the first moment ever that a teacher really treated me as a human. He called me out on what I was doing wrong and honestly it hurt. I think about that moment all the time and as much as it made me feel bad, it has helped me in the long run. That man was someone I honored as a mentor at my Eagle Scout Ceremony. As much as I want to look back on that moment and feel ashamed, I can only feel proud. Proud to have a person in my life that would call me out to make me better.

All this thinking is reminding me with all sorts of different experiences that allowed me to grow. One of the best experiences I had was actually at the end of my high school career. It was senior year and I was offered a chance to be a sixth grade camp counselor. Basically, where I went to school we had three elementary schools that came together to form one big middle school. At the beginning of the school year a group of high schoolers and teachers from the middle school get together and are camp counselors to help the three elementary school students to form one big sixth grade class. I was asked to be a counselor and I would be in charge of a group of students. This group of students would be the rowdiest group of sixth grade boys I had ever seen. We had our challenges but towards the end of camp I could see how my campers were using manners and lining up in a straight line… they were basically doing what I was asking them to do. On paper It doesn’t seem like much but it was one of the first times that I actually felt like people looked up to me. They counted on me to lead and came up and asked me questions or even came up to me with their problems. I felt as if I could help someone else grow. That feeling of humility but also empowerment is where I get the idea of even being a teacher from.

Looking back at it all one cannot deny that if they are looking hard enough there is always something to learn.

Teachers: The Best of Us and the Rest of Us.

When it comes to teaching, I have learned that there is a lot of work that goes into being the best of the best. I have learned a lot about teaching so far and when I think about which teachers I have had there are a couple that stand out as the best and some that stand out as the ones who just skated by.

My favorite teachers are the ones who really engaged with the students and held their position with honor. An example of an excellent teacher that I have had is Mr. Brooks. Mr. Brooks was a great teacher for many reasons. He taught my Speech class and my English 12 class in high school. He would ride his bike to school almost every morning and then change into a suit. He allowed creativity in his classroom and even had bikes and a refrigerator door hanging in his classroom. When teaching speech to a group of freshman, he had a way of letting students be as creative as possible as long as they followed his rubric. He would let students come in for some demonstration speeches and demonstrate anything from how to deep-fry Peanut butter and Jelly to how beat a video game in minutes. He understood that many students were not comfortable with public speaking and met them where they were at. During my English class he often called the class of seniors back when they were getting distracted. He gave us the chance to break down the books and tell him what we thought instead of just forcing the main points to us. As a class of seniors we would get off track and he would often allow us to realize what we were doing wrong and allow us to solve the problems our way. He was almost a facilitator more than a teacher, and for high school students that was a big, and needed, change from our usual classes.

There was one teacher my freshman and sophomore years who taught Modern World History and also AP US History. He was not quite at Mr. Brooks’ level of teaching. In a way he skated through the material and basically put it up on a whiteboard and went through it. He seemed to have an attitude of learning is on the student. It worked for some students but I was never really engaged in the learning because he was almost never engaged as the teacher. Most of the learning that took place happened when I took the book home and read the material over again. I think that if I would’ve been an older student That would’ve worked better, but there was never any real emphasis on going over the material on our own.

Looking back at some examples of great and not so great teachers really makes me think that if I were to become a teacher I would need to meet my students at their level or at least compromise. As a teacher the classroom is not about me. The classroom is a place for students to learn and grow, and as a teacher it would be my job to facilitate an environment for growth.