There is no greater calling than that of teaching. In a recent job interview, I was asked what I love the most about my job in academia. I replied, "Teaching." Teaching: because seeing those students progress and develop is rewarding in and of itself. Teaching: because it is my way of giving back to the world, as I help others realize their potential. Then I was asked what I least like about my job. I replied, "Teaching." The interviewers laughed because they knew what I knew: there is nothing more frustrating than having a day or a week or a month or a full semester when no matter what I do, I cannot get through to that student, or sometimes even a whole class. Teachers know all too well about that paradox I pointed to: there is the self-congratulatory pat on the back when a job well-done is recognized and the banging the head against the brick wall while lamenting "What more can I do?"
At the age of ten, I knew I wanted a career in teaching. My fifth grade teacher asked me to tutor another student. So, each day, that student pulled her desk up to mine, and I explained in my ten-year-old language what the assignment said to do, what the teacher wanted us to do, how to work a math problem, or how to understand a story and why. Seeing her progress was satisfying, but seeing the look on her face when she recognized her progress was exhilarating. The pride she felt in herself made me smile. Knowing I had made a small difference in how she felt about herself and liking that I had made a difference allowed me to realize I was a real teacher. Also, she made a difference in my life: I learned to have compassion and patience with others; I learned to love and to serve; I learned my lessons a little better. Since then, I have measured each and every teacher I have ever had against my sense of what a teacher should do: help others come into their potential. Sadly, some have fallen short, even as they issued forth the challenge if "any of you think you can do better, then I'd like to see you try." Well, ____, I accepted your challenge long before you issued it in the twelfth grade, and even as you spoke those words when I was still a child, I knew I would one day try my darnedest to do a better job: to lift up instead of tear down and ridicule, to guide and instruct instead of confuse and leave students wandering and wondering.
No Student Left Behind, to me, does not mean lower the standards, but to elevate the "least than" to their fullest potential so that all can have the opportunity to achieve their life dreams and goals. I teach this concept to my students so that they will take responsibility for their own education. Once students realize what is expected of them, they usually rise to meet those expectations. But I get ahead of myself here in this blog that I want to use as an interactive teaching journal to catalog my experiences as I seek to meet the teaching challenge.
It was eight years ago when I first walked into that college classroom as a teacher with little experience. Originally, I thought I would teach high school, but while in my junior year of college, I fell head-over-heels in love with academia. After writing a critical analysis of D.H. Lawrence's Women in Love, I knew a high school teaching career would not sustain my love for literature or keep my intellect challenged in satisfying ways, as I did not want to censor literary discussions. So, I walked away from the Education K-12 degree track and embraced English as a degree major. Walking into the college classroom as a teacher with only some substitute teaching experience and teaching kids ages 6-18 in church was like jumping off the high dive after the second swimming lesson (something I also did once). It was life-threatening scary.
I had to write about my experience of that first semester teaching for a class that was required of those who were awarded teaching assistantships. (We had to be trained in pedagogical approaches before we were allowed to teach in the college classroom.) At that time, I felt like a gladiator wrestling against mythic forces, and I positioned myself as such in my report that highlighted the various challenges I had to overcome. It is that report that gives this blog its title "Classroom Warrior." Since that report when I visioned myself as a gladiator warrior battling against metaphoric lions, student apathy, and what not, I've grown to envision myself more as a warrior against what is wrong with the world. Thus, the students should be trained to recognize the world's short-comings and seek to address them anyway that they can in order to make a difference. In this way, teachers are warriors against the world, and we are enlisting soldiers to take up the good fight for humanity, even as they realize their potential for their own greatness, whatever their calling may be.
It sounds so incredibly idealistic, right? Well, maybe so. But that idealism is what motivates me to teach and to teach to the best of my capabilities. Perhaps, my outlook will develop into something else down the road, but for now, I'm engaged in a great battle against ignorance, apathy, anti-intellectualism, and the Entitlement Syndrome. I am the Classroom Warrior.
Below are some links for teachers:
Dr. Ren Denton
A Call to Teaching
A film that illustrates the dangers of the current practice of No Child Left Behind
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