Why I keep teaching

 

For those of you who follow my blog, which I admit is not many, teaching is my second career. I made the choice to become a teacher several years after I was laid off from my first career in print media. 

Teaching has become very important to me, not for the money or adulation, but for the students and what I have learned from them. You can talk about how students have changed; they have. You can bemoan the fact that discipline at home and school has declined; it has. You can talk about what is going to happen when the students of today are in charge of the world tomorrow; it won't end as some believe. These children need what we can provide for them. 

I teach high school but have taught middle school. I like both. I like the challenge of middle school and all the drama associated with the students but high school has shown me where the growth from middle school goes.

I have a pretty good relationship with my students, or my kids as I call them. I know who wants to travel and I know who wants to spend her senior year as an exchange student. I know who misses school because their mom is sick and they must care for her and who feels like he has no one who cares. I also know they want to learn, circumstances just make it easier for some.

They asked pointed questions. Sometimes I don't know the answer. The girls giggle a LOT. I was not a giggler. They believe they can sneak air pods and cell phones past me. They can't but sometimes I am too tired to admonish them to put them away. 

This past week I participated in 2 webinars. One through the Bill of Rights Institute and one with Gilder Lehrman. I have two more scheduled for this week. I had stopped viewing so much professional development because I had spent so much time on the computer in the past year that I was burned out. This week showed me I needed to continue to educate myself for my kids.

The first webinar was on storytelling. Erin Gruwell from Freedom Writers fame reinforced what my students have told me since I began to teach. Stories are what pull students in; then show them the history. I came away re-energized. 

The second one was on the United States' world involvement pre-World War I through World War II. For two and one half hours, listened to lecture and questions. I learned so much and since we are studying this period in World History, it fit right in. I now have a game plan to help my students understand the relationships which came together and fell apart during this time. I have primary documents, essential questions, higher order thinking questions and I feel much more comfortable to be a sounding board for their questions.

I will admit to you now, I am a certified history geek. I become so excited when that lightbulb goes off for one of my students and when one of them says, "Calm down, Mrs. Faulk. You are way too excited." I take that as a compliment. I want them to get excited as well. I want them to view history, not as dusty tomes of old men opining, but as something alive and exciting and ready to see what history they can make. 

Retirement is on my radar. I am closer than even I like to think. Then a students gets a perfect score or answers a hard question or poses a well thought out opinion for a lesson I thought bombed and I realize that retirement means I lose all this. I am not sure I am ready to give up watching those lightbulbs flicker and then burn bright.