Words of a Rookie Teacher

Ok. I realize that I am a rookie teacher. I realize that what I know about teaching could fit into my pocket at this point in my career. I realize that I will look back on my first year of teaching in a few decades and possibly laugh at myself.

That being said, when did it become ok to tell students that they are lazy? When did it become ok to tell kids that they might as well drop out because they will never succeed academically? What gives a teacher the right to belittle and breakdown their students?

I started teaching summer school today. There is (in my humble opinion) an infinitely different attitude with my summer school students as compared to my school year students. They walk in broken and negative. Not negative toward school, per se, but negative toward themselves. They believed themselves to be failures before they walked in my door because they have not passed English previously. They expect to fail again.

Since I started the session off without textbooks, I decided a writing assignment was the way to go today. The topic? Why they are in summer school. One, I want to know why in their words, words they would probably never speak out loud. And two, I need to see what level their writing is at so far. In walking around the room, I noticed several common factors among the majority of my students:

*At some point, a teacher told them they were lazy/stupid.

*The student believed it.

My heart broke today every time I heard, “Well, I failed this class before because I can’t write an essay/don’t get symbolism/etc.” I was actually speechless once I realized the trend amongst my two classes. Perhaps I am naive, perhaps I am idealistic but how can we as educators expect excellence from our students when they are broken down right in front of us and/or broken down because of us? How can a teacher say, “You are lazy” because a student asks a question or needs clarification on an assignment? Isn’t that what we are supposed to do? Clarify, simplfy, make the lesson understandable for the student? Teaching is not handing a student a book, saying, “Read” and walking away. Teaching involves equipping the student with a set of tools to break down the text to understand it. And quite often, teaching involves breaking down the text for the student to simply reach understanding. Teaching involves correction and redirection so that the student is going down the right path and not wandering off to get lost in the woods. I fear too many of my students wandered off and no one bothered to find them.

You know that saying, “It takes more muscles to frown than to smile?” Well, it takes more energy to break a student down with negativity than to build them up with encouragement. At least, that’s what I think. What I think may not hold much water with anyone reading this and that’s ok. This is probably the most poorly concluded piece I’ve written but I’m at a loss. I’m befuddled and disheartened. I do not want my students to be academically disadvantaged, at least, not in my class. Something needs to change. Being lost in the woods is not an option. I believe my summer school kids realize this and know that they must pass this class. Their essays, in some way, subconsciously sent up a flare, calling for help. The trick is getting to them before the forest is set on fire.