nov 20th - teacher teacher teacher

November 20th, 2008

Teacher, Teacher, Teacher!

Last night I was uncomfortably awake for the majority of the night, tossing and turning because of the nausea, after throwing up heaps early this morning I am feeling much better. It helps that I ‘called in sick’ today, and am staying at home in bed making up stories in my mind and relaxing.

One of the things my class is doing today (sadly without me) is watching James and the Giant Peach (the one co-produced by Tim Burton), I finished reading it to them on Monday. I enjoy Roald Dahl’s writing very much. I don’t know how many of them understood what was going on in the book. Because for all of the students, English is either their 2nd, 3ed, 4th, or 5th learned language, so their English comprehension is quite different from the average 4th grader in Canada.

We often learn new words that come up in subject work, books, etc. After we discuss the word I encourage the children to try and incorporate that new ‘word’ into their oral and written communication with one another and myself. They often use a new verb as a noun, or don’t fully comprehend the word so it is difficult to understand what they are trying to say, but they get props for trying : )

This week, one of the new words was ‘influence’. This came up the other day when we were learning about the 7 year old king Joash in the Old Testament, and discussing how important good influences would have been in his life. Every single student needed to give examples of who had been a good influence and a bad influence in their lives… some of it was hilarious, some of it was sad. Unfortunately not everybody understood how to properly use the word in a sentence. For example ‘A bad guy bad influence devil.’, or ‘She is a stealer influence’… my oh my, my frustration with the difficulty in ‘teaching’ the English language peaked months ago. However I still have many frustrations, and days when I feel like I’m drowning in inadequacy of trying to help someone to grasp a concept. Although I no longer feel as rushed. Regarding lack of understanding, I can usually smile, sometimes laugh and think ‘this is cute’… but when it’s the same question for the 100th time from the same student, I need to practice my deep breathing skills I learnt back in grade 5. Seriously, for anybody praying for patience, I strongly suggest you look into teaching for at LEAST 6 months. You would be a changed person; more patient, little more fulfilled, and exhausted, or bitter, cynical, and exhausted.

Teachers, I love you. Kids of all ages, cultures, languages have a huge variety of learning difficulties, and attention disorders, not to mention a whole whackload of unstable homes to add… Imagine being the primary caregiver (8 hours a day, 5 days a week) of apx 20 children for 10 months out of the year! I greatly admire people who work passionately in their career choice of being a teacher. Huge thank you’s to my past teachers, with whom my respect for escalates on a daily basis. Imagine… teaching for 25 years! Agh, I’m sure I’d die after 3 of stress. Some people say it gets easier as the years go on, and I don’t doubt that in certain areas of teaching (preperation, methods of teaching, subject material, organization, etc). However what I consider to be heart of teaching, children, is constantly changing. Imagine a work environment where the heart of your career is CONSTANTLY(I don’t just mean week by week, but minute by minute) being stretched and poked and prodded.

Money can NOT be the reason teachers become teachers, benefits perhaps, but not money. I believe the majority of the teachers choose this as a career because it is their passion to make a difference in the life of a child. To plant seeds of wisdom and true education into the minds and hearts of the future leaders of our world. Yes, I know this sounds cliché, and maybe even a bit lame, but I am just thinking about how the elementary and high school teachers of Barak Obama must be feeling right now. I wonder how many lives doctors have saved, how many grass roots peace organizations have been started, how many writers have inspired new hope… none without a small seed of one of their past teachers. So for you teachers, I wish I could give you a hug, ten GOOD Educational Assistants, a paid holiday once every month and a half, a work environment free of gossip and malice, and a super booster injection of patience, energy, love, and wisdom.

At 22 years old, I find myself teaching grade 4’s all subject in English... in the French speaking country of Madagascar. Nobody in my family knows a word of French. So my ability to do every day things here such as taking a bus, asking for help, speaking with the parents of my students, or even ordering a pizza, is completely dependent on my French language skills which I owe entirely to my elementary and high school teachers in Dawson Trail School turned Ecole Lorette Immersion, and then later on in College Lorette Collegiate. In Malagasy they would say Misotra Beteka, Thank you very much, Merci beaucoup.