EPTIn fact, I learned much more than I taught to my students. So much more that I even question what I really taught, be it school content or values. I learned what I think are invaluable lessons, and I'm glad I learned them before it was too late, and they hit me in the face when I could not face them. I grew up this year, going from a post student state to a noob teacher state in a few months. I have so much to say, yet I have a hard time to put it in order. This will be a try.
I think the best way to begin this wall of text is to talk about the emotional part, so that my thoughts won't be too much parazited by the feelings afterwards. I had two classes, one was your usual class of first year in highschool : kids were not really autonomous, they had a desire to learn and understand, they wanted to succeed in their dreams, yet they were still kids and we were asking them to think like adults. The other class was kind of the opposite : children of immigrants (be it first or second generation), often the French was the direct problem, living in a socially destructive environment where the one designed to take care of them could not even understand the tongue of the country. We were asking the same of these kids, but none of them or us could provide the correct environment. They were interested to learn and understand, but they had lost for long the ability to do so.
I spent a long time trying to get them into the lessons I wanted to taught them. In fact, I tried so much ways I can't even sum them up. Often I was even mixing to see if they would bite the bait. I failed for the entire year. To think that the best method to have acceptable lessons was to verify systematically if their homework was done, and punish them for every single undone work and bad behaviour without even giving room for their arguments was not refreshing to say the least. I abandonned the hope of making them understand what we were doing, focusing on methods and typical exercices. Boring lessons. And they were suddenly more calm, more focused. Some improved rapidly. Some still continued to get worse, and worse, and worse. Until they "unlearned" things they have known prior to this year.
Yesterday was their class council. And 50% of this class was not allowed to continue in highschool. Only 5 students had the orientation they wanted, but we were warning them it would be hard. Next hour, 15 of them, even boys you would think were emotionnaly untouched by school, were crying. I saw again what I have witnessed this year : a social problem. I wondered everyday, every hour with them, why the fuck would they continue to come, while it was obvious they weren't motivated. It's been some months I found the answer : man, where do you want them to go ? What is their other option ? And at the end of the year, they will be forced to accept this one, only, other option : life is already beginning for them, in the hard way. The very hard way.
A part of my job is to put empathy aside because I'm asked to be objective. If you ever wondered why teachers looked like robots without feelings, sentencing student to oblivion every year, think about the amount of problem those kids have. Violent parenting, imprisoned father, pregnancy, drugs, useless parents or no parents at all, diseases, coginitive problems, you name it. In all those I named, I had at least one student with that problem in each class. I didn't mention every other problem because at some point in the year, I could not take more. I had to forget the problem, and see what the kid was doing in class. I would consider the problem when the final decision would have to be taken. I had to do so, because they are few who can withstand all that shit, and I'm not one of them.
I slowly entered depression this winter. Slowly, but surely, I descended into this energy drinking pit. I could not sleep on sunday nights without strong anxiolitics. Getting out of bed every morning was harder, and harder. My friends felt like I had a dark cloud above me, and my girlfriend told me it was as I was an empty shell of myself with a dark aura surrounding me. When I thought I could not take more of this because my energy was getting negative, I lost a precious member of my family. My grandmother died of cancer a few day after the New Year, and because I was ill and completely exhausted, I didn't take the time to call her for christmas, a thing I had been doing every single year since I was 5. I couldn't have her at phone on the 2nd of January because she was already sleeping at the hospital, even if at that time we didn't think she would never wake up. And so she went, without me being able to speak to her one last time. I don't know if I will forgive myself this one day.
I had to continue to go to school because those kids needed their math teacher. And January and February were awful. I stopped communicating with my referent teacher because she was not helping me at all, more of the contrary. I was basically alone at school, in front of the kids, with badly thought lessons, stupid activities without sense, a decreasing authority and respect. Things could have been worse, oh wait they were : my girlfriend told me it was beginning to become too hard to live with me, as I was useless at home or in life outside my job. I wasn't talking anymore, and when I talked it was bout my job and how it was destroying me. She told me I had to make things change rapidly or I would have to forget about us.
It was inevitable : one monday, I could not get up. I was mentally exhausted. Fear, rage, sadness, tension, despair. I felt them all at once. At the very time I called the highschool to pretend I was sick, it all has disappeared. I faced the problem again, but I didn't know how to stand up against it.
I don't know how I was able to do it. But basically, that's what I did for the next 2 months. I stood up.
Now the emotional part is over. And I was at this time ready to learn many many lessons. I first learned to accept that I would fail, and fail, and fail with my classes. And still fail. And fail again. But with every fail, my next lesson was better. With every new problem inside the class, my reactions were more thought, more accurate, more useful. Slowly, but surely, I learned what I needed to anticipate and imagine for every lessons. I changed my whole way of preparing my lessons. My referent teacher was basically mad at me for that. She kept saying it was bad and that it would fail, while I kept getting better and better feelings in class, better results with kids. She had to make a file on my global performance as a teacher. And it was bad : she basically wrote that I was a shitty teacher without charism nor implication, using single examples that she witnessed in January, magnifying her contribution and minimizing mine.
I learned that communication was key. I made a simple mistake from september to march : I expressed verbally my feelings. It can even be summed in one crucial discussion I had in september with my referent : trusting her, I thought I could tell her that I felt bad, not in phase with what they were expecting me to do and to be, that I didn't know if I could continue. This was the only impression she had of my work for all year, even now, even after the second class concils where the kids themselves said "we like to go in maths because we learn things and we have fun", even now that other colleagues praise my attitude in public. What was also a mistake I made was to fail brutally one hour I did in front of an inspector. I thought of this single hour for an entire week. I had anticipated the 3 previous hours, I imagined this hour minute by minute, anticipating reactions from the kids and so on. This hour would be perfect.
And it was a fail in astronomic proportion. Kids were intimidated by this person who said "Hello, I'm here to see how you work in mathematics". My lesson was faro too complicated because it was thought too much. I was running against time for the entire hour. It failed.
I learned that I can't think in place of my students. I learned that I had to imagine the frame, and that they would write what they needed, and that my very role was to guide their writing so they ould have the maximum. Who could have tell ? Don't say "your referent could". Don't say that it was obvious and that I should have known : it is obvious indeed, as obvious as the sky when you're looking your feet. I learned to look at what was important in class. I was inspected again later in the year, and the person who came was surprised that my previous report were so bad when he witnessed the lesson I gave this day.
I still learned communication. I spoke my mind to this guy. And I should'nt have. The school head now dislikes me, as my referent, as a person. Because my words were interpreted not for their exact meaning, but for what they were expressing. I learned that I should focus more on what I was saying, and to stop my tongue from giving unecessary informations. The first impression you give is the only one that stays, this was already true before it hit me in the face like this year. I learned that adults were grown-up kids, in the sense that there are not many differences between my classes and a small assembly of adults in behaviour.
I learned to trust my students to a certain extent, and I learned to read their lies. I learned to give the necessary piece of answer or piece of advice without sacrificing their reflexion ; this was, and is still a very tricky part. I learned to be rigid, the kind of rigidity I could not stand from my teachers. I accepted the fact they were not autonomous, and that they needed such rigidity.
I was a student too actually. After this year, I feel humble, but that's not really how I wanted to put it. I feel like I should thank my students for this year, while they were a big part of the problem. A big factor maybe. I kind of feel like I was collapsing due to several exterior causes that were echoing my weaknesses. I expected to feel pressure with this job this year, but I could not have imagined this kind of pressure.
If I should name the global lesson of this year, it would be that I learned how to "let go". There are two kind of perfectionists : "optimists" and "pessimists". Simply put, optimists try harder every time and are never satisfied with their results. Pessimists won't try until they know it's the best way. Every perfectionnists tend to be one type or other, often switching. They have still one thing in common : control. Personally, my perfect world would be a world where I can read minds and guess every events, or act on every event. When I told this to some friends, they laughed at me, saying that every body had already those powers, and that I should wish for teleportation. I realized how absurd my lust for control was. It was paraziting, more and more, my perception of life. So I slowly learned how to let go. Let go in my social life, let go in my job, let go in my sentimental life... Let go.
I cannot think of a proper conclusion for this post. I feel like I didn't even express anything new. Writing all thoses evidences thinking I discovered fire may reflect how lost I was this year. I was fucking lost. I find the way at the end. I said goodbye to my students with a slight pinch at the heart. Even if this very morning, they were loud and stupid, throwing papers through the room and I had to put 7 of them out because they would not shut up for that last lesson I had to present to a part of the class, I felt this pinch. I would never have imagined that someday, I would have said that thay will miss me.
It sounds like you have learned a lot of valuable lessons from teaching so far. It saddens me to think that half of your class won't go further and that regardless of how much you tried, it just wasn't meant to be. I wouldn't blame yourself for not talking to your grandmother before she passed away. You were legitimately ill and had no clue that it was her time and no one would say otherwise. As mentioned, I love your writing style and I wish you continue to contribute to TL blogs in the near future. Best of luck!
