Teaching and books are the stuff I’m made of

Tuesday morning, and I woke up early, as usual, but this time it was 5:30 instead of 5, and I got out of bed at 6. (I woke up once at 4:30 as well.)

I know it’s the lack of schedule that’s thrown me into this stupid cycle. I also know it’s the career confusion I’ve put myself in recently. I was so excited for my Teacher’s Assistant course before Christmas, then when January rolled around, I had second thoughts.

If you’ve not seen Tough Young Teachers, I suggest you don’t if you’re planning on going into teaching. It will ruin all hopes of doing well and will make your first day more frightening than usual. Of course, the public think the teachers are doing a bad job, and that the disruptive kids are just misunderstood.

“What was most upsetting was seeing the effects of the clash of the young re teacher with the disruptive pupil. The kid is so bright, articulate and emotionally intelligent and yet the strategies used by the teacher seemed from the editing to be so destructive for him.”

The main offending student this commenter on the Guardian article is talking about was expelled for three years after he punched a teacher at another school. No teacher or administration should coddle to him. The show even filmed the kid at home where his mother was totally blasé about the kid being spoken to by the teacher. When she discussed the boy hitting a teacher three years ago she just blew it off with, “But he’s just not like that.” She never, ever gave him any kind of discipline measures. The kid told the teacher he was boring, a bad teacher, wasn’t doing a good job, total, all and all disrespect, no disciplinary action at home, but it’s the teacher’s fault.

Kids act like this in school, yet Twitter was all about defending him during the airing of Episode 2. Not being in front of a classroom will make people have all sorts of brilliant insight, though, I tell you. He shouldn’t be allowed to go back to public school. In the US we have schools for kids like this, kids who are offenders who have adult-ed type institution. That’s the kind of school he should go to. They have this boy in GCSE courses when he doesn’t want to be and all students like this do is waste everyone’s time, theirs included. But, what do I know? I’ve only taught all age groups for year.

Steve even suggested the kid was acting up more for the camera, which probably is the biggest encourager.

Steve also told me he didn’t want me to teach again if the kids were really like that. Yeah, yeah they are.

This kid, of course wasn’t the only one acting like this. The Year 7 English teacher had all sorts of crap to deal with in her class – kids walking on tables, crawling under tables, throwing things, talking, and making the poor teacher have to be “flagged as cause for concern.” Her life’s ambition was to be a teacher and now after one term, it may all end? Very, very sad.

Anyway, after watching that show, I really started thinking that I should toss the education thing out the window totally. I toyed with the idea of going to get some kind of computer degree and work in the gaming industry like Steve does. (Gaming Librarian? I would love a job like that.) But, alas, I’m not a math genius and yet another degree would take time and money. I’m already in enough debt because I can’t find work with my degrees as is, I don’t want to waste time barking up an entirely wrong tree.

A new career is great but how do you possibly get experience? And who would hire me? I had administrators ask me, baffled, why I would want to be a librarian when I had trained as an English teacher. (If anyone asks that again, I’ll tell them to what the teacher show on the BBC.) We easily get pigeonholed into a career.

So, I was thinking about how awful the classroom had been in the past, and how I’m probably better off giving up and trying something else. Then yesterday I was filling out a form to register for an education webinar. It listed writing and reading webinars, and asked me what my interests were in education. That’s when I remembered; I like this stuff. It sucks and I haven’t done well at all. (Except the college in Florida – I still say I’d go back to that if we ever moved back. If I didn’t have to teach Foundation Skills here, I’d gladly try it again.) And after thinking about that I’d like to go back in the classroom, and I’d like to start from scratch and learn to be a good English teacher. (I really wish I could just take the PGCE teacher training courses here.)

And with that hope, I feel better. I’m going to still try to register for a TA course this term and go back to the Primary Schools for a while, if I can. I’ll still always want to be a school librarian, of course (literature, research, and technology – oh my!) but as long as I’m making some kind of steps toward getting there, I guess that’s all I need to keep me content.

With that said, I plan on going out today. It’s been so long since I’ve felt like venturing outside in the daytime. I picked up Anna Karenina last night, and felt happy again to be interested in that stuff that makes me me.

Anyway, it’s almost time for the day to begin and time for me to go out and enjoy the world again.

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