When I first started teaching, I worked at a charter school for ELL students in the inner city. It was about as close as being thrown in the deep end with the wolves as you can imagine. No library, no curriculum, no resources… it was basically all on me. And let me tell you – those kids ran wild. I spent my first year trying strategy after strategy, overwhelmed with responsibilities, lesson planning, curriculum work, behavioral problems, and spending all of my own money. On top of all that, the school was failing and desperate for good test scores. So we were forced to teach to the test – planning out lessons around priority standards that were more likely to show up on the state tests and completely throwing out the rest of the standards. As you can imagine, the kids suffered. The gaps became wider and so the school pushed us to dig even deeper into high leverage standards and over test our kids – week after week, leaving little time for instruction amidst all the testing. It was a truly terrifying time, but I came out the other side a stronger teacher and person!
Having been through all of that my first few years, I realized that most of the time we are all just trying to do our best with the information we have at the time. I tried so many of the strategies, lesson plan ideas, and behavioral management that I had been taught in college those years and looking back, I realize I was doing those kids a huge disservice! How I wish I could have them all back again, to give them the effective teacher that they deserved.
But such is life. You live and you learn and when you KNOW better, you DO better. I have learned so much over the last few years and if I can save one struggling teacher the heartache and trial by fire that I went through to learn what I know today, then this will all be worth it. hope that sharing my journey, my insights and revelations, I can help teachers all over to save their own mental health and be what their students NEED. Teaching and learning that focuses on the student taking charge and ownership of their learning and the teacher as the facilitator of that learning.
“Do the best you can until you know better. Then when you know better, do better.”
—Maya Angelou
Teach 2 the Student 