I want to be.....
An inspiration.I was watching "unteachable" tonight on the ABC, and its one of those occasions in my life where i realise that i could be so much more than i am, in a professional capacity (I teach High School, for the uniformed). Its happened before, usually when i see other teachers going above and beyond, and being such an inspiration to their students, for involving themselves so much. The time before last was when Andrew Douch came to talk to us about using Web 2.0 tools in our classrooms. I think he may have struck a particular cord with me, as a fellow Biology teacher. I wanted to be so much more like him, to use my time so much more effectively.
I've only been teaching for 2 years, so i know i have so much more to learn, and a better teacher to become. I can already see the results, see the progress that i've made as a teacher. But its a hard thing to measure. If i do it on the amount of time i spend preparing and thinking about lessons, then i've gotten worse. If i base it on VCE results, then its much improved (go Bio class of 08, you did me proud). I have thinking about it though, because i feel measuring teaching success is so difficult, which is why i don't really like the idea of performance based pay.
Coz if you base it,say on my VCE results, then based on a state wide performance, then maybe not so good. But can you look a bit closer, please? Look at the kids who only took my class because they couldn't do their preferred subject, one that is as far removed from Bio that you can get. And then can you look at the effort they put in for me, the work they completed, the motivation they had?
I'm an emotional person, i cry at the drop of a hat (i cried at that WorkSafe add where the daughter thought her dad had died, and then he appeared home....) but i had several moments this year when my students moved me so completely. The first was when a parent came up to me at Valedictory (year 12 graduation) and spoke to me about how i motivated her son, who didn't enjoy school or science subjects, but loved my class and talked at home about how much he enjoyed my class and how hard he tried for my exam.
And then there were the two year 12's who both individually commented about how disappointed they were at their overall results, not because they were lower overall than what they wanted, but rather because they didn't want to disappoint me.
Makes me tingle.
So maybe in that capacity i am an inspiration. But i don't think i am. I don't think i'm doing enough. I don't think i'm working hard enough, making my lessons interesting enough. I'm not engaging those students who have those different intelligences that the guy in Unteachables was talking about.
He does Punctuation Kung Fu. Oh yeah, Kung fu geastures and noises associated with punctuation marks. It was freakin awesome.
I think thats my challenge this year. I'm teaching more boys than i ever have. And a difficult group of boys. And this worries me. It has ever since i heard what they were doing with the program. I'll admit it.
I've been dreaming about crazy out-of-control science lesson for the past week. Alot involving boys looking like mad scientists. I may be a fraction stressed about this.
I just want to translate that motivation i have with my senior kids to my more junior ones, coz i dunno if i can do it. I just don't know.
posted by Super_Hot_Mel @ 2:32 pm
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