Teaching to Teach

Just returned to the classroom after a relaxing winter break. Students returned ragged! Two of them missed most of the week, one throwing up, the other with a migraine. Had another complaining of stomach issues. Jeez, I thought they would come back relaxed and ready to go! Hopefully they will go home this weekend, regroup and come back healthy.

Nothing makes me reflect on my practice more than when an "outsider" comes in and starts askin' questions. I have two new outsiders in my professional life right now. One is a student teacher from the University of Colorado finishing out his undergrad and licensure program. He is all of 22, enthusiastic and curious... a good combo. The other is an exchange teacher from Melbourne, Australia. She has 30 years of teaching experience, is enthusiastic and a bit overwhelmed after two weeks in the states and a week in a Commerce City classroom.

I tweeted the other day that I was discussing the finer points of pukey fourth graders with my teacher candidate. Seriously... I was. We had a student make an emergency run to the bathroom so I sent my TC to the office to fetch the nurse while I stayed with the class. He asked what I would have done had he not been there. The question seems a bit silly, until I remember what it was like for me stepping into my classroom for the first time. My TC asks lots of these kinds of "what do you do when" questions, which is a good thing, but I realized how difficult it must seem as a pre-first year teacher to take into account all of the things you must remember, and all that can possibly go wrong. I do my best to answer all of his questions, and hope that I demonstrate with my actions, my ideal: That I am a teacher who teaches with enthusiasm and abandon with a complete willingness to fail, knowing that I can't control every detail. I commented to him today that I think we sometimes try to control too much in our classrooms, forgetting that these 10 year olds are just kids. They need to socialize, play, laugh, joke, sometimes they are ill, sad, frustrated... we can't control it all.

Our exchange teacher had a trial by fire this week (her words). We had CELA testing all week which pulled 1/3 of her kids out for the first hour of the day and replaced them with 1/3 of mine while I tested. Two of her boys had a fight in the classroom and were suspended. We tried to express how this is not the norm in our school. She shouldn't expect fistfights and standardized testing every week. This was right before discussing the finer points of CSAP testing. This weekend she is spending time with other Aussies who are exchanging in Colorado and I wonder what their conversation is going to sound like.