ahora

Tomorrow is my last day of my summer education course. I made it (and now I'll have a little more freedom to keep up with the blogging)! Although it wasn't my first choice to take summer classes, I'm glad I went through with it - I know I'll be glad when I walk down the isle in Calvin's Fieldhouse next May!!

One of the things I really like about taking education courses at Calvin is that all the professors model what they teach, and they teach you how to teach well through their own methods of teaching. Also, being in a room with people who want to teach middle and high school automatically means you are with people who have that fun, outgoing “teacher personality” – it takes a certain type of person and personality to teach that age! My professor and classmates are all phenomenal people and it was a privilege to learn with and learn from them. We had a lot of fun together over the last 3 weeks! :)

Although this class has confirmed my excitement for teaching, it has also made me more aware of the complexities that go into being a teacher. Not only do you have to know a lot about your specific content area, but you need to know how to translate that content in a way that your students will understand and engage with…and there is so much diversity within just one classroom of 20 kids (and, just to be clear, diversity is so much more than ethnicity)! On top of that, there is the whole hierarchy within whatever school system you teach as well as the demanding state requirements for any public school (and thanks to No Child Left Behind, there is a ‘whole nother’ set of complicated issues within the education system that overlooks the local needs and situations of individual schools)…not to mention the different types of parents that have a say in their child’s education….

Sometimes I ask myself, Shelly, what are you doing??? Who are you to think that you can handle all that being a teacher demands and be the kind of teacher that the kids need?? It is usually around those times that I get some reminder: I hear a story of a kid who wasn’t given the time of day by a teacher and feels worthless…I overhear a mom and child speaking Spanish to each other in a department store…some young person tells me that she dreads going to her Bible class…I hear some story of a teacher really making a difference in a students’ life, or someone tells me directly that they think I will make an excellent teacher some day. That is my prayer.

I decided that I wanted to get into educating young people because, in a nutshell, I wanted to help open their eyes to the beauty of the very diverse Hispanic culture as well as the exciting truths of the Bible. I wanted to challenge them to think deeply about these important matters before they went into the working world or college fulltime. And I wanted to be someone that these kids could trust and not doubt that I cared about them. Who knows, some of these kids may receive little or no love in their own homes and, let’s face it, the jr. high an high school years are some of the most challenging and socially awkward – we all remember them (or wish we could forget them)! Throughout all the crazy life changes, it’s important that these kids know that they matter to their teachers, to the school, and to the society and world as a whole. It is important that these students can be patiently encouraged to take on challenges and told that they can and will succeed in them if they try. It is important that students can find worth in their education by being able to connect it to what they know from previous experiences. Basically, I believe teachers are in schools to enthusiastically help kids reach goals they could not reach on their own. However, if teachers cannot give their students hope in the process, they should not be teaching.

Anyway, I still am not 100% positive that teaching is what I’m supposed to do, but I do know that God is not closing any doors yet. Student teaching next spring will be a real eye-opening experience that I’m sure will give me a better idea of whether this field is where I fit or not. In the mean time, I'm going to keep learning and praying, taking one day at a time and trusting that God is leading me to the place he wants me to be and the place he knows will be the best fit for me.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 12, 2006 at 1:56 PM. You can skip to the end and leave a response.