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May 18, 2005
I wish that I knew what I know now . . .
Now that I'm winding down my Teach For America commitment, I thought that I'd take the opportunity to pass on a bit of what I've learned. I made this list not because I am a great teacher, but because I am a pretty bad one. I've broken every one of these rules and lived to pay the price. I see no reason why you shouldn't learn from my mistakes.
TFA summer institute will teach you many things that you should know. Listen. It's good stuff. The things on here are they things they don't teach you. Or, at least, the things I didn't learn
Enjoy. I hope it helps. Good luck and God speed, you poor sonofabitch.
Eleven Things I Wish I'd Known When I Started Teach For America1 - Read "Tools for Teaching" by Fred Jones right now. If you teach reading, writing, or anything resembling reading or writing read "Mosaic of Thought." Anytime someone hands you a book after that, say "Thanks," and read it when you get a chance.
2- Whenever you are absent, Sub-proof your room. Substitute teachers are undoubtedly good people, but you won't feel that way the next day when you get back and you can see they've been rooting through your desk. Lock your desk, put away important documents, and -- for the love of God -- unplug your Internet connection or you'll come back to find programs on your computer that you never knew existed.
3 - Document Everything. Everything. Everything. Even if it means stopping class, make a note every single time you give a detention, send a child to the office, or talk to a parent. Buy a photocopier for your room if that's what it takes. In theory this will protect you against angry parents. In practice it will protect you from incompetent administrators. Either way, there will come a day when you are glad you've done it.
4 - No one else's classroom is ever as good or bad as anyone else says. Moreover, the only person who knows what's going on in a classroom is that particular teacher. Don't get discouraged by the magical things you hear about other teachers. The truly great teachers don't have time to shoot their mouths off.
5 - Teach what you think needs to be taught. Educational theorists posit that isolated instruction in grammar isn't useful in any way. Educational theorists can go fuck themselves.
6 - Put important notes on yellow paper. It means that you won't accidentally recycle the list of kids who handed in their homework for that week even if you don't get a chance to put it in the gradebook right away.
7 - No matter how tough your job is, remember that thousands of thousands of other people have done the same damn thing and not gotten a medal for it. Be proud of yourself. Vent your frustrations when you need to. But don't ever think you have "the hardest job in the world." You don't.
8 - At the beginning of the year you will be handed more information than you can ever process. You will have no idea what is important and what is bullshit -- trust me, there's a lot of it. Find someone to ask and just keep asking.
9 - Take the help you are offered.
10 - For the first two months of school, teaching procedure and organization are always a good use of your time. Once you are sure that they know it, teach it again.
11 - Children are amazingly forgiving. There is virtually nothing you can do in your classroom (yelling, throwing things, telling students to shut the fuck up) that you can't acknowledge, apologize for, and forget. Someday you will have to take advantage of this rule. Forgive yourself, too.
Posted by Drew at May 18, 2005 09:39 PM
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Comments
Drew,
I've been lurking in your blog for a couple months now, and figured this would be a good time to say hello, and also thanks. Initially I felt a little creepy about keeping tabs on a stranger's journal, but since we both grew up in OP, and since eleven years ago I operated a ban saw in your basement as a member of Bruce's OM team, I reasoned that we weren't technically strangers. Also, at the time I had just joined TFA and been assigned to teach secondary English in the delta, and thought I might learn a few things from you that I couldn't learn elsewhere. I really appreciated your most recent post, and thanks to your honest school-related entries I feel like I have a much better idea of what I'll be dealing with next year. Every time an Onion reader jokes that two years from now I will be nothing but a burnt and hollow husk of a man, I quietly tell myself that I will prove them wrong. Someday, I vow, I will be a cantankerous, cynical, but ever-insightful bastard, just like my mentor Drew Courtney.
Respectfully,
Pete Garrison
Posted by: pete at May 22, 2005 01:37 AM
Don't say I didn't warn you!
Seriously though, congratulations. There are some amazing people down here (TFA and non) that you'll be lucky to get to know, the kids not least among them. Even on the worst days, TFA is an invigorating experience. Also, don't discount the fact that for all the challanges a lot of people really love it. I hope you do too.
Best of luck. (And let me know if I can help you out. Really.)
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