30 Something

I've always been a flighty person. As soon as something gets bad I want to through my hands up and say that I can do it. That mostly comes from wanting to be perfect at what I do. I will say that I'm not a type A personality at all, but I do have tendencies. I used to practice things over and over again so that it would be perfect. I would try to anticipate the things that would go wrong to alleviate them before it happens. Because I'm this way, I'm having a hard time with this teaching thing. I do like the fact that I'm only teaching one subject and if something doesn work second hr I can change it before third hour, but when nothing it working it can be devastating. It messes with my psyche. I didn't realize my lesson was boring until 7th hour. NO one wanted to participate at all. I was so exasperated that I just gave them worksheets to do. Mind you, 7th hour is not an easy class to deal with. They were the only class that I had to assign homework during the first days of class, so it already takes a lot to motivate them. Then I got a note to go to the principals office. I was a little nervous. Basically, my classroom management plan was wrong. To make matters worse I've already handed it out to the class. I understand that everyone's first year as a teacher can be difficult, but I don't know if my personality can handle it. I recently watched on TV, "the education of Ms. Groves". It was a Dateline special that followed a first year teacher. She did a video diary and chronicled her experiences. Not only did she have discipline problems with her children she even had to break up a fight in her classroom. For the first semester over 50% of her class failed with a D or an F. She talked about how she was able to changed the bad situation into a good situation and of course there was a happy ending. In the end 80% of her class passed and a good number of her students made the honor roll. Watching her story scared me. I'm still wondering if I made the right decision to leave the community college to do K-12. I guess I'll see at the end of the semester.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 30, 2006 at 3:40 PM. You can skip to the end and leave a response.