A teacher’s journey to falling back in love with teaching
I’ve never been known to have a great ability to think before I speak, I open my mouth and words just start flowing.
This is likely one of the qualities about me that my high school students find entertaining. Sometimes it’s a lack of a filter and others it’s blatant honesty, something that often is lacking when adults speak to teens.
On more than one occasion, during class, a student or two will tell me that it seems like I’m in a bad mood. 99% of the time they’re right. Instead of pretending that I”m not or brushing it aside, my usual response is, ” You’re right, I am, you’re driving my crazy. No one is listening , you’re being disrespectful.” A look of shock and realization spreads over their faces. Really no one has ever told you how annoying it is to have 25 people continually ask you to repeat yourself, only to not listen while you repeat yourself?
And just like that their behavior changes. It turns out, they didn’t want to be annoying, nor did they want me to be in a bad mood, however, until I laid it on the table, they weren’t making the connection that they were the cause of my bad mood.
Over the years, my love for kids has remained true, but my love for teaching was fading without me knowing it..
There were some people in the gallery asking questions about the morning kids classes, I explained the classes as usual and then I heard myself saying, I needed to do this to rediscover my love for teaching. ( I didn’t see that coming) As the words flowed out of my mouth, I could feel tears, and all kinds of emotions rushing to the surface.
Until that moment, I didn’t know that I’d created the kids summer art classes to rediscover my love for teaching, or to set myself free. However, that’s what happened. The classes created an environment where for the first time in 7 years I feel free to TEACH, really teach what and how I believe in teaching, and with the passing of each class, I became more excited to teach the next.
“It doesn’t interest me what you do for a living. I want to know what you ache for, and if you dare to dream of meeting your heart’s longing.”
–Oriah
So my summer vacation from teaching, is helping me to reminder why I started, and is allowing me to realize that no matter if it’s in an official classroom, a gallery, basement, or park. I AM A TEACHER. ( I am also an artist, a designer, a dreamer… but that’s for another day)
Just as my students didn’t see that their actions were directly affecting my mood, until point blank told so, until trying something new, until speaking freely, I wasn’t aware how much of my love for teaching the public school was taking away from me.
“A mind which says, ‘I have taken a vow to be something and I am going to be that for the rest of my life’ is called consistent; but it is really a most stupid mind, because it has come to a conclusion and it is living according to that conclusion. It is like a man building a wall around himself and letting life go by.”
⎯Jiddu Krishnamurti