a love note to teaching

On Friday I began placement at my new school – the beginning of my second teaching rounds! It has been quite a few months since I finished my last placement, so I was feeling pretty nervous!

I spent the day following my new mentor around, observing her classes. I had become a bit unenthused about teaching over the holidays – not hugely excited about going back to simultaneously being a teacher and a student. By the end of the day, however, my attitude had completely reversed. I had reverted to my old super-excited-to-be-a-teacher self.

It was so lovely to spend the day sitting in on English classes. I got to listen to discussions on The Wife of Martin Guerre, Antigone and Romeo and Juliet. I’ve since been re-reading To Kill a Mockingbird in preparation for the classes I will be teaching next week!

I feel so genuinely excited. So excited to know that I will be spending the rest of my working life reading, teaching and learning about books. I know that books are only a tiny part of what I will be doing. I know about the hours and hours of marking, the crowd control, the mediocre pay and the fact that I will have to teach Lord of the Flies/1984/Of Mice and Men every single year. And I know that most kids won’t be half as excited about To Kill a Mockingbird as I will be. But there is something so lovely about knowing that books and language will be the vehicle behind it all.

I never thought I would be a teacher. I always saw it as a bit of a cop-out – the predictable and obvious next step after doing a Bachelor of Arts.  I never really thought I would be suited to the job either. I am ridiculously, painfully shy. I often feel quite literally sick at the prospect of meeting new people and am almost incapable of having a conversation with people I don’t know very well. I was surprised by just how easy those kind of problems are to overcome in the classroom. I guess there just isn’t really any time for anxiety when you have a room full of twenty-five teenagers to control.

Now I’m not expecting some kind of To Sir with Love/Dead Poet’s Society experience, and I know I have a long way to go and a lot to learn. Maybe I’ll feel differently in 10, 20, 30 years, but for now, I can’t think of any career I would rather!