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!
