This was a reflection written for our 2018 Presentation of Learning to culminate the end of the first year of our graduate program and showcase our learning.
January 15th, 2018
Teaching: one of the very few professions that we get to watch someone else do for 40 hours per week! 9 months out of the year! 12 years straight (at least!)… and yet we still don’t have it mastered once all of that’s over with. It is a complex, dynamic puzzle with no one ultimate solution. Despite all of the roughness around the edges, this is what is most appealing to me about the work of teaching. I am drawn to the inexplicable -- the 2am wonderings about our universe, the probing questions that can't simply be Googled, and the multi-dimensional answers that beg for more questions.
Who am I as a teacher? I am a collaboration of every learning experience I have ever undergone, good or bad. I am a reaction to those experiences and a decision to do the bad experiences justice by not letting them happen to others. I am a hopeful assertion to recreate for others the good experiences that inspired me to be here, and maybe even improve upon them, too.
I am a believer in the beauty of logic - I am a devotee to analytical processing who believes all at once that science and math can and should be organically creative. I am a passionate interdisciplinary learner and educator.
I am the wisdom to know when I’m right and stand by it - I am the courage to seek guiding feedback, and the power to accept without defensiveness when there is a better way. I am trial and error.
I am on the pursuit of the sweet spot in between compassion and hypersensitivity. The balancing act of educating authentically while listening intently.
I am the student who "asks too many questions” preparing myself to have the answers for future students who are just like me.
What is my work? First and foremost - to be fully there, 100%, in the classroom, with my students. To resist the ease and simplicity of doing a “good enough” job, while at the same time putting up the necessary boundaries to lead a balanced life that makes room for both work and play. To change what isn’t working, and accept that what works for me might not be the best method for someone else. To be gritty in the face of failure, and to teach my students to be the same.
I think this is one of the most wonderful and also difficult aspects about teaching - it holds us accountable to be the kind of person that we teach our kids to be.
My Essential Questions How does it feel to think like a teacher? What does it look like to embrace entropy from the perspective of a teacher? What is the sound of collaboration?