I'm starting my tenth year as a teacher--all at the same school--which feels arbitrarily momentous. I mean, being a base 10 culture means that something like a decade "means something" and the thing that it means is that we've decided that it means something. There isn't anything inherently powerful, wonderful, or noteworthy about ten consecutive years, but it does feel like I ought to mark it.
Thinking back to what I was doing that first teacher training week in 2008 makes me smile. I was so enthusiastic and ungainly, like an evangelizing foal. I mean, I love my job--and I've loved it since the beginning--but I was a pretty lousy teacher back when I started. I cringe at the mistakes I made, the assumptions I had, the poor teaching choices I selected.
One of the things that I remember about that year was when I had to take charge of a break-out session for the students. Back then, we gathered the two hundred or so students for a welcome assembly, then sent them in classroom-sized groups to one of the dozen or so classrooms we had. There, teachers would rotate through to give them explanations about the policies and expected behaviors of students at our school.
I stood up in front of a rash of high school students (that's the correct group plural, right?) and explained to them the Internet policies. As was the modus operandi of that year, I had no idea what was in that policy book; Internet usage policies hadn't been covered in teacher training week. So I was given the assignment, the handbook, and pointed to a room. "Take care of it," was the essential command.
So there I was, trying to figure out how to tell these kids about stuff that I didn't know myself, gently sweating in my new gray suit. The break-out sessions eventually ended and we went on with an abbreviated schedule for the rest of the day, then began classes in earnest the following day. One of the students later confessed to me, after she and I got to know each other, that she had been in that class whilst I was bumbling through the handbook but pretending I wasn't entirely out of my element.
"I leaned over to my friend and asked, 'Who is this kid? Is he trying to pull a prank?' I totally thought you were one of the students."
"Thanks," I said, not sure what else to say.
"You're welcome!" she had said, smiling.
That taught me to always wear a tie, insist on students calling me by "Mr. Dowdle" or "Dowdle" (I now prefer Lord Dowdle) and keeping a strong distance between students and me.
That tendency has improved as my reputation has grown, as my presence at the school has ossified, as the school and I have grown together (the school was started the year before I joined, so I'm one of a handful of faculty still around from the "early days"). I now always wear a tie and ensure that I have my suit jacket on whenever I first meet students (and, according to the uniform policy, the beginning of each week) because that is now part of my reputation.
And I think that's part of what I find interesting about my job now that I'm sitting here, on the precipice of the decade: There are a lot of strange things that have happened to me since I've been at this school, and a lot of exciting things, too. My son has survived heart surgeries, we've grown our family, we've moved a couple of times, yet I'm always in this position, looking at Dante's Inferno during the hot final weeks of August, as regular as the calendar. There's something reassuring and exciting about having the familiar, coupled with the unknown of student/class dynamics or unexpected events transpiring in the course of a year. It's predictable on fundamental levels, but variable on the surface, which is a mixture that I find exciting and enjoyable. I appreciate the punctuation that summer gives me, as well as the meaning that teaching provides.
That isn't to say that I'm not a little nervous (which is pretty normal for me) about what to do on Monday when students come into this classroom for the first time. (The solar eclipse is messing it all up, but that's a different post.) You would think, after ten years, I wouldn't stress about it. But I do, though admittedly, not a lot. I have a tendency to not stress over fine details too much, allowing myself the room to improvise around what I need to do. This can be a benefit--like when I'm called on to substitute a class--but it can also be detrimental. I prepare the papers, assignments, and hand outs in advance, but I don't necessarily worry about them until the last possible moment. I prefer to think of it as "mental preparation" rather than "procrastination", and that tendency has served me well.
Well, regardless of how prepared I am, the school year is about to commence. My tenth.
Here's to another decade.
Thinking back to what I was doing that first teacher training week in 2008 makes me smile. I was so enthusiastic and ungainly, like an evangelizing foal. I mean, I love my job--and I've loved it since the beginning--but I was a pretty lousy teacher back when I started. I cringe at the mistakes I made, the assumptions I had, the poor teaching choices I selected.
One of the things that I remember about that year was when I had to take charge of a break-out session for the students. Back then, we gathered the two hundred or so students for a welcome assembly, then sent them in classroom-sized groups to one of the dozen or so classrooms we had. There, teachers would rotate through to give them explanations about the policies and expected behaviors of students at our school.
I stood up in front of a rash of high school students (that's the correct group plural, right?) and explained to them the Internet policies. As was the modus operandi of that year, I had no idea what was in that policy book; Internet usage policies hadn't been covered in teacher training week. So I was given the assignment, the handbook, and pointed to a room. "Take care of it," was the essential command.
So there I was, trying to figure out how to tell these kids about stuff that I didn't know myself, gently sweating in my new gray suit. The break-out sessions eventually ended and we went on with an abbreviated schedule for the rest of the day, then began classes in earnest the following day. One of the students later confessed to me, after she and I got to know each other, that she had been in that class whilst I was bumbling through the handbook but pretending I wasn't entirely out of my element.
"I leaned over to my friend and asked, 'Who is this kid? Is he trying to pull a prank?' I totally thought you were one of the students."
"Thanks," I said, not sure what else to say.
"You're welcome!" she had said, smiling.
That taught me to always wear a tie, insist on students calling me by "Mr. Dowdle" or "Dowdle" (I now prefer Lord Dowdle) and keeping a strong distance between students and me.
That tendency has improved as my reputation has grown, as my presence at the school has ossified, as the school and I have grown together (the school was started the year before I joined, so I'm one of a handful of faculty still around from the "early days"). I now always wear a tie and ensure that I have my suit jacket on whenever I first meet students (and, according to the uniform policy, the beginning of each week) because that is now part of my reputation.
And I think that's part of what I find interesting about my job now that I'm sitting here, on the precipice of the decade: There are a lot of strange things that have happened to me since I've been at this school, and a lot of exciting things, too. My son has survived heart surgeries, we've grown our family, we've moved a couple of times, yet I'm always in this position, looking at Dante's Inferno during the hot final weeks of August, as regular as the calendar. There's something reassuring and exciting about having the familiar, coupled with the unknown of student/class dynamics or unexpected events transpiring in the course of a year. It's predictable on fundamental levels, but variable on the surface, which is a mixture that I find exciting and enjoyable. I appreciate the punctuation that summer gives me, as well as the meaning that teaching provides.
That isn't to say that I'm not a little nervous (which is pretty normal for me) about what to do on Monday when students come into this classroom for the first time. (The solar eclipse is messing it all up, but that's a different post.) You would think, after ten years, I wouldn't stress about it. But I do, though admittedly, not a lot. I have a tendency to not stress over fine details too much, allowing myself the room to improvise around what I need to do. This can be a benefit--like when I'm called on to substitute a class--but it can also be detrimental. I prepare the papers, assignments, and hand outs in advance, but I don't necessarily worry about them until the last possible moment. I prefer to think of it as "mental preparation" rather than "procrastination", and that tendency has served me well.
Well, regardless of how prepared I am, the school year is about to commence. My tenth.
Here's to another decade.