Hell on wheels, anyone?

Today feels like one of those days that I can learn a great deal from.

We had a supply teacher with us today, which I think always throws the dynamic of the class off. And the students felt a little more chatty and energetic than usual - especially for the work that we were doing: taking up a math review, listening to presentation, and writing a pop-quiz. I am not going to lie, I wanted to pull my hair out a little bit.

And then came to the point of the lesson where I didn't really teach long division with decimals very well and it may have been the ONLY topic so far in math that these students didn't already "get" - kind of threw me for a curve ball to be honest. So, I had to be honest with my students when they asked me "what do you do with the remainder if you already have a decimal there" and say "That is a great question, I'm going to find out and tell you after lunch". On one hand, I had this sinking feeling in my stomache that I had somehow let my class down - like I had somehow given away my secret that I'm not perfect, that I am human, that I'm not a master of long division, and I am fallable just like every other adult out there. Whoah - way to shatter the illusion of the all-knowing teacher, Ms. Dickson. But on the other hand, what I hope could have happened, was a great learning moment of the students seeing a teacher admitting when she doesn't know something and trying to make right. I admited to them that I sometimes struggle with long division too and I don't know everything. I suppose they could have taken it either way, but I think that honesty always has to be the best policy.

The feeling of today's teaching was humbling. After a couple of stellar lessons and great experiences and home-run experiences in the class, it is easy (maybe too easy) to feel cocky and over-confident. The grounding that I had after this class reminds me that I don't know everything, I NEED to prepare myself and my lessons, and I'm far from being anywhere close to an expert in this field.

Fruits of our Labour

I am an optimistic woman.

I like to look on the bright side of things.

I am always focusing on the silver lining of ANY dark and stormy cloud.

And I will always be that one smiling on the subway when everyone else is scowling.

However...

After all this work that we did on Friday on co-operation, I am not convinced that I really saw the fruits of that labour in class today. This leads me to a couple of conclusions:

1) Building community, a team and a group of young people that work together takes WAY more time than 3 weeks. It is an ongoing process.
2) The entire class dynamic can be thrown off by one person being present or one person being absent. It is like baking cookies - if on Friday we had Baking soda present, we may make a perfect batch, but if on Monday, Baking Soda AND Vanilla are absent, the cookies will be very different and barely edible.
3) Teaching may just be the hardest job in the world.

My head is swimming with wrapping up my units, completing our culminating tasks, introducing culminating tasks, planning a future field trip and contributing to extra-curricular stuff. I sometimes feel like I am constantly thinking about work.

It suddenly makes sense to me why school is only 10 months a year - so teachers can actually NOT work. We are constantly planning planning planning. Or, at least I am.