light the fire

“Education is not the filling of a pail but the lighting of a fire.” William Butler Yeats

Its almost June which means I'm about a third of the way through my year here. It also means the first trimester is over and grades are due soon. Talk about stressful! I'm supposed to give 4 tests each trimester (2 oral and 2 written) and I've been stressing about how to fit in 2 more in the next week. In other words, mission impossible. I've resigned myself to a presentation and a quiz and hope that next trimester I can plan my tests better. I'm hoping I can plan everything better but I'm trying not to be too ambitious or put my expectations too high because it's what has left me feeling so frustrated at times. I just hope the kids learned half as much as I did.

I started teaching some adult English and will be teaching a second adults class this week (for more advanced learners). This recent expansion of my teaching responsibilities has confirmed that I have no idea what I'm doing. I think it's a common theme among beginning teachers. Teaching is a career which challenges your bravery, your self-esteem and your capacity to change. In my last post I compared teaching English as a foreign language to trying to single-handedly run a three ring circus. There are times when your three ring circus erupts into chaos, the monkeys are attacking the crowd and a stampede is imminent and other times when the high wire is too low and the elephant has the flu and your clowns aren't funny. In both cases you have to be willing to change. Yourself, your lesson, your classroom, your perspective. Sometimes one thing, sometimes everything. You have to be perpetually willing and able to fail, sometimes quite painfully, in front of a class full of students. But here's the thing: I have a suspicion it doesn't need to be quite so difficult and exhausting. I have a feeling if I hang in there I might just figure out how to do this with a little more grace and ease. And the fact is every day I do learn a little more about what works and what doesn't. Unfortunately (for future teachers) it's not an easy thing to describe or explain. Mostly I just feel, like anyone who is practicing a new skill. Sometimes, it just clicks.

But, lets face it, teaching is never easy. There always seems to be a mountain of factors working against you both inside and outside the classroom from student motivation, behavior issues and parent involvement to regional rules and regulations, language barriers, weather, and other various distractions and disruptions. With all that said even under ideal conditions teaching is still one of the more challenging professions. I remember talking to someone at a hostel in San Jose about teaching and he said, “You seem so smart. Why would you want to teach?” I thought, “Why wouldn't I? What better way to put my talent, my intelligence and my passion to work.” I guess he was of the mind that if you can't do, you teach. There is, in the minds of many, an unfortunate stereotype that many people only go into teaching out of necessity and I think we can all attest to the fact that there are far too many joyless teachers who do not like children. But considering the extremely low pay and long hours I would have to bet that the majority of teachers do it because they love it and because they feel acutely the importance not just of teaching but of learning and of education in general.

As Yeats says, education should be more about the lighting of the fire and as my high school Physics teacher said its more about being the “guide on the side” than the “mage on the stage”. And though I'm still in the beginning stages of learning how to teach, and thus muddling around in the mystery, I have a hunch, a gut feeling if you will, that these pieces of wisdom are the key to that “click” feeling. In the past week I've felt that perhaps the sparks are starting to catch on the kindling I've been piling up this first semester. In essence I want to be able to step back more and let my students be the sources of their own learning rather than mere depositories for the knowledge I possess and am willing to bestow upon them. I want them to take on some of the responsibility and feel empowered rather than powerless in the classroom. Too much tedious and ineffective rhetoric that passes for education these days comes from teachers as the authority, as the sole possessors of power and knowledge in the classroom. I feel this is consistently my greatest downfall as a teacher and yet somewhat inevitable considering I was educated in this system as well. And depending on your motives and goals, it works on a lot of levels. It works to keep people in their place and perpetuate a system where few people question the unequal distribution of power.

Well I think I'll stop there because I'm going to need a whole other post to get into all the details of that statement. But needless to say it's what's on my mind when I think about becoming a better teacher. Empowering students, teaching them to think critically and work as part of one harmonious didactic community. Hey, I never said I'm not an idealist!