When faced with a class full of strangers and the fear of losing control - it's easy to put on a mask and pretend to be someone else... but being yourself may be the better option. This is an excerpt from an essay I wrote several years ago after my second year of teaching in rural North Carolina:
When you go into teaching everyone says, “the kids don’t have to like you, they just have to learn from you.” And in the aftermath of horrible conferences we comfort ourselves with the notion that the same must also be said of parents. Still, there are many nights when we secretly lie awake wishing someone out there would say one kind word, or at very least stop being negative. And if we’re honest, we even wish the kids would like us because then this incredibly difficult job wouldn’t seem quite so hard.
In the quest for such things I’ve tried many tactics in my two years. I’ve tried the “so you hate me, fine, I don’t care,” approach, which really only makes kids hate you for real. I’ve tried the “how about a sucker for every time you don’t curse in class,” and that only makes for hyper-active-foul-mouths. I’ve tried the silent, super-sweet, totally patient, really condescending, completely fed-up, and I-can’t-hear-you treatments . . . I do not recommend a one. I’ve even tried the “yes, you’ve finally done it, you made the new-teacher cry,” approach, (well, you don’t really try that one, you sort of get forced into it.) But at the end of the day the most successful strategy I’ve used, is simply being who I am.
So, with brief interruptions from my education-class-alter-ego, I have basically just been me in the classroom. And now I understand why they advise against this method in education classes. When you give your students the real thing every day, you basically dish yourself out 100% on daily basis. It’s exhausting, and leaves you little to work with on a personal level.
But your students like you, they trust you, and because of this they are willing to take the intellectual risks you ask them to take every day. It took me awhile to learn this, to trust myself to be me in the classroom. Ultimately I learned to hold myself to the same standards I had for my students. We cannot become who we are meant to be by pretending to be someone else.
