Sidney Poitier I'm Not

Well, I've survived my first week of school. It is very strange to be in a position in which I feel truly incompetent... I'm not sure I've ever been in a job I was less well-prepared for. I have to shoulder some of that blame, but the truth is that no first-time teacher in the world -- especially those who haven't done any student teaching -- could possibly be prepared for the reality of the job. Not that there is anything in the job that is beyond my skill set (I don't think), but that there are a million little things a teacher needs to do and ways he needs to act in order to be able to clear the decks for actual teaching. Plus, there are a million strategies the teacher must have for all of the different teaching situations he will face -- kids who have no math skills but want to work hard, kids who have good math skills but don't want to work at all, kids with good math skills but who don't speak English and thus can't understand what you're saying, kids with bad math skills and bad English skills, kids who are bored and need to be stimulated by more interesting material than is being offered, kids who are bored because the material being taught is too hard and they've tuned out, kids who have good skills but need to digest information slowly, etc., etc., etc., etc., etc... well, you get the picture. That's just relative to student-teacher interaction.

Then there are the unbelievable peripheral requirements -- "word walls" to be updated daily with new vocabulary from the course, "standards-based" charts on the wall to show students what will be covered that day and what State Educational Standard the day's lesson is directed toward, "Workshop Model" charts to show the flow of the instruction (lecture to small group work to class discussion to summary, for example), lesson plans that must conform to a specific format, including a listing of the Standards to be taught, the objective of the day's lesson and essential questions the student should be able to answer at the conclusion of the lesson, forms to be filed for how you are differentiating your instruction for "special needs" students and students who don't speak English, and others I've forgotten in the haze of the past week.

Good teachers, from what I can see, have found ways to implement processes that reduce the time required for the peripheral stuff to a bare minimum -- maybe an hour or two a day. They also have processes and mannerisms and little tricks to keep their classroom running smoothly, reducing the amount of policework they have to do, and dramatically reducing the thought they have to put into how to run the classroom. This frees them up to mostly teach, and some of them are very good at it. Some are less good, but the truth is, the bad teachers are not the ones who can't teach (there aren't many of those), the bad teachers are the ones who can't control the classroom or who can't manage the peripheral stuff so that it doesn't impinge on their ability to put together a good lesson. The great teachers are the ones who manage to get all that done and still find time to add some special flair that ignites a flame in some kid to do more, and accomplish more, than he otherwise would have.

I have a considerable mountain to climb, no single step of which seems particularly difficult, but the whole of which is, at the very least, daunting.