Living a Whole Lifetime in 7 weeks

After 14 weeks of student teaching, I am back to my old life. Going to bed late, sleeping in, being a kid at heart almost all day (and it's exhausting!), cleaning up and doing things around the apartment. This is only my 3rd full day back at home, and I already feel like I have too much time on my hands. While it's exceptionally nice to be back at home, I feel happier when I'm working. Contributing to society, supporting myself and my kids, and most importantly - keeping myself busy.

Don't get me wrong. It's really nice to be back at home again full-time. I can get things done and go grocery shopping during the day. How I missed grocery shopping in the daytime during the week. I've gotten used to enduring long lines in the evenings and on the weekends along with the working people. Now I share the lines with stay-at-home moms, the recently unemployed and lazy bums.

In just 7 short weeks, I've learned more than I ever could in my entire life what NOT to do as a teacher. Teaching high school was a mess! In my personal opinion, some of the teachers created much more drama than the students did. They actually leeched off the drama between the students and recreated them. They call it "professionally discussing their concerns for the students" but they are really feeding off the energy and amplifying the situation. Some of the students acted more mature than a few of the teachers. How sad is that?

During my evaluation (which I passed with flying colors - but that doesn't mean anything to me coming from an ineligible sponsor), my supervising teacher gave me some advice - two, actually. First, he said I needed to be more social with the students and the teachers. Yeah - because I didn't want to hang out with him during my free time, that means I'm not social enough. Right. Second, he said I needed to dress more professionally. There he was - telling me that when he himself was dressed in jeans and a t-shirt. Maybe he meant I should wear skirts or pretty myself up. If that's true - he deserves a fist in the face. Here are some "Don'ts" I've observed and told myself to NEVER EVER do when I'm a teacher. It's also my advice to the supervising teacher I had:

1. When a student needs help on an assignment, never tell him/her to hold
on so you can finish talking about another student and his/her problems (in the
presence of a class).
2. Don't leave your student teacher alone for 30-45 minutes at a time
(almost daily) to wander the halls, talk to other teachers and come back with an
excuse saying "I had to deal with a problem."
3. When you make rules, never break them. If YOU break them, your students will.
4. Never make up grades based on how you feel about the students. If he earned it, good. If not, do NOT give him a passing grade! That only sets them up for failure in the future.
5. Do NOT back stab or gossip about your co-workers. Maybe not today or tomorrow, but someday it'll come back and bite you in the ass. Hard.
6. Don't teach the same lesson every...single...day. It's BORING! No wonder your students hate you.
7. If you're lazy - you're NOT meant to be a teacher.
8. When you often dump your class on another teacher because of a "situation", do NOT call that teacher lazy when he wants you to return the favor once in a blue moon.
9. Do NOT meddle in your students' lives. There's a fine line between caring and getting involved.
10. If you give assignments and tell them it's for a grade, do NOT just throw them in the trash when you've decided you don't want to be bothered with the gradebook. It's a waste of the students' time (especially when the assignment is 2nd grade material...like, really!? You'd give seniors a 2nd grade assignment!?).
11. When the student teacher teaches for a week, creates an assignment/test, and administers it to the students, do NOT disregard that as "practice" for the student teacher and simply place the papers aside. At least when the student teacher teaches, the students are actually LEARNING. Look that up in the dictionary - I'm sure it's a very unfamiliar term to you.
12. Again - if you're lazy - do NOT become a teacher.

Overall, you can see my experience wasn't a very good one. I did enjoy some of my time there. I met some teachers that I've become friendly with and hung out with during my breaks. There are some decent people there and the students can be super nice.

If you or anyone you know is planning to intern at HISD, please PLEASE talk to me first. I'll tell you who's good and who's not - so you can be sure you're not placed with the same teacher I was stuck with.