After another weekend attending class for my master's degree, I am left pondering the state of education, the purpose of education, and my ability to contribute to meaningful change. There seem to be more balls to juggle than I have the skill to manage. But which ones to let fall? My day at work goes by in a blur. I start as soon as I arrive - 7:30 am. I am organizing, rearranging, getting agendas written, finding things, talking to students, trying to find other staff, and then the bell goes and the first class comes in, and then it's non-stop action until lunch time. I know that some of the activities that we are doing are boring, but I can't determine how to get through some of the drier aspects of material without having to make it pointed and not buried in something that might prevent them from seeing the core.
The underlying issue that I must deal with for myself is how to convince students that they can be active participants in their learning - that it isn't done to them so much as with them. At the moment, many seem to treat school as a curiosity that they can view objectively, as though they are observing an animal on display at a zoo, or a butterfly on a board with a pin through it. They are aware of this thing, but not emotionally involved with it. And this isn't a good thing.
I have ideas (god help me) about trying to address this, but I need others to take up the challenge as well. I wish I could share the brain. It would be so much easier.
That being said, I do work with some great people. We don't always agree, but dissension can be healthy, provided it doesn't hang up forward momentum. I want so much to create a school that truly lives up to our mission statement. It is exhausting work. Many of us are already pushing ourselves about as much as we can before some artery explodes. But it's never enough... and that is so frustrating.
The other thing, of course, is that on top of this, I want a life. I don't want my work at school to be the only thing that defines me. If this is the only life I'm going to get, there's a lot I want to do with it.
2 comments:
I agree. You are a great educator.
Today I felt I can't teach worth a lick...
With my grade ones if they actually can
read a small book soon. I will personally
jump off the table.
Yeehaw.
Well just keep going but yah work interferes
with my plans why should you be off the hook?
Yeah, me too! I feel like I am swamped with work that just keeps getting piled on. Teachers that should know better still don't understand what my job is. I have yet to work with a teacher that actually has worked out what they want to do and shared it with me so that I can plan for their students. (You'll be different right?) As a result I don't feel like anything I have done in another person's classroom has made one iota of difference to the reading abilities of any of my students.
And then there is the having a life thing...
Maybe I'll move back to Edmonton and live with my mom. There would be absolutely no stress there.
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