My ego, surprises, and stereotypes.

I've been feeling very ineffective as a teacher this week.

I worked three days so far and each day became increasingly difficult. As much as I tried to enter into the classroom open minded, flexible, and calm, I found that I felt really stupid. The book I'm reading would say that that is just my ego talking and wanting to feel important. That the real Hillary is limitless and infinite. But could that Hillary sub for me, ego Girl, one day?
As a sub, I have a big bag of tricks. Tricks to get every one's attention, tricks to make Math more interactive, tricks to get the room super clean. I call these "tricks" since "skills" implies consistent success. Tricks can fall short, which this week they did. I hate to yell, I hate to have a "no-talking classroom" but that was what I was reduced to more often than not. It isn't the students' fault, it isn't really even totally mine. It just is.

I will admit that there were proud moments. Yesterday, in a first grade, I remembered what it is to feel something small is very important. Brandon and Eric had had a fight over something and Brandon was crying. It was in the middle of a math game, where everyone was crazy, and I had been losing patience. But then, I stopped. I took a breath and thought, "I am Brandon, sometimes." So I called him over. He was crawling on the floor and kept his head just below a desktop. Instead of saying, "Stand up! Brandon!" I lowered my head to meet his eyes and said, "What's upsetting you? How can I help?" To the rest of us, the problem would've seemed minor and trivial. But in this moment, it was tearing apart two friends. We talked, and then walked over to Eric and smoothed things over. The boys ended up playing the math game together. And for a small moment, I, ego and all, felt good.

The other thing I realized this week was how much I compare situations to either music or movies. I was in a fifth grade class of about fourteen students that I had been in before. This is a school that is in the middle of a small town. Everyone has known everyone for 100 years. And this fact makes children very mean to one another. Normally, I enjoy this group immensely, they make me laugh and we have fun. But this day, they were the rudest people on earth. Pestering one another, making fun of hats, or what position someone played in baseball. (All boys, of course.) This is when I enforced the "no-talking classroom." They had a bunch of worksheets (yuck, I wanted to make the work a bit more fun.) and the students ended up working in silence because they couldn't be decent to each other. As I sat there, with my mean substitute face on, I thought about how I was like the principal in "The Breakfast Club." And really I was an outsider who didn't understand the politics of the school at all. I had even started stereotyping the class before this. "Oh this one is the diva, he's the jock, he's the charming funny one..." I thought. And while I'm not happy I did this, at least I recognized it in the moment and was able to stop. And once I stopped, we had a better time. We even ended up going outside!

I have to change the first sentence of this blog. I've been ineffective as a teacher this week but I've been a very willing student. This job never ceases to amaze me. I'm always wondering, "Who is the real teacher?"