Thanks, everybody, for your comments on my post asking if I am a bad teacher. You reminded me of things like my first grade CCD student telling her parents that she can't wait to go to religious education, and that I'm the best CCD teacher ever. or like the ninth grade student who emailed me about course selections and mentioned that he likes the atmosphere in my class, especially on Fridays when everyone is kind of silly.
Tuesday was a long day, but it was a good day becuase it was the first time in a while that I've really felt like I'm part of the community at school. Yeah, I had to reprimand some students who performed a lab without knowing the reaction they were testing, but the rest of the day I just felt like I had really good rapport with the students.
Sometimes I feel like I can really be myself when I teach, and sometimes I feel like I'm acting a part. Part of it is just good moods and bad, but part of it is also the image of the "good teacher" that we get from movies and tv shows. You know, the charismatic teacher who inspires students just by being such an impossibly awesome human being. That frustrates me because we get a message that only these ultra inspirational golden beings can be great teachers, but anyone with a college degree can do the basic work of a teacher (TFA, I'm looking at you). What about the rest of us who work hard to be good teachers, with more craft than a volunteer but less charm than Louanne Johnson in Dangerous Minds?
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