Teaching Is An Exercise In Faith

Despite getting ready to start my fourth year as a professional teacher, I still feel like a newbie.

No, not a newbie to my English Department (which is awesome, by the way) but to the profession as a whole. I once told an older teacher that I feel like I'm still in the "beg, borrow, and steal" phase when it comes to lesson plans, to which he replied, "Oh, you think that goes away..."

If there's been one thing I've discovered about teaching, it's that this is a terrible job for a pessimist. It can be easy to fall into a pit despair over some of the things with which you have to cope. It takes an insane amount of hope and faith that students, situations, and you yourself are not going to be stuck doing the same things forever.

It takes faith for a teacher to realize that he or she is going to improve and get better. I think just about every first-year teacher reaches a point where they think to themselves, "I don't think I can handle another year like this." But that first year is so incredibly valuable. That's when teachers really find out what works well for them and what doesn't. If you were to ask me what was different about my second year compared with my first, I would probably tell you "Everything." Was it still tough? Yes. Teaching is tough. It will always be tough. But things seem a little brighter when you can at least work with a year of successes and failures under your belt. It's a challenge to know deep down that in ten years, you will be ten years better.

It takes faith to realize that a student will mature with the passage of time, and that they won't be the same person when they graduate as they were in your freshman class. Kids change. People change. And I believe that, for the most part, they change for the better. The best example I can think of for this is myself. I was a moody jerk at times during high school. And look at me now. I'm awesome. Just kidding. But I do feel like I'm a kinder and less selfish person than I was when I was in high school. It's incredibly easy to look at a student and assume they will keep cutting corners and trying to cheat forever. But that's probably not true. As people experience new challenges, their perspectives change. And growing up is all about facing new challenges. It's difficult sometimes to truly feel that gradually, you are making an impact on a student who will be an inheritor of the earth.

It takes faith to believe that legislators and policymakers will make the best informed decisions for the education of the children in their state. This is a touchy one, especially in Kansas, where the legislature not only seems to treat school funding like a non-essential budget line-item, but recently decided to make sweeping policy changes with zero research and virtually zero debate. It's tough to work at a job where the perception is that your work is unappreciated, and sadly that's the message that comes across when this happens. It's tough to work when at a job that is subject to spin and mischaracterization, much like the widespread misunderstanding regarding Common Core. But unless you can brush it off, put your head down and vow to keep doing your job to the best of your ability, it's easy to start comparing your career to other options that are out there.

And for my grammar Nazi friends out there: Yes, in my informal writing, I use plural pronouns when the gender for singular subjects is ambiguous. It is a conscious departure from prescribed American Standard English. Also, sometimes I end sentences with prepositions. That's something you need to get over.