I've undertaken an English poetry project, where the students spent Monday writing their poems, Tuesday typing them up in Publisher (I'll never understand why my school is so big on that program, but whatever) and making them into a nice poster-ish thing, and the rest of this week they're going to be learning about Glogster and creating a glog with sections of their poems. It's not that I'm not liking how this project has been going at all. That's absolutely not the issue here. I love that the kids are learning about more new tech options and I'm able to show them how to make creative presentations.
Today I started a Native American beading project, as shown by the supplies up above. I did this project in 8th grade and liked it (as did my friends), so I made a note on my project list at the beginning of the year that I should try it. I finally got around to getting the supplies, and spent most of last night putting together a little history and background, as well as what examples would look like. Today we started doing it... and the kids flew off the handle!!! They were completely confused as to what they needed to be doing, not listening at all to instructions, and most of them (after about 90 minutes throughout the course of the afternoon) didn't really even get close to having the first line of beads from their design on their strings. They spent most of the day caterwauling about what a dumb project this is and, 'Who came up with this stupid project anyway?!' and 'I am SO not going to figure this out.'
hate.
Hate.
HATE!!!!!!!!
I went to dinner tonight with some of the choir ladies, and one of them asked the two teachers at the table (the 3rd grade teacher was there as well) when the last day of school was, and I, in my complete exhaustion and frustration with this project that I thought would be something new and different, replied with, "Not soon enough!"
That broke into a conversation with the woman sitting next to me about how the school year's been going lately and whatnot, and she eventually said, "Oh, that's too bad. You seemed so excited at the beginning of the year. Are you regretting being a teacher?"
I was stunned and completely horrified, to say the least. I quickly rewound in my head what I had said to try to understand where she had gotten that perception. Let me be clear: I love teaching. Absolutely and completely would not trade it for anything (unless someone wants to pay me to play volleyball for a living - if so, where do I sign?). I love the kids, I love my coworkers, and I still, now more than ever, love math. I had hoped, throughout the course of the school year, that I would grow to love my other classes as well (I teach 5th-8th math in the morning, then 8th English, PE, computers, spelling and art in the afternoon). I love teaching computers, and would absolutely take more work on there... same with PE (since it was technically the other half of my major, with math). English, spelling and art? Meh, blech, and LOATHE.
Here's the thing - I miss high school math. You go from teaching matrices, solving quadratics and creating movies (yes, movies) on graphing calculators; to teaching 4 different (and progressively easier and more monotonous) units on fractions, decimals, and solving combinations by drawing pictures and tell me if you're having fun, because I'm not. I'm bored. The best part of my week is tutoring an Algebra 2 student, because he and I dig in and search out the answers, talking through the problems and really working through understanding instead of just, 'here's how it's done, go to it.'
Don't get me wrong - I've had some fun with some of these math lessons this year. I've also had days where I open the next textbook and think, 'Really? Area of a circle? Again?' I feel horrible that someone perceived me as having lost my love for teaching. I do love teaching. I guess I'm just not loving what I teach here...
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