I am doing my first practicum right now for my BEd, and the thing I'm finding is that most schools are in far flung areas without a lot of parking. So I am spending a lot of time on the bus right in the prime high school student rush hour. I used to be quite annoyed by kids on the bus because, let's face it, they can act like a bunch of buffoons sometimes. But one of my major goals for becoming a teacher is to learn to exist and sit peacefully in a bus full of jabbering kids. I am not there one hundred percent, but I am getting there.
If I'm going to dedicate my life to the chalk (my metaphor for teaching), then I will need to learn to share their spaces. Kids see the world in such a different way than I do, and it is actually kind of fascinating to watch them interact with eachother. I am learning a lot about social dynamics just by watching behaviour on the bus. I am looking at the bus as an advanced teacher training course. Every day I sit in a sea of teenage tomfoolery and I am left without one the teacher's greatest tools: the "HEY STUDENTS PAY ATTENTION TO ME!" outburst.
Teaching is negative capability, existing in a strange space and not grasping for easy answers, and the bus is the greatest test of that.
If I'm going to dedicate my life to the chalk (my metaphor for teaching), then I will need to learn to share their spaces. Kids see the world in such a different way than I do, and it is actually kind of fascinating to watch them interact with eachother. I am learning a lot about social dynamics just by watching behaviour on the bus. I am looking at the bus as an advanced teacher training course. Every day I sit in a sea of teenage tomfoolery and I am left without one the teacher's greatest tools: the "HEY STUDENTS PAY ATTENTION TO ME!" outburst.
Teaching is negative capability, existing in a strange space and not grasping for easy answers, and the bus is the greatest test of that.