2004-09-22 - 9:11 p.m.
school has been keeping me busy. i am reading all the time, trying to keep up with my classes. there is nothing i want to skip or skim over - everything seems so relevant. relevant to my future and relevant to what i am doing right now at the middle school.
i've taken a break just now - browsing the internet for possible classroom poster. god, this time next year i could have my own classroom. i want it to be very colorful and decorated with tons of posters and racks of books. i'm so pleased - there are lots of famous author posters to buy. toni morrison, dickenson, langston hughes, maxine hong kingston, gabriel garcia marquez... so cool.
i remember my high school teachers had pictures of hemingway and shakespeare up. not too inspiring to me. i wonder, how different schools are now. six years later. mine was so fucking white bread it makes me sick. and now at the university, we are learning so much about multicultural education, i can't imagine any school sticking to the old ways with all this information and inspiration available. i guess i will soon find out.
i am so scared of this responsibility.
at the middle school, there are so many great kids. there's eric, fresh from china, barely speaks english, but it is expressive and communicative and smart. the other day, he pointed to a picture in chinese-english dictionary of "love," asking me, are you in love? it was so fucking sweet! when i told him i was in love, with brian, he smiled huge.
there's hilary, who is so prim and priss, so patient and still, with her hand in the air and her pinched-mouth responses. i'm so humbled and stripped of all my former assumptions and sterotypes about people, that i can't even look at her with annoyance or judgement. i just wonder if she is happy, and what she needs, and what her family is like.
i don't think i want to teach middle school. the material is so boring, and i have a hard time feigning enthusiasm for it. my cooperating teacher is really peppy and exagerated all the time. i guess this works well, especially when she gets pissed off, and the whole room can feel her alarming smile tumble into a terrifying frown. but i dont remember any of my middle school teachers being like that. overly enthusiastic, sickeningly sweet. they were dry and sarcastic, for the most part. or they were young and self-obsessed, preoccupied by new babies and husbands.
id much rather teach high school. i have to student teach for the second time next semester, and i wish i could do it at another high school.
i wonder how soon i will burn out. im not sure im the best person for the job. teachers really have to know how to make kids feel good about themselves, and to make kids do work. not sure i will be that effective or amazing. sometimes i think im too intellectual for the job (ha!). like im lazy, and should be in grad school writing a dissertation instead. i especially feel this way during my teacher education classes, when the other student teachers seem intimidated by me. we had peer review of our papers today, and my group members were visibly stunned by my writing, and had little to say other then praise. now i know for fucking sure that my writing is not that fantastic, and that i should be doing peer reviews with people who are a hell of a lot smarter than me if i want to improve at all.
well, ok back to the grinding stone.
