Summer Camp: Day 8
Day 8 – If you had to teach something, what would you teach? (If you DO teach, when did you discover your love for teaching/the subject?) Do you think blogs can play a role in education?
Read more: 31 Days of Blog Juice at Creating Motherhood
I taught high school English for a few years. I quickly discovered that I did not have a passion for teaching. I loved reading. I loved writing. I did not love trying to get a bunch of teenagers to love reading or writing.
The first year was quite a wake-up call. Teaching high school is damned hard work. The lesson planning and grading can consume your life if you let it, especially the first few years. It’s also very repetitive. One year I had five classes of freshman English. That meant I stood in front of the class and gave the same speech five times in a two day span (block scheduling). Soooooo boring.
Oddly enough, I really enjoy substitute teaching. The pay is crap, but there is very little responsibility and every day is new. If things don’t go well you never have to go back to that classroom or school again. Perfect! Except for the whole pay thing.
If I had to teach professionally again I’d choose 3rd or 4th grade (assuming I could get certified). At that age the kids still love learning. It’s not all sunshine and roses, but it’s a lot easier dealing with kids who mostly want to be there and are eager for new information.
If I could teach anything, I would probably teach quilting. I love quilting and would love to spread that love around. I would actually make a terrible quilting teacher becuase I don’t now enough about it. I can make a baby quilt (that might be debatable if you saw the ugly mess I’ve made out of the binding of the current baby quilt I’m working on), but I don’t now very many fancy methods or even “correct” methods. I could probably use a few classes, frankly.
jeanette1ca said,
July 9, 2011 @ 11:03 am
If you do teach professionally again, consider community college/evening-weekend-online classes. The majority of the people are there because they want to be so the atmosphere is completely different than high school. My sister has talked me into teaching a daytime (monday 9:30-12:30) Excel class in the fall. I have a feeling I’m not going to enjoy dealing with the younger group of students nearly as much as I enjoyed the online class last spring. I know – teach an online quilting class for people who can’t cut material in a straight line – I’ll be your first student!!!!