Teacher or Lunatic?

This teacher craic is overwhelming!

When I signed up for this course, I had many friends who had completed or were in the middle of completing the year long version, and I was accustomed to hearing of weeks spent locked away drowning in piles of lesson plans and nightmares about schemes of work and giving detentions to 100 students. I expected that my life was going to be take up by lots and lots of work. Turns out I seem, so far, to handle the work quite well. There are lots of reading lists to mull over and assignments to keep track of, but it's manageable at the minute. What I didn't anticipate was the lectures.

I spent three years in Maynooth in lectures, and I always just went in, took notes, and came out in the same mental state as I went in. This is now not the case. Before, my lectures were simply knowledge. They were fact, or at least the search for a fact (arts students get what I am on about). But now, I am surrounded by the intrinsic nature of students, the psychology of the individual, and the methods for planning 10 weeks of lessons around an every changing mass of hormonal teenagers. The importance of the job, the complications of trying to accommodate for 30 students who rotate every 40 minutes 5 days a week is nerve wrecking. You have to think of their learning styles, their economic stance, their social situation, their personal home life, their emotional issues, and try to steer them all towards not only being well rounded and functioning adults, but also beating the competition in the leaving certificate, which happens to be the entire population of 18 year olds in the country. No pressure.

When I was in Thailand I went to school every morning, I taught the kids how to order a McDonalds, or get a bus ticket, or describe their family. I then went to get a massage or a manicure. I don't mean to scare any prospective teachers who read this blog, but it's bloody scary thinking that as a teacher in western society the responsibility upon you is to basically create a functioning adult in 5-6 years. The modern education system is a lot more than fill their heads up with knowledge like we were taught. You have to teach them to control emotions, learn discipline and respect, and teach them a massive curriculum in a certain, very specific, way.

And you know what the mad thing is? As terrifying as it is, I secretly love it. After three years of a degree in subjects I naturally absorb, and two years of cruising job wise, it's invigorating to have a challenge, something to be concerned about, to think about, and to care about. That's why we all go into teaching, right? Cause we all could have had an office job, but we are are all really just insane. Its more interesting than a spreadsheet.

Amy.