Language grace!

@Nightmare Fuel  
It was a joke when I said that I don’t have to deal with stupid shit as a teacher, but I really do enjoy it. The workload is disproportionately heavy to the pay, so you need a strong passion for either kids or your subject (ideally both) to do it, but it’s extremely rewarding. I teach history, geography, and social studies, and I never tire of seeing the look on students’ faces as new understanding of the world dawns on them. At times it can be a challenge to spark their interest, get them to participate, teach the required material, and manage trouble makers at the same time, but even then it can be a fun challenge if you approach it the right way.
 
For example, during my student teaching, I had a kid who liked to goof off in economics class. One day, I was teaching about co-owned companies and asked for a volunteer to suggest an idea for a sample company. He immediately shouted out that our company should be pot dealers. This could have been a disruption of the lesson if I’d gotten mad about it, but instead, I turned it to my advantage. Here is approximately what I said: “We’re not going to do that. Let’s do a jelly-making company instead, okay? So Zach and I co-founded a jelly-making company, but we’re having a disagreement in how it should be run. I want to make raspberry jelly, and Zach wants to make pot-flavored jelly…” This of course made the whole class laugh, but since the joke was intertwined with the example I was using, I was able to go on with my example of how co-owned companies worked, and most of the students paid better attention to it than they were before, including Zach. Not only did students do well on the questions relating to that subject on the next test, that little moment of humor helped improve my rapport with Zach. He ended up being one of the students I had the best relationship with, and because he liked me, he toned down his joking in class and actually volunteered to help out a few times. Finding creative little tricks like that that is one the highlights of teaching for me.
 
If you have any other questions about teaching, I’d love to answer them.

@WatermelonRat  
is working as a teacher good? i personally can’t stand an environment like it, but i’d like to hear another perspective

I’m glad I quit retail to work as a teacher. Now I’ll never have to put up with stupid shit again.

“I’ve quit better jobs than this!”

Me Too Mrs.Manewitz, Me Too

my life as a moderator on another pastel horse website