As if conjured by a charm, images of this past year's Period 4 English experience flooded my mind. While I LOVED the kids in that class as individuals, together as a group they drove me to the brink of madness and I can say that publicly and candidly because they know it.
They also know that I loved them and that to this day, I will go out of my way to help any of them but I'll never sugarcoat how difficult it was to teach them.
Fortunately, they had me as their teacher and I'm not saying that to sound conceited or to imply that I'm the world's greatest teacher because I'll be the first to admit that I'm not; I have A LOT of faults as an educator however luckily, the way I feel about and understand teenagers isn't one of them.
Did my Period 4 English class purposefully try to drive me insane? No. Was the atmosphere of that class the fault of an individual(s)? No. Would the experience of that same group of students have been the same if it had a different teacher? NO.
Then why was teaching that group of kids difficult?
I don't know - it just was and that's the point of this post.
Teaching is not easy - AT ALL. But learning isn't easy, either. And unfortunately, there isn't much that can be done to make either of them fool proof and, in my opinion, that's ok as long as both parties try its hardest to put forth a positive attitude and a true effort and, most importantly, as long as both parties care about one another as individuals. Mutual respect goes A LONG WAY in the classroom and in the long run, will teach a student more than a text book ever could.
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