Who Loves Being A Teacher?

I do!! I truly do. Why?

Overall: Many students would come to my classroom worried about how they would do in chemistry. It was very satisfying to help them by teaching them the brain-based strategies they needed in order to be successful and learn to believe in themselves.

Specifically:

1. I love to learn and it is very satisfying to help students find joy in learning.

2. When I help a student work through their confusion to find success that makes me happy.

3. It is gratifying and meaningful to help students and see the positive impact my efforts make.

4. Kids are fun! They bring a lot of positive energy to the classroom and once they get to know you (after the first month of a new school year) they are great! There are always some that are not as much fun initially because they are not happy and have some issues but those students challenge me to be a better teacher and find ways to reach them, if possible.

5. Teaching is a challenging endeavor and I like to be challenged.

6. I love my subject area of science and so when I create lesson plans I’m studying something I enjoy.

   
   

What can make it so that a teacher doesn’t love teaching?

1. They are new to teaching and feel overwhelmed by the work load. Here are some proposed solutions that worked well for me:

   
   

   1. Classroom management: If your students are being rude and out of control you will not like teaching. Modify your behavior management plan until it works for you. Once you have a plan that you like, be consistent with your consequences. Gain control even if you’re worried that the students won’t like you. If you are clear, fair and consistent, they will like you.

   2. Grading: Do not take grading home or reduce the amount of time that you grade at home. SO often teachers take student work home on a Friday just to bring the same student work back to the classroom on Monday ungraded. Put your time and energy into your lesson plans and implement grading/evaluating student work into the school day. Students will appreciate the instant feedback and you will feel fresher and have a happier attitude in class. Example strategies: In-class peer evaluation with a clear scoring guide, gallery walks of student work, online quiz review games like Kahoot, Google quiz where you make the test key ahead of time and the software scores it as soon as it’s submitted, Socratic Seminars, debates, etc..

   3. Highjacking of your prep period: Try and protect your prep period. SO many times admin or others plan meetings during your prep period because you are not teaching. You NEED that time to: plan, grade, gather supplies, etc…Stand up for yourself. I know that is hard when you are not tenured yet but a good administrator will understand that you need your prep time to Prep!

      
      

2. They have very challenging students and the school atmosphere is not good. This is a tough situation for teachers. If the administration is not effective and supportive of their teachers and are too lenient with consequences this pushes all of the responsibility back on the teacher. I have had this situation at times in my teaching career so this is when I modified my consequences to be more effective on my own regardless of the current administration. This proved to work very well for me because the students realized very quickly that I would rarely send students to the office but preferred to handle consequences in my own classroom (I’d sometimes go two school years without sending a student). If a student zipped through all of my steps in one period then I’d reach out to the parents/guardian. I also worked hard to keep my students happily engaged in interesting lessons. Engaged students are way less likely to be off task and create problems.

   
   

Final Thought: I enjoyed my teaching more and more as I gained experience. If you are new to teaching, be kind to yourself. It is a tough job but if you choose to stay, you’ll enjoy it more and more as you learn strategies to improve your teaching without working harder! I’ve shared my learning on this topic in my book written to help teachers, “Wait, Don’t Quit.”

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