Blog over what I have learned in my first year of teaching:

I have just completed my first year of teaching. I have learned an incredible amount from teaching, way more than I initially thought that I would.  To start, I would say that I have experienced some things that maybe not all first year teachers have experienced.  We all have our first year journey, and mine has certainly been an interesting one.  There have been so many highs, so many that I can’t even count, while there have also been some lows.  These lows included are of course a few classroom management struggles I wasn’t planning on and a pandemic that closed down the school for the end of the year.  

One major thing that I have learned is patience.  I have been praying for years for God to work with me on my patience.  My patience has always been the spiritual gift that I feel I have lacked the most.  However, since teaching, I have found I have the capability to be patient in many different situations.  I still have lost my patience more than I would have liked to.  This is something that I am hoping to continue to grow in next year and many years after.  Now, that I have experienced a lot of different situations, I am hoping that I will continue to be more patient when I am experiencing a similar situation in the future.  

I have also discovered a lot about grace since I have started working as a teacher.  I think that it can be very easy as a person to not have a good relationship with a particular person/student and to then avoid them.  There are a few students that I didn’t and still don’t personally click with as well.   They may misbehave, talk back, or not follow directions. However, I have instead learned about grace throughout many different times and situations in this year. This is, of course, in  giving people endless changes, and creating a new day out of, well, everyday.  To give one example, at the beginning of the year, there was one particular student who I didn’t necessarily get along with, but today I actually talk to a lot.  After a lot of grace and prayers, we get along a lot better than we did at the beginning of the year and a lot better than I would have believed if you would have told me that at the beginning of the year.  Grace mattered, and that is something I am going to continue to work on with other students.  I have also learned this from my fellow teachers that I work with.  They are amazing at showing grace and giving endless chances to students, and I have tried my best to learn from them.  

I also learned how to be flexible.  I think there are many times in life when we have to be flexible.  This flexibility and the willingness to be flexible is another showcase of giving God your control.  This means one is willing to go with whatever life gives you.  They tell you many times when you are studying to become a teacher, that you may need to be flexible and willing to change your plans.  There were days when people ended up having to be gone because of sports that I wasn’t planning on, or there were days you could just tell the students are too upset to really learn a lot of content.   There were days when we had to spend some time talking out our problems.  (This was, of course, with the smaller classes). I learned to assess situations and make changes based on that.

This year as many people know, we (as teachers and students) all over the nation had to complete our fourth quarter of the year online because of COVID-19.  For my particular school policy, we had a few weeks of optional learning, but then we moved into required online learning for the last few weeks of school.  This resulted in having to create my lesson plans, that were new from the beginning for me, to now be done online separate from my students on a computer screen.  This has become an interesting challenge.  I have learned a few more online resources though that I definitely want to try in the future with my classes when we meet in person.  This has taught me how to be creative in a situation that no one from the beginning of the year could have expected.  This will, again, hopefully help me be more and more ready to handle any other new and interesting situation that will come my way.  

One thing that I will say that I have learned best about this year is that I am so proud to be a teacher.  Every time that someone asks me what I do for a living, I absolutely love saying that I am a teacher and that I teach kids.  I love getting the chance to tell stories about the kids and their classroom shenanigans. I love getting the chance to say what the students have all learned, and some of the fun activities or projects that we have gotten to create or complete.  I love watching my students learn new things and start to become the person that they are.  I am so incredibly proud to be my student’s teacher.  I have compassionate, kind, hardworking, and funny students.   

Talking back to the social distancing teaching, even though that was a lot harder than one would think, there was an increasing appreciation for my students.  When I first heard that we weren’t going to be meeting in person for, at the time, four weeks, I was so sad.  I instantly thought of how much I wanted to spend more time in the classroom with my students, especially the students that were going to be graduating at the end of the year.  I felt bad that students weren’t going to get to participate in their spring activities, and how I wanted to support my students in those events.  But something that I did have was Google meets and meeting with my students on the computer.  I was incredibly pleased when I had my google meets.  For a majority of the time, we actually spent a good amount of time talking and catching up about what the students have been doing and how they are doing.  I appreciated it so much, and I was instantly filled with joy for the small amount of interaction I got to have with them.  This will hopefully be something I remember and really appreciate next year.  Even on days that are harder to get up in the morning, I am hoping that I will remember how much I missed the regularity of seeing them and appreciate them every second longer.    

The following is a poem that I wrote that will hopefully be something that I remember in all future years of teaching and working with children. 

A Teacher’s Prayer:

Lord, please help me to achieve all that you need me to today
Give me eyes to see the whole child
Help me hear the cries of the hurting child
Grant me patience to work with the defiant child

God, help me to see beyond the surface
Help me to listen beyond the complaints and yells,
Help me comfort the upcoming fears
Help me to empathize with the tears

God grant me patience when the students don’t listen
God grant me grace to forgive any misunderstandings
God grant me peace to be steady amongst chaos
God grant me God’s love that I can give out to everyone

God, please guide me in all things
guide the right words to speak
Please guide me in the content that I teach
Guide me in confidence and assurance

Lord help me to do my best
To be the teacher that my students need and deserve
To be the kind mentor and listener
To be able to forgive myself and fix my mistakes

Lord, I pray for my students
I pray for their continued safety
I pray for their growth, both in education and life
I pray for their character, and that it will prosper
I pray for their future and that it will be incredibly bright