An essay of past goalsWhen I graduated with my bachelor degree and advanced to my teaching internship in 2011, I felt full of trepidation and naïveté. I knew I was fresh, ignorant, and inexperienced. I lined up my binders, sharpened my pencils, and hung my meager supply of “teacher clothes”. I pushed up my glasses and stepped before a group of wiggling seventh graders who probably mirrored my feelings on their first day of Junior High. It wasn’t long before my suspicions were confirmed. It was a beautiful year, albeit full of the blood, sweat, and tears that I have since come to associate with teaching. I walked out with confidence and not a little excitement for my first position as “Ms. Converse.” The spring passed and I waited eagerly for the letters, the calls, the interviews that I felt would inevitably lead me to my future classroom. I collected a handful of interviews-- none seemed promising, and no one called back. As September loomed, I realized that I would not be a teacher. Not yet, and certainly not in the middle of the Michigan Recession. The following spring, I tried again- and finally scored an interview for a Junior High English position. The interview was daunting, and I swallowed my nerves as I stared down a conference table with nearly ten interviewers. For thirty minutes I explained my experiences, my repertoire of classroom management strategies, my excitement about technology as it related to assessment. And then one question stopped me. “And what are your goals for the next five years?” I heard the answer in my mind bubble up automatically-- something about my future master’s degree and my excitement to devote myself to the community in which my students lived. But instead, I thought of the last year of failed interviews, of waiting for the new school year to turn over, of the year I spent working behind a cash register, thinking of the students who were not mine. “I just want to teach,” I said, my eyes stinging with emotion. “I just want so badly to be working with kids, it’s hard to see that far ahead. Wherever I am, my goal is to be working toward the success of students who are my own.”And they nodded with me like they knew. I got the job, and when I push up my glasses and step in front of my students every day, it is with the joy of those words that I have the privilege to plan for the next five years-- and beyond. My goals now are more sophisticated. I want to take my classroom-- now at the High School teaching American English-- and invigorate a curriculum of reading “dead, old, white guys”. I want to use technology to reach my low level, resistant readers AND my proficient readers. I want to teach with creativity, equity, and efficiency. I want to ensure that ALL my students can access the skills needed to deliver their own five-year plan. I want to inspire my students to dedicate their own blood, sweat, and tears toward their carefully crafted dreams. My goals haven’t dramatically changed, since all teachers want these things, but they now have the refinement afforded by experience, by real students, and the ability to iterate year after year in a job I love. And since the entirety of these was my goal in the beginning, I think I am well on my way. Want a printable copy of this post?
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