The other day, I was giving my midyear presentation for the Einstein Fellowship, and talked about how I filter everything I do and learn through the lens of going back to the classroom. I know that's where I belong, teaching math to students is what I do best, and watching them grow personally and mathematically is what I enjoy.
HOWEVER ...
As much as I am excited to go back to the classroom in August, I am just as afraid. I won't have been in front of a class of students in over two years, thank you not at all, covid. My experience as a Fellow has been so different from the experience of my colleagues, and even more so, as they've taught remotely, in a hybrid setting, and with masks on every day. That's a situation that can bind people together, and I'm not there. Additionally, my school has switched from a nine-period-a-day, 42-minute class period schedule to a block schedule with 85 minute periods. The closest I've been to a block schedule is teaching summer school. Also, I think two of the courses I have most recently taught have gone through some curriculum changes, and I think the third is in process.
The upshot is that at an age where I should probably start thinking seriously about retirement, I will most likely feel like a brand new teacher all over again. That scares me; that's a discomfort I've not felt in a long time. And it's a feeling I've been missing. I applied for the Fellowship to shake me up a bit. Well, I've been shaken, stirred, spun around, and turned upside down the last two years, and it's been great. So while the roller coaster I'm going to be on next year will be familiar in some ways to the one I left two years ago, there will be new twists, unexpected drops, and exciting turns. It's going to be scary.
And it's going to be fun.
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