learning about…..myself

When people ask what you do, and you say, oh ‘I work in a school’ (cause I hate saying I am a teacher because I hate the connections with standing up the front lecturing), which then leads to are you a teacher (yeah…) the next question is (nearly) always ‘oh what do you teach?’ I say ‘I teach kids’ or if I can be bothered, I say something like ‘I’m learning about chem with some awesome kids’. Or at the moment we are learning about soldering, or static electricity, or energy or whatever it happens to be. this occasionally gets me into trouble with other teachers or parents or Jo Bogs who think that teachers should know what they are ‘teaching’. Again, depending on the mood, I either eye roll internally and talking about the idea of reciprocal learning/ako with as much patience as I can while trying to check my frustration that they actually think I don’t know a thing….. or I laugh it up as a completely incompetent person who knows nothing who is being left alone with a class full of kids. And gets paid for it. Sucks to do your job, right? And did I tell you about the holidays

But I am also starting to wonder about why I get so defensive about this?

I read a great post recently about having growth mindset only sometimes. When do you decide enough is enough? When do you cut your loses and realised perhaps something isn’t for you? There are so many awesome ideas and strategies and ALL THE THINGS you can do, so how do you decide what to do.

And also, how do you decide when other people are just being arseholes? How much do I need to justify myself to them? Do I just let them be horrid and stop trying to think around all the ways I could change to help them more, or make them understand more, or make them feel better. And what point do I need to stand up and go – HEY, that is not ok.

It is a bit crass, but this kind of sums it up – not safe for work language. Definitely not safe for work language.

 

I genuinely try to be positive. I do have a temper (ask the hubby and/or the odd person I’ve snapped at) and occasionally say flippant things that have more of an impact than I intended. But if people keep building walls/finding excuses/not being even willing to entertain a conversation then why waste time on them?

I’ve always loved the line ‘you catch more flies with honey than vinegar’ (even if it is, or maybe because it is, scientifically inaccurate. But maybe sometimes I need to be a bit stronger about why I do things the way I do.

And then yesterday this beautiful image popped up (on failblog of all places)

 

So I guess this in linking into my last post about not having the ‘words’ to describe what I am trying to do. How I can’t put it into a unit plan. How I am struggling to tell people what I am trying to achieve, either in general conversation or in a more professional context. A big question during NAPP is ‘what is your moral purpose?’. Could I show the picture above and leave it at that?

Or do I just quietly say, yip, I’m a teacher, I teach Science and Chem and leave it at that?