The Rewards Of Teaching

     I love teaching. I wish that I could get back into the classroom. During the brief time that I spent student teaching (sixth grade social studies and English as a second language students at Jo Lane Middle School in Roseburg, and language arts students at Oakland High School), I discovered many rewards in teaching students. But I didn't realize that my short time in the classroom three years ago would yield positive results now. More about that later in this blog entry.
     The students loved me at Jo Lane. They planned a surprise party for me on my last day. I had been there two terms, or two-thirds of the school year, so I had become a "fixture" in the classroom almost as much as their regular teacher.
     During the surprise party, they showered me with sweet treats (I got to go first in the line at the baked goods buffet), and one student even gave me a bag with an apple in it. How sweetly appropriate! To top it off, the students had each signed their names and written a thank you message to me on a giant sheet of roll-out paper.
     To be honest, teaching high school students presented more of a challenge. After hearing the reports that teaching seventh grade students was the hardest year for teaching, I was surprised to have encountered difficulties at the high school, after my smashing success at the junior high level. But to be objective, I should have expected it. Having been taught by a popular teacher for the entire year, suddenly a newcomer enters the classroom spring term with a different teaching style.
     I endeavored to break that barrier by introducing some innovative student-centered activities that I learned attending Graduate school at the University of Oregon College of Education (jigsaw exercises, small-group student presentations, etc.). But despite resistance by some of the students, the experience was still a positive one, in the sense that I learned multi-tasking first hand! During my section on teaching the novel The Great Gatsby, one student just didn't "get it," regardless of how many times I tried to explain the plot to the student.
     I sought some advice from the special education teacher, who found a graphic novel of The Great Gatsby, where all of the characters looked like space aliens. Don't think that wasn't an interesting challenge, trying to incorporate a customized lesson plan for that one student, while I was teaching the "regular" novel to the remaining class!
     But I never gave up on my high school students. During the two weeks that I worked as a substitute at North Medford High School, one student told me that I was her favorite substitute teacher. Why? Because I was the only substitute teacher who came to class prepared with a lesson plan, instead of other substitute teachers who talked all period and gave the students "busy work" to do.
     During the last 26 months that I've been battling cancer, I assumed that my short tenure as a teacher had been forgotten by students. But I was wrong. This week I visited a restaurant owned by the parents of one of my former students. The mother and daughter came in to the restaurant while I was there. They came to my table, excited to show me the paperwork from a school evaluation session where they had just been.
     The daughter had received straight As in all of her classes, and received glowing recommendations on her coursework by her teachers. It had been three years since I had taught the daughter, but her family nonetheless remembered me and wanted to include me in the good news they had just learned.
     I would love to return to the high school classroom. A class on "Detective Fiction" based on my Detective Fiction class that I took at the University of Oregon. Or an "Asian Literature" class, again based on a class I had at the UO. How about an  "Old English" class, where I can introduce students to Paradise Lost in a contemporary lesson plan that's easy to understand, based on the semester-long "Milton" class that I took? After taking "Advanced Shakespeare" in college, I would love to teach a full year of the subject, one semester of the tragedies and one semester of the comedies. Or, my first love of social studies would be enhanced in teaching an "Advanced Placement U.S. History" class, incorporating some of the work I did in a Graduate level course of the American Revolution.
     For now, while I battle cancer, I have to content myself with reading some of the books and coursework that I studied in college. At least I'll be able to keep my own mind sharp, even if I currently don't have the opportunity to help sharpen the minds of today's youth.