My Inner Teacher
When I was seven, I wanted to be a ballerina. When I was ten, I realized I'd rather be a choreographer because serious lifestyle clash. When I was fourteen, I didn't want to do anything but read. Forever. When I turned fifteen I decided to write instead. And so I did. Do. Both.
My entire academic path is built on an obscure privilege: I am a reader. My high test scores and academic success are all due to this inadvertent fact. It required no discipline to achieve, did reading. Schoolwork required some discipline, but since it's mostly reading and writing, I had a huge advantage.
My career trajectory is based more than I care to admit on this: I want to read and write as much as possible. Under all the rhetoric of having a "calling" and "following my passion" is that simple fact: I am a reader. But reading and writing do not help with the single skill I never acquired, and never wanted to acquire: teaching. I am not a teacher. Yet.
Teaching is the necessary evil of "reading and writing" (any graduate humanities degree). I've been teaching for seven years (more, if you include k-12), though not usually in my field. And when a student asked me today if I liked teaching, I said NO! It was an unfortunate, instinctive reaction, but very honest. I dislike doing anything I'm not already good at, and I make all the mistakes. Sometimes more than once. And if somebody were to tell me that I would be teaching freshman composition forever, I would give up and drive a bus.
Last year I hit the zenith of frustration. The bad way. I had long passed the reach of pure reader talent in my academic career. I needed help, and couldn't get any because nearly all strategies for success in graduate school are passed on socially, and I am a first-gen grad student. I was also facing a grade dispute from a very bitter student, and that's a crazy disheartening experience, even when you win (and I did, of course). And then God called me to be a ward organist.
Sometimes, from where we fall, we can see the next step. I couldn't. I just saw a whole life of such failures, fading blacker and blacker into the distance. And then God asked me to fail again. Very publically. He knew I had never been a ward organist, even if I had had the technical training. I could only imagine that somebody had made a mistake, and that I was to humbly suffer it. Again.
But looking back now, I see something I couldn't see then.
My mother hates public speaking. She shakes and ums, and suffers all kinds of psychosomatic anxiety. She hates teaching adults. But when I was little, she learned to accompany my ballet class on the piano so she could afford to give me lessons.
I'm her reverse. I can't play the organ without shaking, and insomnia, and stomach problems. But I can stand in front of anybody and say nearly anything (it has gotten me in trouble more than once) and feel no fear. That is my gift. That is the seed of my teaching talent. From that, I have added the ability to get my students involved in a discussion. And if I practice really hard, I can be good at this someday. As old as I am, it's never too late to try to be better.
And Mum's taking piano lessons again, too.
My entire academic path is built on an obscure privilege: I am a reader. My high test scores and academic success are all due to this inadvertent fact. It required no discipline to achieve, did reading. Schoolwork required some discipline, but since it's mostly reading and writing, I had a huge advantage.
My career trajectory is based more than I care to admit on this: I want to read and write as much as possible. Under all the rhetoric of having a "calling" and "following my passion" is that simple fact: I am a reader. But reading and writing do not help with the single skill I never acquired, and never wanted to acquire: teaching. I am not a teacher. Yet.
Teaching is the necessary evil of "reading and writing" (any graduate humanities degree). I've been teaching for seven years (more, if you include k-12), though not usually in my field. And when a student asked me today if I liked teaching, I said NO! It was an unfortunate, instinctive reaction, but very honest. I dislike doing anything I'm not already good at, and I make all the mistakes. Sometimes more than once. And if somebody were to tell me that I would be teaching freshman composition forever, I would give up and drive a bus.
Last year I hit the zenith of frustration. The bad way. I had long passed the reach of pure reader talent in my academic career. I needed help, and couldn't get any because nearly all strategies for success in graduate school are passed on socially, and I am a first-gen grad student. I was also facing a grade dispute from a very bitter student, and that's a crazy disheartening experience, even when you win (and I did, of course). And then God called me to be a ward organist.
Sometimes, from where we fall, we can see the next step. I couldn't. I just saw a whole life of such failures, fading blacker and blacker into the distance. And then God asked me to fail again. Very publically. He knew I had never been a ward organist, even if I had had the technical training. I could only imagine that somebody had made a mistake, and that I was to humbly suffer it. Again.
But looking back now, I see something I couldn't see then.
My mother hates public speaking. She shakes and ums, and suffers all kinds of psychosomatic anxiety. She hates teaching adults. But when I was little, she learned to accompany my ballet class on the piano so she could afford to give me lessons.
I'm her reverse. I can't play the organ without shaking, and insomnia, and stomach problems. But I can stand in front of anybody and say nearly anything (it has gotten me in trouble more than once) and feel no fear. That is my gift. That is the seed of my teaching talent. From that, I have added the ability to get my students involved in a discussion. And if I practice really hard, I can be good at this someday. As old as I am, it's never too late to try to be better.
And Mum's taking piano lessons again, too.
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