Have you ever felt like you were living on a foreign planet? Educators can often feel that they have somehow been transported to a strange place where teenagers behave in a manner that is quite questionable at times. Sensory overload is definitely real. If a person is looking for a calm profession where you can sit in silence and work, a school setting is not for you.

When I was in college for my undergraduate degree, I took several classes from the education department. They taught us things about grading, making students take notes, how to structure test, and other general educational topics. When I began my student teaching, I had a preconceived notion that I would be like the teachers that I respected when I was in school. What I was met with was times were different and students were different. As I finished up my classes, we were instructed not to use red ink and not to trade and grade. The reason for this…sparing the feelings of the students. It was less threatening when the pen was a pretty purple or blue. What school did not teach me is that I would wear a bunch of different hats and some of them were nowhere even close to what school prepared me for. They don’t prepare you for students who are struggling with depression. They don’t teach you about how to approach students who have experienced a loss of a family member or friend. They do not teach you about kids who are hungry or exhausted from working a job shift that lasted well into the night. Teaching is much more than being a “glorified babysitter”.

As my teaching career has progressed, newer technology has been invented to make the life of students and teachers alike much simpler. There are platforms that allow kids to take notes on digital note cards. There are programs that can check for plagiarism. There are even programs that allow a student to talk and the computer will write it out.

Things are definitely not the way they used to be. Another way of teaching that I learned about during the pandemic was online or remote learning. To be honest, it didn’t go well because we had never done that kind of teaching and learning before. While it went okay by the end, it definitely took time to get the routine down.

It wasn’t until I began my graduate classes that I became more informed about online teaching and learning. I discovered through the journal articles, the presentations, and independent sources I researched gave me a better understanding of the elements involved with distance learning. I like that I can take the lessons that I learned about bias, gender, and creating lessons that can engage students and teach my colleagues about the new technologies that can be utilized for collaboration. I find that the more I learn the better teacher that I become.

When asked why I want to teach at the high school level I answer them with the fact that I can have meaningful discussions with them. We can talk about hard things. Every day is an adventure as a teacher. It is not always a good adventure, but it is always a learning experience. Life is constantly a learning process. Where and how people learn may vary, but it happens sometimes without not even realizing that we are learning. I remember watching “School House Rock” and singing along with the cartoons. Little did I know that I was learning lessons that I carry with me still to this day.

Bringing this back to the title of this blog post, is there anyone out there who can share with me the experience of educating the young? If you feel like you are alone on planet weird, just know that you are not. Banding together as the educators of the youth of America, can fill the empty feeling when you experience bad days. Whether the learning experience is in person or online, students have the same basic needs. They need to feel seen, heard, and respected as do the teachers. Learning is a reciprocal arrangement that requires all parties to be involved. If grad school taught me anything, it taught me to be open minded and willing to learn from others. So, if you find yourself feeling like you have landed on the isle of weird, just know that you are in good company.

Until next time,

Cat