How teaching helped me prepare to be a mother, and how being a mother helped me be a better teacher.7/10/2019 Teaching is the hardest job. It's thankless. We are expected to get up the next morning with a smile and put on a "show" of the happy, sage educator when the day before one of our students yells at us, "f*** you!"
How teaching helped me prepare to be a mother... NO HARD FEELINGS For a long time I took it personally, but I got over it and learned that those insults had little to do with me, but mostly with the struggle that students were facing on the inside, and occasionally I made it worse. I learned to be more empathetic and patient, and realized over time that students don't care how much you know until they know how much you care. And when we both show up the next day and I say to them, "hey, I'm glad you're here today," I'm showing that student that there's no hard feelings, that I still care about them. Same for tiny people! When my toddler needs to take a time-out I DO get very frustrated at the moment because why the heck did you just hit your sister in the head with your train AGAIN after I told you NOT to TWICE, but when those 10 minutes are up we talk, we hug, we go right back to playing with trains (on the tracks, NOT on sissy's head). ONE THING AT A TIME Teaching also taught me how to handle keeping 10 tabs open at once in my head, and how to juggle 10 jobs to be completed in varying order by the end of the week. All while remembering to breathe and pee. Cue kids. Babies and toddlers require A LOT of patience. I really want to take a break sometimes and leave the room (and I've done that on occasion to REALLY calm myself down), but I need to remember back to when I was teaching and get a handle of doing one. thing. at. a. time. It's the only way I got anything completed when I was teaching and it's the only way I've been able to keep my kids fed, changed, and happy, while getting the laundry done, groceries bought, and dinner made. I NEED A BREAK...BUT I CAN'T CALL IN SICK It's SO HARD to go right back to playing with trains when just the moment before my toddler pitched a fit about not wanting to go to the potty and then pooped his pants a minute later (we're potty training). And as I'm cleaning him up his baby sister is wailing in her crib to be fed. One person against 2 little ones is TOUGH. I just want a BREAK sometimes. i want to flop on the couch and watch "Stranger Things." But teaching taught me how to handle the go-go-go and how to APPRECIATE the times when I actually CAN take a break (like when both kids are napping!). Listening to podcasts while folding the laundry is also a game-changer. How becoming a mother taught me how to be a better teacher... WAIT TIME Watching my toddler develop listening and speaking skills is truly amazing. I remember being shocked and awed when I could tell Eli to do something like, "go pick up that ball" and he would execute the entire command. What was EVEN MORE amazing was when I strung commands together ("go put the ball in the basket") and he did it. Now he's my big helper-tiger and puts baby sister's diapers in the trash can! If he's got a job to do, he's set. He is 2 now and is at that stage where his vocabulary is EXPLODING. He's repeating everything he hears (uh-oh...) and is really growing his range of sounds. I've learned that when I speak, whether it's giving a command, asking a question, or telling him to repeat a word I'm saying, I need to give him several seconds of wait time. His brain needs time to process the information I'm sending. I can't stand it when other people ask him a question and when he doesn't respond immediately they ask again OR tell him the answer. Like, give the kid 5 seconds to think about what words he want to choose to use and I promise you, he will amaze you. I feel like I WAS THE IMPATIENT PERSON when I taught! I need to give my students more wait time to process what I'm saying, and to think of a response, and I'm sure they will amaze me too. THE WAY WE LEARN MATH SHOULD BE THE WAY MY SON LEARNED TO USE A FORK The first time Eli used a fork it was messy. The second time was messy too. It took him a long time to figure out how to get most of his food in his mouth. He's pretty good at using a fork now, but when he first started and did a poor job at feeding himself I didn't take the fork away, sigh, and say, "well, better luck with the spoon!" NO WAY! We kept giving it to him because we knew he would get it right, out of necessity of feeding himself. And we didn't make him feel BAD for sucking at using a fork, in the same way we shouldn't make students feel bad with a grade for not mastering a concept within a week or two after we introduce it. That's why in the classroom I use Standards-Based Grading and multiple demonstrations of mastery. Actually I started doing both of these in the classroom before I had kids, so allowing my students to fail and dust themselves off and try again with no finger-wagging from me helped me be a better mom when my kids struggle with things (like potty training- OY). Now in the classroom I'm moving towards a written-feedback-only strategy (without grade) to drive the learning further. Becoming a mother has been a wild ride, and I believe teaching has helped me through some tough bits. I also now have a few more nuggets of wisdom after raising two children for a few years to use when I return to the classroom next year. Is there anything you've learned from your kids (whether school kids or home kids) to help you be a better parent or teacher? I'd love to read them in the comments:) Take care!
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AuthorTracy Conte is a high school math teacher in Raleigh, NC. Archives
November 2019
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