Teaching: the Wonderful and Challenging Profession
Sarah Orosz
On a cold Friday afternoon in the middle of January, I conducted an interview that added several intensely surprising perspectives to my once solid impression of the teaching profession. My very gracious and informative interviewee was Ruby Zhao who currently teachers intermediate writing to Bowling Green undergraduate students. The interview itself was as smooth as silk. After I posed a question, Ruby would respond with thoughtful, honest answers. Often, the majority of her answers were astonishingly genuine, truthful, and straightforward. I now realize that this particular assignment was much more than a pleasant and educational conversation with a professional pedagogue, it was an experience that shattered the glossy bubble containing the image of what I considered the teaching profession to be.
Ruby opened my eyes with her sincere words about the ups and downs of teaching. She allowed me to grasp a deeper understanding of the blatant fact that teaching, like any other profession, has its share of trials and tribulations. I realize that the inside of a real high school classroom in America shifts from day to day. A class will not always reflect the picture perfect class room, with the teacher beaming as she writes on the chalkboard and her enthralled students smile back at her while diligently nodding and taking notes. The previously described image is not a typical classroom, and I can accept this now because of my discussion with Ruby. This interview revealed the surprising and wondrous aspects that the field of teaching has to offer. I truly feel enlightened because I can clearly identify several of the hard knocks in the realm of teaching and how teachers pull through to a brighter day. I now see teaching as a whirling, twirling roller coaster that is thrilling and unpredictable, but always worth the ride.
I am a writer. I always have been a writer because I have enjoyed creating words and putting them together on paper since I was a child. Writing is vital in my life because on a personal level. Writing is my escape from the troubles of the world to a place where nothing exists but the whirlwind of my thoughts and dreams. I know why writing is important to me, but what I really wanted to learn from Ruby was what role does writing play in the classroom? How is writing viewed from the perspective of a teacher? Ruby told me, “Writing is very important. People have to use writing to communicate.” She went on to explain that nearly every profession will require some degree of writing. Ruby also allowed me to realize that written communication is a part of every facet of a student’s daily life. From the moment they wake up and start sending e-mails and text messages, to the moment they snuggle under their covers to write in their private journals or hurriedly scribble a writing assignment that is due the next day. I am now aware of what an enormous part the action of writing plays in every branch of today’s society. Writing is inevitable and now that I have a firm grasp on this reality, I see how incredibly imperative the teaching of writing becomes.
Ruby’s thoughts about student writing helped me to shift into my questions concerning the realm of the classroom. My key questions were centered on my desire to know what life inside the classroom with a cognitively diverse group of students is truly like. I began by asking Ruby to share the one piece of helpful information that every new teacher should know. After a moment of thoughtful silence, Ruby revealed the following words, “I would think, not every student is a very capable writer. But every student has the potential to improve. Be sure to remember that not all students want to learn.” After Ruby uttered that final line, I felt as if a curtain had been lifted and I had been introduced to a whole new realm of teacher responsibility. I have been told time and time again that teachers need to motivate students. But hearing a professional verbalize the cold truth that some students simply do not want to absorb the knowledge that teachers work so hard to present was somewhat of a rude, yet much needed awakening,
Hearing Ruby’s honest answer was refreshing to me, because although I have mentally pictured wonderful teaching moments, I have not dedicated enough serious thought to the more demanding elements of my future career. This conversation with Ruby allowed me to stop and take the time to realize that not every student in my class will be like I was as a high school scholar. “Students are very different, some work very hard and some don’t like writing at all,” Ruby said. Many of them will have troubles with home life, or peer groups and will not care in the slightest what I have to say about a writing assignment on Toni Morrison’s Beloved. This creates a challenge that I will have to face, as well as every one of my fellow education majors. We all will have to struggle to pull our students into the intellectual worlds that we will create in the classroom environment. I will have to do everything in my power to create and teach writing assignments that will capture the attention of my students, and help them discover the motivation to complete a task to the best of their ability. I will choose topics that my students can easily relate to during their adolescent years.
However, I think it is also important for me to remember that my high school students are more than just teens, they are young adults who have the potential for greatness in the field of writing. I will treat them as young adults, and I will tell them all from day one that all of them can and will excel in my class if they open their minds and take in what I have to say. I will also let them know that in return they can teach me what they believe and understand about the world around them through writing. I will find ways to motivate my students to learn, because if a student is not involved in the learning process, then they are not learning. I need to spark the desire to know and understand. This makes me feel that my purpose as a teacher is truly honorable. However, I was soon to discover yet another new bump in the road to teaching.
After conversing for a while on the diversity of the student population at the college level, I asked Ruby is she could share a teaching story from her past that taught her an unforgettable lesson. Her first reaction was a small laugh, and then she shook her head saying, “Being a very good teacher is difficult. Always be prepared because there is always something that is unexpected”. She went on to tell a story from her first year of teaching English 111 to Bowling Green freshman. She had given out explicit instructions in the class computer lab that all students were supposed to complete an activity that involved finding online articles with spelling errors, and then cutting and pasting them to a Word document to print out. Ruby told all students to leave the back of their paper blank for revision notes. To her dismay in the middle of the period she noticed that the majority of her students had not followed her instructions at all, and she had to act. She changed her lesson at the last minute and took a different route because some students seemed bored. Lesson learned, expect the unexpected. This is a wonderful lesson that I will keep in my mind when I have my own class, and even earlier when I become a student teacher. I know that this lesson will be put into practice numerous times as I journey into the rather foreboding land of student teaching.
This lesson will benefit me as a student teacher because when I enter my assigned classroom, the students may be upset that I am not the teacher they have grown accustomed to through the school year. Also, the high school class I am teaching may not like some of my lessons or find them too confusing. These are the reasons why, as Ruby says, “You always need to be prepared, and always have another plan to fall back on. Be flexible”. Ruby now understands that she can look back on that experience and chuckle because it was a teaching fiasco that tested her skills as a planner and thinker. Being a teacher means thinking on your feet and making hundreds of decisions every day. As I enter the realm of classroom instruction, I understand that I will create activities that will not go according to plan, or lesson plans that students will not embrace with open arms. Overall, Ruby’s lighthearted story made me understand that sometimes, new teachers will make mistakes but in making these mistakes they learn and grow.
Near the end of our interview, I gleaned a final surprising element that is a significant thread in the tapestry of teaching. An element that must be addressed when it is encountered in the classroom or else negative outcomes will ensue. One of my final questions for Ruby was for her to explain what the biggest challenge was for her as a teacher of writing. Ruby breathed out, shrugged her shoulders and said, “So far, I have had a few excellent writers in my class. These students seemed to be a perfect writers, and I feared that I could not teach them anything!” This realization shocked me like a bucket of ice water! Ruby’s response was somewhat new to me. In the past, education professors have always stressed the fact that there will be students in our class who will fall behind and will need extra assistance before and after school. However, dealing with exceptionally gifted writing students is like seeing the other side of the coin. This also presents a challenge for me as a future teacher of writing because if I fail to make appropriate changes to advance the material for these students, then they will become bored in my class and waste time that could have been spent learning.
Ruby and I agree that there are always new lessons and ideas to be taught, no matter how bright a student is. It is up to the teacher to make the decision of how to handle extremely gifted students in order to make them want to learn. It is ironic that this final surprising element ties back to the previous two. If I am ever confronted with a student who is a gifted writer, as a teacher I will have to think on my feet, devise a new back up assignment for that student, and find methods to motivate that student to explore the knowledge that I have to offer. This proves that the various phases of teaching travel full circle. Everything teachers do, say, every activity, and every homework assignment will reflect how a teacher’s students will perform academically in the future. Teaching is both a fascinating and demanding career, but no matter what the teaching profession holds for me I will always be filled with Ruby’s final words of wisdom, “You have to have passion. You have to love what you do. Teaching is a wonderful thing”.