The Freakout

On Tuesday, when the last student left my classroom I sat in the empty room for a couple of minutes, contemplated the day, and almost broke down. Nothing was going right. My lessons were not well planned and I ended up having to drag them out to fill the impossibly long hour and a half slots, leaving both myself and my students bored with the material. The three classes are at vastly different levels and I had no idea how to cater to three different groups in a single day. My students were openly disrespectful to the point of laughing at me literally behind my back when I was writing on the board. Meanwhile, I was wracking my brain to figure out how to plan culturally competent lessons in reading comprehension without anything for the class to read! Not only were there no textbooks, there were no books of any sort that were suitable to what I needed. How the hell do you teaching reading without books?! The straw that broke the camel’s back was when my supervising teacher was unexpectedly called into another meeting and left me with the most rambunctious class again. They walked all over me, and I spent the next hour playing crowd control rather than teaching.



So there I was with my head in my hands and my entire world crumbling around me. What the hell was I doing? I was not only looking forward to, but praying for, the final bell almost within the first fifteen minutes into the school day. This was no way to lead a life. I want to feel good about what I do with my life, not be terrified by it and left crying every day. Even since my last internship in Seattle, I had gotten a feeling that teaching is not necessarily my forte and that my passions and talents are more geared towards trying to make education more effective through research, theory and policy work. Even so, I planned on teaching for a couple years before heading down that path just to get some worthwhile experience. By the end of Tuesday I doubted with all of my being that I could survive even a year in a classroom on my own. Who was I kidding? I was terrible at this. Maybe, if I gritted my teeth hard enough, practiced enough self denial, and counted the days until April I would possibly be able to make it through my entire internship without quitting on the spot and taking the next plane straight back to LA.



Luckily, I’ve learned from the Jesuits never to make an important decision during or immediately after a time of desolation. I spoke to Mr. Nolberto about books and he said, “Of course! All you have to do is ask!” and pulled out a crate of “New Caribbean Junior Readers” full of relevant short stories for me to photocopy and make worksheets. He then told me that since one of the Language Arts teachers begins University classes in the mornings next week that from next week on we will only be working in 45 minute sessions in the afternoon, giving me smaller blocks to fill and the entire morning to plan and grade.



Two of the three classes are still terrible toward me. However, I had a successful time having one of them do group work on Wednesday and will try to build on my success. In the other class, I had to yell at them that they were behaving terribly and once I finally had most of their attention, found (smelled) that one of the students was lighting paper on fire underneath his desk. Mr. Nolberto said he is going to have a talk with them today which is likely to put the fear of God into any class.



So, back from the brink of the abyss, things are looking up. I’m feeling much more confident about my lessons for next week, and feel like I have the materials to back me up. If there is one thing I’ve learned about the life of a teacher so far, it is that it is a rollercoaster ride to say the least.