I have had the great opportunity to teach not only in the United Stated, but also in Puerto Rico, and I have noticed the same feeling at the end of the teaching cycle - once I have to include grades into the system a part of me feels like something is never going to be the same. As the school year comes to an end, I find myself not looking forward to that end date or the closure of another great year of academic achievements by students, but feeling a little melancholic.
I have always felt comfortable in the academic environment to the point that I look at a year not from January to December, but from August to May and summer is that time in the middle. That begging of the year has always brought great joy to my life, while the end has been a time of closure and looking forward to the next big challenge. Probably that is the reason why I feel like I do at this point, but what calls my attention is not how I feel, but why do I feel differently towards the closing of the year in college education vs. primary education.
While relief is the best adjective I can use to describe the end of the school year, wonder and wanting more best describe the end of the college semester. This has been the first time that I have had the opportunity to teach both levels at the same time and thus, the first time I can really compare the end in both settings. Never before I had the chance to notice, but looking back I know that this is not the first time.
From an educator’s point of view, teaching should be teaching and students should be students - so why then the end of a cycle comes with full of different of emotion?
The primary education experience:
Who ever said that teaching is an easy job, should become a substitute teacher for a week and then tell me what they think. Most people I talk to tell me the same thing, it must be hard dealing with children the whole day. To those that think that teaching middle school or high school students is hard, would be amazed at the ease which the job comes sometime.
Teaching at the primary level is much like an office job - the week starts on Monday and you come in with a plan for the day or the week. You do the best you can to keep to that plan, but as many teachers will tell you, staying on the planned schedule is not easy. The same is true for any other work environment, Monday rolls around and although you may come with a plan for the week, that plan is usually pushed to the back because you have to deal with things that come up during the day. As Friday rolls around, in both settings, you just want the week to be over and get a couple of days off to listen to the sound of quietness.
Teaching primary level students is not just about teaching. In a given day, you have to deal with many personalities in a brief period of time every day. Those personalities change as much as the weather and they bring with them the baggage not only from their homes, but from their last 30 minutes and that is sometimes hard to deal with. Add to those personalities, the personalities of all the other people - the administration trying to control and make it a better work environment, the other teachers trying to get their material through to the students and finally the parents trying to look after the best interests of their children. If you have never been inside a classroom or you forgot what it used to be like, you probably think is sounds just like any office - that is my point, teaching at the primary level is just like any other job, with a few more perks.
A week off here and two months off there would be the first thing that calls attention to any person as a great perk of being a teacher. To me, that week off goes by too fast and those two months sometimes get annoying without anything to do - sometimes that lovely summer vacation that teachers look forward to, becomes another job and at the end, a vacation is needed from the vacation. The real perk of teaching these students is when connections are made - when a student opens their eyes for the first time to a subject and realizes that what they thought was simple and just there, is a complex process now they truly comprehend. When a teacher becomes a guide and they can actually talk to them and get advice. When the problems that they thought would bring their world to pieces, is easily laid down before them.
I would not change my experience teaching students from 7th to 12th grade for anything in the world. What I have learned from them and the joy that it has brought to my days in not comparable with any thing that any other profession has to offer - but like many jobs, after a year of doing the same thing and dealing with the same people, sometimes you want a break. That is why the closing of the year comes as a great relief to many including myself. Although I wonder what could be done, I know that at the time I did the best I could and that next year - if I teach the same thing - I will make the necessary changes, but that is next year.
The college education experience:
I have taught so many different classes at the college level, that sometimes I wonder how could do I do it? At first as a Teaching Assistant in charge of classes or lecture and now as an Adjunct Professor, I have found myself filling in gaps and teaching what other do not want to teach. For this reason, my courses have changed depending on the needs of the Institution hiring me and the availability of classes depending on my free time.
Teaching a college course is nothing like a 9 to 5 - although the actual class time might be and hour and thirty minutes or three hours of lecture, the work that is behind the scenes is more like a 24-7. Preparing a class for a semester course takes time - class calendar, class syllabus, reviewing the material, lecture presentation, assessment preparation and grading, finally grade input.
With all the teaching resources now available to educators from publishing companies, most would think that you just go there and talk - I have to admit that I was one of them for a good 2 months and then pride and ambition kicked in. While it is true that publishers now facilitate the actual lecture time, the educator then has more time to come-up with other teaching tools to make the process of the student better - set-up a website and update it, record and edit classes to create podcasts, assess student performance and modify assessment according to class material and when the class preparation is done, study and research the next big thing to try in the course and see if it valid to incorporate to the class.
To the college professional, the work never ends in the classroom. Besides the mentioned work done before and after the class, then come in the other more personal things. Interaction with other professionals in the field is important, it not only helps to learn from others, but it is never bad to be known and recognized in the community. For this reason, a professor has to become part of various committees and faculty functions - to be known and respected means to have a job next semester. Opening doors and facilitating the student’s college experience through the knowledge attained by the professor is also a goal for many. The creation of programs and submitting proposals to create programs to be tested, is something most people outside the academic world do not know about, yet somehow becomes an every-day thing for a professional in the field of higher education.
The real interaction time between student-teacher is usually limited to once or twice a week - then you have people like me that have opened new channels for students to communicate through Tweeter accounts and chat-rooms. When all the time is added-up, the work done for a single class is overwhelming at times and the work done besides the class becomes a way of life.
The end of the academic cycle:
For a person not involved in the academic world, it might just come down to teaching a class to a bunch of students - to a professional, it is what we do and we try to do it at best of our capacities. So at the end of the cycle, the question still lingers, why feel different at the end of the school year?
I think I have answered my own question while I set down my thought to write this. While many would argue that a job is something you do to get paid and continue with your life, there are others that embrace work and make it part of their life. It comes down to what the educator does and how he feels about the work they are doing.
Many of my colleagues in both fields of education might tell me that I have missed many aspects of the day-to-day, and I agree. As I write I have remembered many other things that other teachers are doing in their classrooms, at the same time I have also remembered professors that do not necessarily do the things mentioned above for their normal day.
When it all comes down to it, I feel melancholic about the end of my academic year in college because I know that the next round starts in a week or two. Maybe it is the short semester that permits closure after six months of teaching a class and gives you a fresh start half-way through the year. Maybe I feel relief regarding my primary education students, because I know that I have taken them by the hand and helped them be ready to go to the next level.
In the end, primary education is like a marathon - you take your time and elaborate, you have the next day to fix any problems you saw in the day’s lesson, you plan ahead and wait to see what the students bring to the table. The college education environment is like a sprint - you put all your energy into short semesters and look back to see what you did and fix it for the next race, you make adjustments before it starts and hope that the preparation you put into the class results in the desired goal.
As many education professionals will say to anyone that asks, teaching is a joyful endeavor full of twist and turns, but in the end you know that you are helping students achieve their full potential and be productive members of society and that is a feeling that cannot be beat.
I have always felt comfortable in the academic environment to the point that I look at a year not from January to December, but from August to May and summer is that time in the middle. That begging of the year has always brought great joy to my life, while the end has been a time of closure and looking forward to the next big challenge. Probably that is the reason why I feel like I do at this point, but what calls my attention is not how I feel, but why do I feel differently towards the closing of the year in college education vs. primary education.
While relief is the best adjective I can use to describe the end of the school year, wonder and wanting more best describe the end of the college semester. This has been the first time that I have had the opportunity to teach both levels at the same time and thus, the first time I can really compare the end in both settings. Never before I had the chance to notice, but looking back I know that this is not the first time.
From an educator’s point of view, teaching should be teaching and students should be students - so why then the end of a cycle comes with full of different of emotion?
The primary education experience:
Who ever said that teaching is an easy job, should become a substitute teacher for a week and then tell me what they think. Most people I talk to tell me the same thing, it must be hard dealing with children the whole day. To those that think that teaching middle school or high school students is hard, would be amazed at the ease which the job comes sometime.
Teaching at the primary level is much like an office job - the week starts on Monday and you come in with a plan for the day or the week. You do the best you can to keep to that plan, but as many teachers will tell you, staying on the planned schedule is not easy. The same is true for any other work environment, Monday rolls around and although you may come with a plan for the week, that plan is usually pushed to the back because you have to deal with things that come up during the day. As Friday rolls around, in both settings, you just want the week to be over and get a couple of days off to listen to the sound of quietness.
Teaching primary level students is not just about teaching. In a given day, you have to deal with many personalities in a brief period of time every day. Those personalities change as much as the weather and they bring with them the baggage not only from their homes, but from their last 30 minutes and that is sometimes hard to deal with. Add to those personalities, the personalities of all the other people - the administration trying to control and make it a better work environment, the other teachers trying to get their material through to the students and finally the parents trying to look after the best interests of their children. If you have never been inside a classroom or you forgot what it used to be like, you probably think is sounds just like any office - that is my point, teaching at the primary level is just like any other job, with a few more perks.
A week off here and two months off there would be the first thing that calls attention to any person as a great perk of being a teacher. To me, that week off goes by too fast and those two months sometimes get annoying without anything to do - sometimes that lovely summer vacation that teachers look forward to, becomes another job and at the end, a vacation is needed from the vacation. The real perk of teaching these students is when connections are made - when a student opens their eyes for the first time to a subject and realizes that what they thought was simple and just there, is a complex process now they truly comprehend. When a teacher becomes a guide and they can actually talk to them and get advice. When the problems that they thought would bring their world to pieces, is easily laid down before them.
I would not change my experience teaching students from 7th to 12th grade for anything in the world. What I have learned from them and the joy that it has brought to my days in not comparable with any thing that any other profession has to offer - but like many jobs, after a year of doing the same thing and dealing with the same people, sometimes you want a break. That is why the closing of the year comes as a great relief to many including myself. Although I wonder what could be done, I know that at the time I did the best I could and that next year - if I teach the same thing - I will make the necessary changes, but that is next year.
The college education experience:
I have taught so many different classes at the college level, that sometimes I wonder how could do I do it? At first as a Teaching Assistant in charge of classes or lecture and now as an Adjunct Professor, I have found myself filling in gaps and teaching what other do not want to teach. For this reason, my courses have changed depending on the needs of the Institution hiring me and the availability of classes depending on my free time.
Teaching a college course is nothing like a 9 to 5 - although the actual class time might be and hour and thirty minutes or three hours of lecture, the work that is behind the scenes is more like a 24-7. Preparing a class for a semester course takes time - class calendar, class syllabus, reviewing the material, lecture presentation, assessment preparation and grading, finally grade input.
With all the teaching resources now available to educators from publishing companies, most would think that you just go there and talk - I have to admit that I was one of them for a good 2 months and then pride and ambition kicked in. While it is true that publishers now facilitate the actual lecture time, the educator then has more time to come-up with other teaching tools to make the process of the student better - set-up a website and update it, record and edit classes to create podcasts, assess student performance and modify assessment according to class material and when the class preparation is done, study and research the next big thing to try in the course and see if it valid to incorporate to the class.
To the college professional, the work never ends in the classroom. Besides the mentioned work done before and after the class, then come in the other more personal things. Interaction with other professionals in the field is important, it not only helps to learn from others, but it is never bad to be known and recognized in the community. For this reason, a professor has to become part of various committees and faculty functions - to be known and respected means to have a job next semester. Opening doors and facilitating the student’s college experience through the knowledge attained by the professor is also a goal for many. The creation of programs and submitting proposals to create programs to be tested, is something most people outside the academic world do not know about, yet somehow becomes an every-day thing for a professional in the field of higher education.
The real interaction time between student-teacher is usually limited to once or twice a week - then you have people like me that have opened new channels for students to communicate through Tweeter accounts and chat-rooms. When all the time is added-up, the work done for a single class is overwhelming at times and the work done besides the class becomes a way of life.
The end of the academic cycle:
For a person not involved in the academic world, it might just come down to teaching a class to a bunch of students - to a professional, it is what we do and we try to do it at best of our capacities. So at the end of the cycle, the question still lingers, why feel different at the end of the school year?
I think I have answered my own question while I set down my thought to write this. While many would argue that a job is something you do to get paid and continue with your life, there are others that embrace work and make it part of their life. It comes down to what the educator does and how he feels about the work they are doing.
Many of my colleagues in both fields of education might tell me that I have missed many aspects of the day-to-day, and I agree. As I write I have remembered many other things that other teachers are doing in their classrooms, at the same time I have also remembered professors that do not necessarily do the things mentioned above for their normal day.
When it all comes down to it, I feel melancholic about the end of my academic year in college because I know that the next round starts in a week or two. Maybe it is the short semester that permits closure after six months of teaching a class and gives you a fresh start half-way through the year. Maybe I feel relief regarding my primary education students, because I know that I have taken them by the hand and helped them be ready to go to the next level.
In the end, primary education is like a marathon - you take your time and elaborate, you have the next day to fix any problems you saw in the day’s lesson, you plan ahead and wait to see what the students bring to the table. The college education environment is like a sprint - you put all your energy into short semesters and look back to see what you did and fix it for the next race, you make adjustments before it starts and hope that the preparation you put into the class results in the desired goal.
As many education professionals will say to anyone that asks, teaching is a joyful endeavor full of twist and turns, but in the end you know that you are helping students achieve their full potential and be productive members of society and that is a feeling that cannot be beat.
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