Stepping Stones: My Journey to Becoming a Literacy Consultant – Step Two
From the desk of Hope…
I am a little leery about saying this right out in front of all you but I am going to anyway……
When I first started teaching school, I had no idea what I was doing. I had gone to college for four years to be a teacher and made good grades but somehow — I had missed it!
I take most of the responsibility for not knowing how to teach my first year because FUN was the priority for me in college.
Even though I didn’t feel equipped to teach in the beginning, I am pretty sure I did OK. I remember my very first class…Cindy (she was a mess), Bobby, Justin, Ethan and twenty-one other students that were depending on me to teach them every day for six hours. This was a big responsibility, at least I thought it was.
I certainly couldn’t let my students down so I started studying. I bought books to read. I borrowed books to read. I read children’s literature and I read professional books. I watched what other teachers were doing. I went to conferences and I asked a lot of questions.
I studied way more during my first years of teaching than I did in high school or college.
Additionally, I had several master teacher and mentors from which to learn. (Thank you Debbie Inscore and Nancy McMunn. I hope you are reading this.) All the way through my career I have leaned on other teachers as resources.
Self-learning was critical to my success as an educator, that is for sure. When it came time to apply the ideas I had learned in college, I had gaps and questions and fears and failures and many other inadequacies. However, I was willing to put the effort into being a learner myself. I closed my knowledge gaps. I tamed my own fears and my successes began to far outweigh my failures all from teaching myself what I needed to know to be an effective teacher.
Step two –– Put forth the effort to teach yourself things you don’t know and need to know. There are plenty of resources available. As a teacher, commit to being a life-long learner.