Making Meaning.

So, as a pre-service English teacher, I have been exposed to an awful lot of text dealing with the teaching of writing. It's one of those things that I never really thought about before I went off on this crazy journey, but it's definitely something I'm thinking about now. What is writing? What does it mean to teach writing?

Even after two years in an education program and coming out of a class on teaching writing just this December, I still feel like I haven't a clue as to how to answer these questions. More specifically, I still don't really know how to expose my students to writing and explain to them how to do it without simply explaining what I do as a writer. This of course has its potential benefits as well as serious drawbacks (the most obvious being that my students are not, in fact, me, and therefore will not learn the same way that I do or did), but I am at a loss to otherwise give writing instruction to students who don't really want to write, much less have someone comment on whether or not they're doing it well.

I'm a woman with many interests. I want my fingers in every pot. I want to travel and I want to experience the world through a distillable lens. I want to play with language and I want to play. But most of all I want my own life experience to inform my teaching so that my students can be equally interested in life - equally desirable of having their fingers in all the pots. I want to foster their sense of curiosity because they're human and they have one whether or not they'll admit it. And I feel, on the brink of my student teaching practicum, that I have been utterly unprepared to do this.

They say that one in every five teachers leaves the profession before they've spent an adequate amount of time getting their feet wet (about five years). They say that this rate is highest in urban centers where a multitude of factors make for (in)tense learning situations. They say you'd better harden your shell, because the kids will eat you alive if you show even the smallest bit of compassion for them as human beings.

I say it's all bullshit.

I will not be one of those teachers who doesn't care about her students. I will not be one of those teachers who gets scared off by administrative bullies or the testing culture. I will not be the teacher who walks away after two years because it's not what I thought it was going to be. And I will not be the teacher who goes home at night and doesn't reflect on her own practice. Because this is not who I am. This is not what I want. And I won't let it happen.

I will reflect. I will rejoice. And I will renew, when the situation calls for it.