I've never been a classroom teacher before South Korea. Hell, the closest thing I'd ever experienced to teaching a class was doing Impromptu speeches for the High School Speech Team. Coming to Korea as green as green can be and being thrown into the fire hasn't been easy. Nothing has been quite the same from week to week, especially when I have such little time to prepare. Yet, recently I've discovered I've been growing rather rapidly in spite of being in the furnace so to speak.
The first metaphor I came up with for teaching is a bank heist. I'd say something like "teaching a successful class is a lot like pulling off a good heist, you always need a backup plan!"
I never realized how much that reflected my own emotional outlook on teaching until recently. Just look at my metaphor for teaching, a heist. Every heist has a specific goal in mind, a prize that our hero is being obstructed from obtaining. Every heist requires meticulous planning, preparation of elaborate tools and techniques, and a high speed getaway. Yet, learning is not some prize locked away in young minds, it doesn't require fancy gadgets or years of training to extract.
This metaphor I imagined has nothing to do with teaching, it has to do with how I felt about teaching. I came into teaching with a head full of tips, techniques, plans, and instructions. It was like struggling to carry a dozen small boxes in one's arms while walking a tightrope! I felt the capricious need to plan, plan, plan so not to fail. I saw student learning like a difficult thing to obtain, a precious gem that required all my cunning to unlock. More than anything, I felt anxious about teaching. There are few things as terrifying as walking into a classroom for the first time with no idea what to expect. To call my start at teaching a rocky road would be putting it lightly, and the anxiety about going into class has stuck with me over the months. There are still days I feel a little queasy at the thought of facing students I've been seeing for the last eight months, but I recently discovered a new metaphor mingled in my mind about teaching. I don't feel teaching is like a heist anymore, in fact I've come to realize teaching is more like music.
Sure you can have sheet music to guide you through songs and help guide everyone. Yet, music is organic and so it teaching. Following the music too closely makes the lesson feel cold and detached, but going in half cocked can be an even worse cacophony! Having done both in music and education I can say for certain that both outcomes occur with mutual unpleasantness all around.
Each class is a new band with new music and you just have to feel it out if you want it to sound right. Sometimes you have incredible jams, other times it's just lousy practice. In either case, the analogy holds. In teaching, like music, sometimes you have to let go and jam!
I find I've been enjoying teaching much more as I've learned to trust in my guts more while I'm in the classroom. I've been forced to produce materials on the fly, discovering incredible success with nothing but a chalkboard and a smile. I've learned to love drawing silly cartoons on the board to explain ideas, I love laughing as a game I made up a moment before becomes a massive success!
Eight months on the job hasn't made teaching much easier, I still never know what's around the next corner. Yet, since I've learned to listen for the music, I have come to enjoy teaching much more. I like to imagine when I feel the music, and enjoy it, that my enjoyment becomes contagious. I don't pretend to think I'm greatly improving my students' English ability. I'm very limited in my opportunities with them. Yet, I occasionally catch glimpses of excitement in their eyes, and I smile. Because if they're excited for my class, maybe, just maybe, they'll take that excitement to heart and learn. Not just learn English, but anything!
Most important in my book these days though, is that they learn to simply enjoy life.
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