Crazy

One of the biggest reasons that I want to teach, is the fact that they current public school system took a toll on me. While I wasn’t a perfect student, I was still a pretty good student before heading into middle and high school. I’m not exactly sure what happened in the switch from multiple subject to single subject learning, but something made enough of a difference that I went from being in good standing, to failing more than one class at a time.

I can remember a few specific instances standing in front of a teacher in high school and them telling me that I while I was currently failing their course, I would do wonderfully in college. Those comments always made me smile, but confused me at the same time. Why is it that if there is some sort of system already in place that will work for some students, we can’t make that work for high school? In most instances that I was failing a class, the teachers were stumped because I was also acing the tests, but they knew that I wasn’t cheating. I still don’t fully understand how a teacher can know that a student knows the material and refuse to find a way to pass them.

I’m sure that this is the sort of thing that I will fully understand when I’m the teacher. That also scares me a little. Like I might end up working with and for the system that was so bad for me in the beginning. The whole reason that I want to teach is to be able to change this system for the students who slip through the cracks like I did, so a part of me doesn’t want to understand why the system can’t be changed. Instead, I just want to find that change and make it work for my students.

The only ways that I can think of doing that right now would involve a whole lot more effort on my part, and because of that I feel like it probably won’t happen for the first few years that I’m teaching. I’m not stupid enough to think that I have better ideas than experienced teachers right off the bat, so I’ll have to settle into my own rhythms before trying anything crazy.

I’ve got some good experience with crazy, and it works best added in just a pinch at a time until it’s not even noticeable.