Teaching Young People

Teaching Young People

I very recently exchanged messages on Messenger with one of my former Education students, a young man who went into teaching after an early career in banking and who I found to be a delightful and diligent student.  We have not exchanged messages in a  while, but he felt compelled to respond to something I had SHARED on Facebook and I was thrilled to hear from him about his career and h is personal life over the last several years.  He told me that he had found great satisfaction teaching Early Childhood Education, meaning kindergarten, and had been quite successful.  I was not surprised because  he had an obvious love of children and a natural warmth that young children would respond to.  He then told me that now that he was more secure in his position, he wanted togo to the opposite extreme and teach at the Grade 7 / 8 level for a bit. He wants to become a principal some day and in Ontario, we don't encourage promotion to principalships without experience in at least two panels  of elementary education.  I found myself reflecting on my first  experiences with that daunting age group. Unfortunately, I began in a split Grade 7 & 8 classroom in a centre-city school.  It was a real baptism by fire.  I was invited to move to another school right away and take over a Grade 4 classroom, but another staff person wanted the junior experience and so I was persuaded not to move. What a mistake that was.  I floundered my whole time in that class and not because I didn't have the right skill set.  They responded positively to everything I tried to do and were very good to me, those kids. But I was afraid of them, truth be told.  It took me a long time to realize that Intermediate students were not to be feared.  They needed to be seen as little people in big bodies.  That age group are still children but in over-sized bodies and it is the size that is intimidating.  I subsequently learned that you can be firm but loving to that age group and be successful. They respond to those who understand that they are not thinking about academics at that age but about their changing bodies and themselves as people in groups.  Insecurity is their primary motivation in everything. I look back at those months I spent teaching them and wish I could go back and have them all over again.  There are so many things we did that I would do differently, but more importantly, there were so many issues I had with them that I would handle very differently today. I give my young friend credit and wish him well and am so glad that he had a chance to feel successful as a teacher first before having to be both teaching and psychologist / sociologist too.