...So says an old tail I heard once or twice before. Less than a week before the end of one of my hardest semesters yet, and I've never felt so exhausted with school work.It's not that this has really been a particularly difficult semester, but it's a different kind of exhaustion that strikes you in a more load-bearing way -- that feeling that you've just spent five months fighting your way through arbitrary nonsense that won't make a firecracker of sense until years after you're actually hired to teach somewhere. I cannot write an Instructional Objective. I cannot write a Performance Objective. I cannot write a lesson plan without the most threatening monster of doubt shadowing my figure because I have not stood before students in my own classroom and assessed exactly what they can and cannot do.
I guess I did breakthrough a slight peck's worth this semester with my initial 50 observation hours at Ramsay High School, which I am so proud of myself for. I was very nervous when I was initially assigned to this Magnet High School with the highest of expectations for its students, particularly the AP Language students I was asked to observe and teach. I must admit I never got totally comfortable with this situation, as I did expect because I have always been nervous about doing any kind of teaching in front of a veteran teacher of fifteen years who is Nationally Board Certified and has an inherently stern approach to teaching to boot. Also, I was assigned to teach a unit on Huck Finn to a class full of African American students, and with this work of fiction being one of the most hotly debated racial novels in the American literary cannon, I was more than a little frightened occupying a classroom that reads this kind of book differently than the white suburban stomping grounds of my youth.
Nevertheless, I succeeded, finishing my hours just this past Monday with high marks and encouraging comments from my teacher, Ms. Crenshaw. And this is just to say, even though I was totally frightened with the whole experience, I enjoyed it completely -- I'm just glad it's over because it's a wicked state to carry the torch of another teacher's students.
So I'm almost done with this, the most exhausting semester of graduate school so far. With only two semesters in, I'd hate to see what lies in store for me next year. In any case, I'm sure I will feel motivated when the time comes. I just need a nap right now...
