Teaching Robotics, Yoga Teacher School

I started teaching Robotics at the charter high school Thursday. I taught it last year, spring semester, as well. I made plenty of mistakes. I alienated about half of my students by the middle of the year. They made a few mistakes, too, like not trying. But by the end, I felt we'd pretty much made peace with each other and we all learned a lot. I did watch To Sir With Love at one point in the semester, and my son commented, "those kids are like the kids in your class." He was right. I tried to take Sidney Poitier's character, Mr. Thackeray's lesson back to my class -but the lesson was, abandon your curriculum, let the kids talk about what was important to them in their lives. Well, I was hired to teach robotics. Certainly, the kids would have been happy to sit and chat with me about relationships, career choices, their problems. But I had to stay on-topic, it's not like I was hired to be the guidance counselor. So I did the best I could, which included asking them what they wanted the rest of the class to look like. And then I pieced together lesson plans that met everyone's needs as best I could. Including the girl who asked for candy, I brought in candy.

So there's a scene in To Sir With Love at the end where the new students come in and Mr. Thackeray is clearly left with the message that next year will be more of the same. This is what Thursday was like for me. The difference was, I have some of my students from last year in my class again. They were overwhelmingly enthusiastic. Some of my new students were, too, but there was one who said she needs to get out of this class, another who was hiding behind another girl so he could put his head down on the table. "Oh," I thought, "here we go again." With the not trying, I mean. That's pretty frustrating as a teacher. But like Mr. Thackeray, I know what could happen by the end of the semester, so I wasn't nearly as stressed about it this year. Or, at least I wasn't for that first class.

Now I leave for 12 days of yoga teacher training. Another teacher is covering my high school class while I'm gone. I feel bad about that, but I signed up for training before they asked me back to teach. So I'm careening to the Berkshires tomorrow to train at Kripalu. It was lovely, the first half of training and I'm looking forward to going back. Funny that I was terrified of missing my kids last time before I left, but I was so busy at the training, and enjoying it so much, I wasn't miserable being away from them. But even though I know this from experience, I'm finding myself anxious again at the thought of leaving them. I guess I just love them a lot.