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I have been at this new role for the last three years and I usually enjoy this fresh place.  Today it’s painful.  I want to jump in and I wonder, what I would be doing if I were up in the front.  I loved the variety of grades I worked with in Pearl River: 8th, 12th, 11, all of them mixed together in drama electives.

Sure, there were challenges, but there was never a time I can remember, that I wasn’t comfortable in the teacher role.  I see someone who is not comfortable and the kids see it and class after class, they take charge.  I just wonder, how you get that comfort? Are you born with it?  Is it learnable?  I think that this student teacher believes he can get it if we tell himhow to do it. He believes he should have been taught this.  I don’t have the answer here, but it’s rare that I’ve seen such a lack of student respect for a new teacher.  They don’t seem to feel a connection to him.  He’s just up in front of them, not really interacting as a teacher.

I don’t have the answers here. I wish I did, really.  It’s been hard.  I see a glimmer of hope and then it vanishes.  A great lesson, but without that student respect, where can you go?