Reflections on my third year

So being in my third year is great!!! There is a really high teacher turnover rate and I can understand why. The first year is a killer! The second year I marveled at how much more sleep I was getting, but I was still doggy-paddling. The third year things just make so much more sense and are so much easier. My teaching is better and students are learning more while having more fun. My interpersonal relations with students are smoother and less fraught with rancor. Teachers just need to get to the third year and the sailing is a lot smoother. Also, the staff at school is more unified and on top of things. We can now work on the task of truly making the school better instead of just trying to get a lesson plan together and survive the day.

Over the summer, I did a lot of thinking. I thought a lot about why I wasn't getting along with kids and kids weren't getting along with me. I realized that I was being too strict. Many of the students at my school haven't had much discipline in their lives. They aren't used to people asking how they are doing in their classes and keeping tabs on them. Many students hate school and haven't achieved in school for various reasons. Sometimes the hard approach isn't always the best. I had to take a more Daoist approach to things. I have to be more yielding and practice wu-wei. Through doing nothing all things are done. Also, I thought about how well I get along with people in the different areas of my life. It was stupid that I wasn't getting along with students. I realized that I had to be myself more and have some more fun. Because when I was getting on students it wasn't making me happy and it wasn't making them happy. So now I try to allow my regular personality to shine (within reasonable and acceptable school boundaries), and I find my interaction with students are 100% better.

Right now I'm teaching two Intro to World culture Classes and I'm trying to access as much prior and self knowledge from the students as possible. So I'm asking them how they celebrate weddings, how they do funerals, holidays they celebrate, and other questions about their cultural background. Many kids don't know their cultural traditions and histories so it's a good exercise to force them to learn and also interact with their parents. But it also made me think a lot about my own cultural background. Chinese people will yell at you in hopes of making you better, so that you won't be satisfied, and so you won't become arrogant. It is their way of showing they care. If they don't care about you they just ignore you. As much as I've always hated that aspect of my culture I find myself mimicking the behavior. It's part of the socialization process. Then I find myself doing this behavior with students that don't have that within their cultural background. And surprise! It don't work. So with each kids being different and being from different cultural backgrounds I have to figure out how to interact with them in a way that works.