I've always been a fan of creative writing. I was the kid who delighted at the idea of writing anything other than an essay. I loved the way that we could spill our brains onto the paper without confines. If we wanted to splash some color outside the lines, we can. But, as I've gone through all of my schooling, I've seen some people balk at the idea of no rules. I've seen people fall into the comfort of a structured essay like they would a fraying blanket.

While this has been a mystery to me, I understand the need for structure. Sometimes it can be good thing. I know that I've had my moments where someone says write and I say, what do you want me to write. They say anything. I say what? A part of that is social conditioning, but a part of that is wiring.

Though I may not be wired that way, I have to acknowledge the people that are. As a teacher, I could terrify someone with the thought of creative writing while simultaneously bore someone to tears at the prospect of yet another essay. So what's the balance?

Recently I've been doing a project (a unit on Ender's Game) that requires reading strategies and group activities (both large and small). I want to integrate blogging, videos, and podcasts. I want to talk about war and right and wrong and politics. But what if I have students who don't like speaking? Or being on film? Or writing a creative piece from a different point of view?

The way I solved this little issue was to give alternate assignments. I know that it creates more work for me, but it also lets me utilize this project as a resource. If they don't want to write a creative piece from a different POV, those students can use the alternate project of writing an essay on the differences in character and how that shaped the story. If another person besides the main character had been the commander in charge, would the same out come have occurred? Why? What are the fundamental differences that define the characters? While this is inherently covered in a creative writing piece, an essay can accomplish the same thing through explanation.

I want all of my students to feel comfortable so they can learn the way they need to. It may be a little more work for me, but I'm not the important one here am I?

I had this terrifying moment today of, "I don't want to be a role model." It's such a concerning term. To think that someone will look at you as an ideal of... something. In this case, I have issues with being an ideal adult.

I don't have my life anywhere close to being together. I think that we forget that adults are just making it up as they go along. I know I am. I recently received my horizontal ID in the mail and I still don't feel adultish. I'm having problems adulting.

So how am I supposed to walk into a classroom and be like, "Hello children I am an adult follow my adulting examples!"

Seriously?

I question my decisions about my lunch, and you want me to be a role model? What?

The question of the year is this: How do I pretend I am a proper adult?

Answer: You don't.

Pretending to be all knowing is one of the biggest mistakes a teacher can make. Showing humanity is one of the main conclusions I've come to about connection and relationship.

Whenever I tell people I'm going to be a teacher, I get one of two responses. Oh! I love English. Or Oh, I hated my English teacher. It's amazing the perceptions that people carry with them far after high school is over. I always ask why they hated or loved a certain teacher, and it didn't come from pretending to be all knowing with this fancy degree.

The teachers that were the most loved were those who cared. They were the teachers who enjoyed teaching their subject, even when they knew the students didn't like it so much. They were the ones who had strange quirks. Who drank coffee and admitted mornings weren't meant for them. They were the teachers who admitted their faults but tried to get beyond them. They were the teachers who made class interesting, who weren't jerks, who went to football games, who nerded out, who didn't hate on the trouble makers, who tried to teach them something by talking to them, not at them.

All of these things are easier said than done. I realize that not all of my students will leave my class liking me. But I do know that they're never going to learn if I keep pretending that I'm Miss perfect.

Recently I had the opportunity to talk with teachers and principals from charter, alternative, and private schools, and to be honest, I'm sold.

I think one of my biggest fears as a teacher, and more importantly as a person, is to end up stuck in middle class suburbia. Now, don't get me wrong. Do middle class suburbia kids need good teachers, yes. Is that something that I would enjoy doing? Less so. I have always wanted adventure. I grew up in middle class suburbia and it's not my particular idea of adventure, especially when it comes to teaching. I want to travel to a different country and teach at an American School. I want to go to a big city and teach inner city. I want to see all different walks of life, and oddly enough, the one that I never considered was the lives of the well off.

I want to clarify that going to a private school doesn't make you rich. A lot of charter schools and private schools run off of scholarship or lottery. But, to be honest, my mom and I weren't exactly middle class when I was a kid. We got by well enough and I never went hungry, but we did happen to live in a place where we needed an exterminator once a month and neither of us EVER went out at night. It wasn't until I was reunited with my dad that things started to get better for us fiscally.

Thus, private school was always an enigma.

After talking to said teachers and principals from these different types of schools, I've been successfully enticed. I think that their curriculum is sometimes more successful because they think outside the box. Often times there is more flexibility within the classroom, or they have a proven method that prepares their 7th graders to successfully read Twelfth Night with a high capacity for comprehension (true story). I think that it's a beautiful way to run a school.

Do I have experience in these schools? Goodness no, but you know what? I'm willing to try it and see what happens.

I've been at a loss of what to write lately. I've been over worked and overwhelmed. I keep trying to think on if high school was this bad, and you know what? It was in its own way. I remember being overwhelmed by emotions and self doubt. I remember feeling like each day was a battle that would never end.

So what's so different now? I pay bills and work a job and do more homework, but I'm also more sure of myself, more confident in who I am, and I feel attractive.

Being a teenager is hard. Sometimes I want to look back and shake myself or maybe imbue my younger self with just a sliver of my current confidence in who I am. I want to tell her that she just needs to brush her hair and stop wearing the same damn hoodie every day and she'll be okay. That she's beautiful.

I think as adults we miss the subtle signs that might seem obvious to a teenager. Yes, they are dramatic, but at the time it's not drama at all, it's very real. So why would I want, especially as a teacher, to look down on them for their problems because they aren't mine? It's ridiculous.

As a teacher, I don't want to be that all knowing adult that will tell them, "This will pass," or "Right now it seems like its the end of the world, but its not."

I find it demeaning to teens who are just trying to get through the best they can. Being overwhelmed isn't a bad thing.

I recently went to an Easter christian church service with my mother. I haven't been to church since I left for college because organized religion terrifies me and tends to rub me the wrong way. Now, as a disclaimer, I'm not an atheist nor am I insulting Christianity, I merely want to touch on it's relevance to my life.

Since I was 18 (as an experiment), I've asked a total of 16 men (including a long term boyfriend) to show me how to punch someone properly and so far I've gotten the same response.

A smile.

Out of 16 men, none of them have actually shown me how to throw a punch without hurting myself. A few have hesitantly told me I need to turn my wrist as I punch. One told me, briefly, that I should hit with a certain part of my hand so I injure them more than myself. I've picked up bits and pieces about how to punch someone properly and have constructed a basic understanding of how to do this.

Here's an info-graphic of how to throw a manly punch, because apparently only men can learn how to punch properly according to Google images.

The follow up question is usually this (if there is even a question of why I want to learn this particular skill): Why do you want to learn how to punch someone?

Why not? I want to live in New York and San Francisco. I am a 115 lb woman and I don't exactly have bulging muscles. The answer should be obvious. I shouldn't need someone to protect me if a person could just show me how to hit someone hard enough that they might think twice about their intentions.

Yet, no one will teach me. Many of them laugh it off. I actually got patted on the head once. I was told that if anyone tried to hurt me, they would take care of it. I was told that I should never have to end up in a situation where I will need to know how to punch if I'm smart.

This made me angry.

I shouldn't have to take self defense classes to live alone. I shouldn't have to be afraid to walk through safe-as-flowers Fort Collins at night after work.

I shouldn't have my motives for wanting to know how to defend myself questioned. I know that violence isn't what I should jump to, but it's often what women are forced into. Many of my male coworkers and I goof off and I don't often have the upper hand.

How does this translate into the classroom? I remember getting my bra snapped in 8th grade. I remember my bra being unhooked in high school. I remember getting jostled frequently. I remember seeing girls pushed up against lockers in the hallway by boys twice their size. I remember the cat calls (though not aimed at me particularly) and the laughing and the blatant sexual innuendos. I remember the difference in treatment depending on the subject.

As a teacher, I want to keep that kind of behavior out of my classroom. I want to let the girls in my classroom know that they are safe. I want girls and boys to know that they are free to learn and experiment with all the knowledge they want. I want them to feel unafraid of the things they find interesting because society has told us that only girls can do certain things and only boys can do certain things. I think it's important to never use the phrase "boys will be boys" in my classroom. I want all of my students held accountable for their decisions, because that is true equality.

I never pictured myself as an intimidating person. I'd always thought of myself as very approachable and fairly friendly. As a student in high school myself, I was liked fairly well, but I don't think I was ever disliked. I just kept to myself.

I never realized how intimidating I might be to people younger than me until I stepped into a classroom. Some treated me as a wall flower, some as a challenge, and some as a monster to be avoided at all cost.

I'd never pictured myself as a potential fire breathing dragon up until that point.

When I was a kid, I never saw teachers as scary. Being an only child up until the age of 13 meant that the people that I hung out with as a kid were all adults. I had no true fear of authority, so I couldn't understand why other kids were so afraid to ask for help. I became the knight that could confront the fire breathing dragon while my fellow classmates cowered in their huts.

I never thought of myself as one of these mysterious creatures. I'm not saying that all kids have a fear of authority, or even a fear of asking for help. I have just had to accept that there are some kids who only see me as a dragon, and not as a person that can help them. I am not the queen in my classroom to most of my kids. To most of my kids I am the dragon crouching atop my desk waiting for the unread traveler to be caught in my jaws of doom.

Relationships with kids are so much more than a classroom management tactic. Relationships, and paying attention to the way your are viewed as a teacher, can take you from a dragon, to a queen, and that makes all the difference.

I knew when I entered the teaching program at my university that I wanted to one day get my masters degree. It's no secret that a masters degree can easily bump you 10,000 a year in pay. I love college. I love the pursuit of knowledge and the thrill of learning something new. It is the reason I get A's and B's; I don't have anyone to disappoint but myself.

So when I realized that I have the opportunity to get my masters at NYU on scholarship and fellowship means, I was extremely excited. But here's the problem. How do I live in New York? While it's possible to teach in New York Public Schools and get my masters at the same time, this limits me financially. I would barely make enough for rent, food, and utilities. I would have virtually no money for much more.

It got me thinking. Teaching is one of the lowest paying professions out there that is of value to society. How sad is that?

One of the first things that I was told entering the teaching program was, "I hope you're not in this for the money."

We're told that our job is valuable.

We're told that our job is extremely rewarding.

We're told that no matter how bad it gets, it is always going to be worth it.

We're told we're doing something amazing.

Yet so many teachers leave the profession. So many realize that they can get a less stressful job AND be payed more.

How messed up is that?

I REALLY want to be that crazy English teacher. It's one of my life goals to get consistent looks of exasperation from my students. I don't anger easily and I don't respond to subtle forms of distraction. Actually, quite the opposite, I react to them.

For example, when I did one of my practicums we had a group discussion. The class was split to either side  and I took one half and the actual 8th grade teacher took the other side. I started out with basic questions about plot. Then we moved into the real questions. We were reading Night by Elie Weisel.

"Ms? Why didn't they just leave when the Nazi's moved into town?"
"Yeah, they knew they were dangerous."
"My family and I would have been three shades of gone."

I listened to them all start to agree.

"Well," I started. They all lapsed into silence. "This is assuming that we all know the ending. These people didn't."

A few nodded, some looked confused, and others were set in their convictions.

"Okay. Story time kiddos. I work in a kitchen in a restaurant, and I've learned a lot of fun ways to cook things. I had Lobster explained to me. Does anyone know how to cook a lobster?"

One girl raised her hand, but still looked lost at the comparison I was trying to make.


"Lobsters are cooked alive." A few gasps from some of the group. "In order to not have them freak out, you start them off in cold water and slowly bring the pot to a boil. Even as the water gets hotter and hotter, the lobster won't move because it isn't aware of what is happening. Now, in the terms of the Nazi's and the Jewish, who is the lobster and who is the cook?"

There was mass amounts of dawning comprehension and they were all too stunned to speak. I couldn't decide whether I'd traumatized them with the idea of killing a lobster or the idea of the Nazi's killing the Jews.

Finally, one girl goes, "Poor lobster."

Chaos ensued as people argued about lobster, life and death, and the humane way to kill a lobster/Jew. I was able to steer the conversation into the Jews being slowly cooked. We discussed whether they would be aware that they were being cooked. At what point? We talked about the idea of teachers walking in there, gathering you all up and saying they were taking you somewhere safe. Most of them said they would have gone because they were teachers and they were trusted figures of authority. Some said that they would refuse to go.

Overall, it was an amazing discussion and the other half of the class couldn't figure out why we were having this great debate about lobster. I was later pulled aside by my teacher and asked what we discussed and why it got them in such an uproar.

"I told them how to cook a lobster because many of them couldn't understand why the Jews didn't just leave when the Nazi's rolled into town. They started off with cold water and slowly increased the heat."

She nodded her head. "That's a really good comparison; I never thought about that."

Needless to say, I'm not a teacher that requires a deadly quiet classroom. I am not opposed to the expression of opinion. I have the ability to wade into a sea of chaos and come out the other side without a scratch. I am not of the opinion that kids learn just by being told what is right. I think the best way to learn is to have them come to the conclusion for themselves.


Side Note: I also hate when teachers answer a question with a question. (eg. "Why didn't the Jews just leave when the Nazis rolled into town?" "Why do you think they didn't leave when the Nazis rolled into town?") Don't be that teacher.

I've been asked so many times where I want to work as a teacher. And to be honest, I have no clue. I'm not married, I don't have kids, and I really don't have too many attachments other than my family to Colorado (though they're extremely supportive of exploration).

So where do I want to go?

Recently we've had to draw up an assessment portfolio for one of my education classes. Part of the assignment is to draw up a demographic and some context to your lesson plans based on the school, district, and area that you work in. I chose downtown San Francisco. I've only been there once in my life and kinda fell in love.


Though I've never lived in a city that large in my life I want to live in many different places. I want to backpack Europe. I want to international teach in South America, I want to live in New York, I want to meet all sorts of strange and amazing people. I love the idea of teaching because I get summers and breaks to do these things. If I want to take my summer to the Himalayan Mountains, I can.


But where do I want to start? I'm not entirely sure. Do I want to work in inner city San Francisco? Yes. Is that the best place to make all of my mistakes? I'm not sure. Do I want to international teach? Yes. Should I throw myself into not only a new job but a new country at the same time? I don't know.

I think sometimes in life we have so many opportunities that it seems impossible to make a decision.

I think I'll just have to see when graduation gets closer. I know I want to teach, but the question will always be where.

I didn't always love books. In fact, I didn't read much at all in middle school. I also didn't read too many of the assigned books in high school. Don't get me wrong, I love to read, but assigned reading was what always bit me in the ass. I think coasting through literature is one of the biggest epidemics in schools today.

Usually it occurs when students don't understand a text. I remember having a class called Literary Criticism. It is EXACTLY as horrible as it sounds. We had a book called A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce. It was paired with a textbook-ish explanation of criticism and philosophy. Philosophy in itself is vaguely confusing and pair it with large words and complex literature and you have Slacker Soup.

We were supposed to read a few chapters of Joyce's book a week and then they were explained in class. That was the theory. I don't remember much from that class. I remember reading the chapters, giving up halfway through, then coming to class. I remember sitting near the front and I would scribble half a page of notes because I couldn't comprehend what he was trying to explain. I left the class with more questions than I started with. The explanations of the reading only led to more and more confusion. I was vaguely aware of the topic and about half the year I was eating Slacker Soup every day in that class.

I stopped doing the readings because I didn't understand them anyways. I doodled in my notebook and played on my computer and because I was always typing, the professor would continue to drone about Freud and Plato and Joyce. We had two essays and three quizzes that semester. I did okay on the quizzes, but it was the papers I excelled at. I'm not sure how to this day. I did a paper on Nietzsche and I think it had something to do with literature?

Sigmund Freud

I remember that Freud was saying that we constantly repressed the Id, or the child in ourselves ("I want"), and sometimes that emerged and upset society. I think I would have loved to have seen Freud against a feminist.

Regardless, you can see I didn't learn much in that class. Here's the magical part, I passed that class with a B. I'm not sure how that happened because I barely knew the names of these dinosaurs let alone their rambling theories of the human consciousness.

That happens a lot in school. I still have the amazing ability to not read and contribute to the conversation based off of context. Some teachers try to combat this in classrooms by creating impossibly specific tests and activities as if to punish the non-reader. As a teacher I want to do the opposite. I want to encourage kids to read with texts that they find interesting. I want to discuss what they're passionate about, because Slacker Soup does nothing for kids in the long run.

Content storage cannot emerge from difficulty and punishment.

I've told my mother when I was sixteen that I was going to give up everything and become a professional hobo. Clearly, I hadn't quite thought that one through. Being a hobo required a lot more discomfort than I was willing to give when I graduated high school. I just remember her looking over her shoulder as she loaded the dishwasher and gave me "the look." My mother has a distinct look she gives my crazy ideas. It is 12% exasperated, 28% encouraging, 30% sarcastic, and 30 % amused. How she manages it in one facial expression is still a mystery to me.

In the last three years I have gotten the look approximately 5 times. I told her I wanted to be a Peace Corps volunteer, a professional hobo, a teacher, a dog owner, and the most recent one, a doctor. I love exploring the limits of my knowledge and so far I haven't found the boundary yet. I'm a firm believer in the idea that you can do anything if you really try. So in being a teacher and choosing that path over so many other opportunities scares me sometimes.

I am still at a point in my life where I have so many different dreams, and I'm young enough and crazy enough to feel like I can accomplish them all in my lifetime, that I don't know what to do anymore.

I recently read a book by Jose Luis Vilson called This is Not a Test. It was an amazing read that half encouraged me and half terrified me. I've never been one to settle into one school of thought. I love to change my point of view constantly. In being a teacher, it is an adventure that can last a lifetime. Every day is different and every year there is a new class of kids to manage, teach, and try not to strangle. Vilson's book gave me real insight into the classroom, especially as a new teacher. Being a teacher is more than just lesson planning. I'm aware that I won't know exactly what to expect because when I enter a classroom for the first time it will be a brand new


experience for everything that might possibly happen.

I have no idea the kind of kids I'll encounter. I don't know what kind of school I'll end up in, what kind of city I'll end up in, what kind of environment I'll end up in. And that terrifies me. The biggest city I've ever been too is San Francisco and to be honest, I felt completely lost there. I never thought of myself as swimming in a small fishbowl until then.

So when I read Vilson's experiences, from his blog to his classroom, I had to really evaluate the kind of person I wanted to be as a teacher. I don't want to walk in with rose colored glasses, but I also want to have some hope. I think the most important thing I learned from Vilson was to make mistakes. They are going to happen regardless, I might as well do my best to make myself a better teacher and a better person because of it.

I've always struggled with sensitivity during an argument. Don't get me wrong, I like to think I'm very sensitive with people's feelings. But apparently not when I'm in the middle of an argument. I adamantly believe in the three pillars of argument: ethos, pathos, and logos. I rarely express my own experiences or feelings in an argument unless I'm aware of the way that I'm exploiting myself. I very rarely let my own feelings get in the way of my point. I speak of this in an academic sense and a personal sense (most of the time). This is mostly to protect myself. I don't reveal my struggles and troubles to many people because I'm aware of how angry they make me. I'm aware how I dissolve under an argument when I can't keep my own feelings in check.

Recently I was in a class where we were discussing the current education system format. Many of the future teachers talked of grade levels versus intelligence levels. We debated the systematic way that kids get pushed through the system. We talked of the pros and cons of each of the systems proposed along with the current system seeing as we'd all been through it.

Everyone has different experiences in grade school. Many of them are unpleasant. I myself don't like to think about high school because I was often ashamed of what I did to try an fit in and emotions spiraled out of our control. There were fights among friends, fights among enemies, and a lot of isolation despite the fact that we were all going through puberty together. I like to repress that as much as possible because it still has an effect to this day. Blows to my self esteem come from my past. The shield that I draw around myself derives from four years of hell and a few spots of heaven.

So when we discussed a possible system where kids were organized based on intelligence versus grade level it dredged up memories for everyone, both good and bad. Because of this argumentative shield I've developed on the most analytic part of my brain, I argued from a different view. I like playing devil's advocate because it makes me question my own belief system. I get my intellectual high off of trying to see things from a different point of view.

This got me in trouble. I realize that certain ideals don't sit with everyone. I realize that some people are extremely passionate about their point of view. Was I arguing for an intellectually based system of organization in education? No. My personal beliefs revolve around the social maturity of varying grade levels. To mix a 12 year old in with a 18 year old would cause too many social problems on such a massive scale of reorganization. Bullying would increase drastically and so might drop out rates due to stress.

I like to argue for a more systematic approach of pre-requisites. If a student passes varying levels of literature classes they can progress to a higher level. Only when they have passed the necessary levels can they graduate. Many would progress on time, many ahead, and a many behind. Have I thought through all the kinks? God no.

But the basis for our class debate was the issues of intelligence over maturity. I tended to argue intelligence over maturity because I didn't quite agree with either.

This led to tears and personal experiences revealed.

I think I realized one of my flaws. Sometimes, when I am personally invested in an argument, I become too analytical. I use too much of my brain instead of my heart. While I don't know if I can change this in myself just yet, I think it's always good to be aware of your flaws, especially when you plan on walking into a classroom of hormone riddled teens in the near future.

Dear A. Gariner,

You had medium length brown hair and a sickeningly sweet smile. You were enthusiastic. Straight out of college. Hopeful. It was the 2010 to 2011 school year at Horizon High School. You were supposed to teach world history: nicknamed WAFL. You approached our class as a future, flourishing friendship.

You tried so hard to teach us. Initially, you used PowerPoint's like your lessons were a college presentation. We listened patiently at first. You gained some confidence. You learned a few names, but to this day I'm not sure you knew my name.

You separated our classroom of almost 50 in half and mistakenly used the word gangrene in your explanation. We never let it go. We thought, adamantly, that you believed our half of the class a disease. We took all future words you said out of context. We refused to listen to you after that.

Our seasoned teachers, your mentors, let you drown.

I heard that we made you cry.

I don't remember any of the lessons you taught. I don't remember the methods or strategies you implemented. But I do remember the day you tried to make us silently take notes from the text book. You wrote down our actions that day and shared them with us the next day. You sat on the table in front of our difficult little half of the class and your voice was angry, frustrated. You read to us what the other "good" half of the class had done during the assigned note taking time. They read their text books. They took notes. You launched into a list of what we had done during that class period:

Read the text book upside down
Read a different class book
Did math homework
Made faces at our neighbors
Stared at the wall
Stared at the floor
Stared at our neighbors
Stared at you

By the end I remember that you couldn't keep the scowl off your face. Soon the whole class had burst into giggles.

I remember the end of the year party competition you let us do. I remember us painting you as our own resident Marie Antoinette.

I only say these things because in exactly one year I will be a student teacher, standing in front of a class full of teenagers and trying my hardest not to say the wrong thing, teach the wrong thing, or mess it all up royally.

I only say these things because I've had to evaluate how hard it is to teach a group of teenagers who think they're smarter and more experienced than anyone else in any given room at any given time. I've had to think about how to approach teenagers not much younger than myself and get them to respect me as an authority figure. I've had to say the wrong things a few times, be at a loss of what to do next, and embarrass myself royally to understand how hard it is to be a teacher.

I only say these things because I want to tell you I'm sorry. I want you to know that I admired your courage to come back day after day and try something new, all the way to the end of the year. I want you to know that it wasn't just you. We were a particular group of assholes that had been in classes together for three years. I want you to know that it wasn't your fault that we couldn't respect authority at the ages of 15, 16, and even 17.

I want you to know that you are one of the reasons that I entered the teaching program at my university. I want you to know that you had an impact, even when you were at a loss for words.

Sincerely,
Kelsey S.

The one thing I can't stand to hear people say to me is: I want to do this thing so badly, but...

Tony Stark does SCIENCE. Bruce Banner does SCIENCE. I... I do not do SCIENCE. I do ohgodwhatisthismybrainhurtsSTAHP. This is what I did tonight during my Chemistry test.

I want to clarify. I do not follow the stereotype of English majors who hate math. I do not hate math or science. I was actually pretty good at math in high school. By a miracle of unknown origins, I managed to walk into my university with 9 credits of math and haven't taken a math class since high school. I recently decided that I wanted a little bit of a challenge in my life and
decided to use my last required science credit for General Chemistry I.

This was a mistake.

I recently sat in a lecture hall with a hundred other college students as we were told to leave bags, jackets, wallets, cell phones, and even the covers to our calculators along the walls of the lecture room. For 30 questions we were given two hours. There were instructions in bold about cheating. We had to alternate pink tests and yellow tests down the rows. We were only allowed the clothing we were wearing with no visible papers in pockets, a pencil, and one of two very specific calculators. When I finished I had to turn in a cover letter with a signature on it saying I hadn't cheated as well as my scantron. They had to check both my cover letter and my scantron against my college ID.

I'm fairly certain I signed away my soul.

You see, despite the fact that I may have given my soul to my chemistry professor, I don't hate chemistry. If I get a C or a D, I will still not hate chemistry.

I have this belief that hatred cannot occur with a specific intellectual subject until you've tried your hardest to understand and to make yourself better at it.

Did I study as much as I should have? No. Will I do all the homework when it is assigned instead of the day before its due? Yes. Have I really tried to understand? No. Have I gone to get help for the concepts that stumped me? No.

I have not tried my hardest to master chemistry despite what I'd promised myself when I'd signed up for the class. While I've done all of the assigned homework, I have not done the extra practice problems, and that bit me it the ass today.

You can't hate something because you don't understand it. You can't hate something until you've mastered it. The same thing applies to reading. I hear it constantly from not just kids, but adults too.

"Oh, I hate reading."
"I always fall asleep when I read."
"Reading is so boring."
"It takes me months to read a book."

I always respond with different variations of the same thing: "I'm going to tell you a fact then I'm going to ask you a question. Reading is not programmed into our brains. It is an unnatural thing for our brains to do because we are better equipped at birth for math than we are words. So when you say you hate reading, is it because you aren't good at it yet or because you've mastered it and still discovered a dislike for it?"

Some stay silent. Some only nod in agreement, refusing to answer my question. And some answer. They usually tell me they aren't good at it. Reading is slow going for them and the words don't form pictures in their heads. They often don't understand the vocabulary, or they cannot connect the ideas from passage to passage in their heads.

I recently read the book When Kids Can't Read by Kayleen Beers. There are ways to identify dependent readers and this is often the category that people who say they hate to read fall under.

I genuinely believe that as a teacher or a person, you have to identify the problem and then do everything you can to fix it before you can make such a harsh declaration of hatred.

So no, I don't hate chemistry because I haven't mastered it. I haven't given it my best shot and practiced and practiced at something that I'm not good at.

After you've tried your absolute best and mastered the skill, only then do you have the right to say, "I definitely know the difference between an ionic and covalent bond, and it makes me vomit in my mouth a little bit. I hate chemistry."

What are we teaching to our kids?

There are a ridiculous amount of required readings throughout school that involve history and emotion and science. We preach of diversity in our classrooms: of race, of gender, of history, etc. But what conversations are being had about those topics?

Written by Arthur Miller (1949)

When I was in 10th grade we read Death of a Salesman. Probably one of my favorite projects in that class as half of the class had to preform Act 1 and half of the class had to preform Act 2. We were separated into actors, set design, directors, musicians, etc, and I loved this because it meant that no matter if you were introvert or extrovert, you had a place and a job to do. Looking back, it was a great way to force the class to read the play in a short amount of time with enthusiasm. It was filmed and preformed during class after a week or two of preparation. It was the most fun I've had reading a play that I typically would have deemed boring.

But here's the thing I don't remember.

I don't remember being asked to interpret the character's motivations. I don't remember analyzing the gender relationship between the salesman and his wife. I don't remember addressing the relationship between the son and the salesman. I don't remember discussing gender roles, insanity, or suicide.

Plays are great to teach; they add a creative element that a novel can't. It allows students to get up and move. Yet so many things could have been covered. I don't remember analyzing how the characters should be portrayed. Was there misogyny in the play? Was there abuse in the play? How would that be portrayed on stage?

I think as teachers we need to incorporate entertainment and learning. Plays are a great way to get the students to think about sensitive topics without triggering something delicate. So many times topics like feminism, misogyny, and abuse are glossed over because we think adolescents are too sensitive to handle said topics. So in what way can we teach these problems without upsetting multiple parties?

It's an age old question, but I think the teaching of plays in an English classroom is a great way to talk about these things. I think we have an opportunity to open up these topics in a classroom in a safe way, and I plan on trying to incorporate plays into my classroom because of it.

Dana Goldstien (2011)

After finishing the book The Teacher Wars by Dana Goldstien I realized that so many people aren't educated on the history of education. This lead to Goldstien's point in the epilogue. What are we going to do with this information? Why aren't we changing?

I can't read.

This is a phrase I hear frequently in the classrooms I've observed. It is usually mumbled and their ears start to turn bright red, the blush working their way across their face as their classmates stare.

My first experience in a classroom was an 8th grade Read 180 classroom. For those of you that aren't aware of what Read 180 is, it is a program designed to help kids get closer to their grade level of reading through small groups and a computer program. The class can consist of general education students or special education students, though usually it is the latter.

In this class of about 12 there was a student, let's call him Andy, that didn't like me very much. He was a social kid with lots of friends and had plenty of girls to flirt with. When ever he would get on the computer to do the module for the day he would constantly distract his partner. I would inevitably kneel down between the two and look at Andy.

"Can you work on the assignment for the day? You haven't even read the passage."

His ears turned red and it rushed across the back of his neck. "I can't read."

Now if he truly couldn't read he would have been placed in a lower level Intervention class, so I knew that that statement wasn't quite true.

I had no idea what to tell him. I was never sure what to tell him actually, and I'm still formulating a proper response.

Further through the semester he and I got into our share of battles. He, at one point, shouted at me in front of the whole class while the teacher was out of the classroom.

He had yelled, "You're not my teacher!"

We had to have a talk, me, Andy, and the Read 180 teacher. He mumbled an apology. The teacher looked him straight in the face and said, "Don't treat her like you treated me the first few weeks."

I had two more weeks left in the classroom and Andy and I had been getting along surprisingly well. He had finally warmed towards me a little bit. He did what I asked during our small groups most of the time, grudgingly I might add.

On my last day we were joking around with a few of the other boys going over literary elements for their poems. I told them that knowing these things are important.

Andy said something that I'll never forget. "Why? It's not like we are going to finish high school anyways."

We, as teachers, all are taught that education is the pinnacle of society and at the age of 14, they already decided that their future had nothing to do with school. Some of the boys agreed with Andy's statement, others didn't.

I wish I'd had the courage to stow the smile and tell them, "Reading is a learned skill. It is not something that is supposed to occur naturally in your brain. Reading is like any other learned skill, you have to practice. If you chose to goof off and not try and say you hate reading, you will continue to hate it and think yourself more stupid for not knowing.

"You are not stupid. You're just a rookie. If you never practice, you'll never be varsity."

Not saying anything is one of my biggest regrets. My not speaking up probably confirmed exactly what he thought about himself, and that's something that I can never fix.

I recently started reading the book The Teacher Wars by Dana Goldstein. I think the most disturbing thing about the first five chapters of the book was how much I could see the old stigmas surrounding the teaching profession gnawing at the edges of our own modern system of education in the United States. In this overview of the history of teaching, there were mass amounts of debates about the teachers themselves. There were debates of gender, race, and quality. Many teachers for too many decades were under qualified, under paid, and overworked. Here's the scary part: we still are.

The world has always found issues with the idea of women as teachers. I wouldn't consider myself a radical feminist or even a radical libral, but I do believe in equality. Teaching is dominated by women because it is thought that we care more. That isn't true. I've seen men more excited to teach 5th graders than women to teach 6th graders. I've seen the passion that can come from a man when he talked about taking care of the kids in his class. I've also seen the same from women, but this is considered normal because we give birth.

Race was constantly brought up because freed black slaves could, in no way, be any smarter than white people. To be a black woman? Forget it. Teachers can be great no matter their color. The best teachers are the best because of the way they care about kids and the way they show them how great they can be.

Schools are still not properly funded in places and we have the same social stigmas against us but this time it isn't race or gender, or even our intellect. For many schools, they are discriminated for their economic class. In what way does it make sense for the poor schools to get less funding, less supplies, and less attention because they don't have as many AP students? Shouldn't they be getting more funding so they can improve their scores? In what way is this fair the kids that are so smart, but so bored because their needs can't be met due to lack of funding?

We are still fighting the federal government to teach kids what they are completely capable of knowing. Walking into a sixth grade classroom, one can be astonished what those kids are capable of despite their lack of math textbooks. Kids can be surprisingly compassionate, understanding, and intelligent if just given the right resources and teacher who cares.

The other issue that has been an issue since the 1800's is that of teacher pay. Teachers are still paid less than that of an office worker in a cubical doing HR and payroll. Many teachers live in low income housing and yet these are the people that are supposed to inspire kids to cure cancer. The great literary minds of the world, the great mathematicians, and the great businessmen are being taught by someone with a Bachelors getting underpaid because as a culture we cannot rise above the history of our past.

Reading Goldstein's book hurt me a lot as a future teacher to see how much Americans have refused to progress.

Want to check out more about this? The Teacher Wars is available at most bookstores and on Amazon.