Hemorrhaging

I think that teachers and doctors share a lot in common. We both work to help people, and have to deal with numerous similar factors, including difficult facilities, difficult patients/students, troubles negotiating with some administrations and burn-out. I am certainly not saying it's the case for every teacher or doctor, but the I think the majority are facing something that inhibits them from feeling they could do everything within their power. And just like doctors, teachers face the odd reality of the fact that they cannot save everyone.

It is something that I think doctors and teachers are aware of as soon as they choose their profession - that no matter what you do, students will slip through the cracks and patients will not respond to treatment. Yet you aren't really prepared for it until you experience it. Sometimes you try everything you can think of and things still just, flat line. I am not trying to say that having a lesson go bad is the same as having a patient die on the operating table, but I think over time the same mentality develops. With a resigned sigh, you shrug your shoulders and shake your head and say "Well, you can't save 'em all."

Today I had my first lesson go really wrong. I tried to cram in vocabulary done as per the book, and it was awkward and stilted and I didn't know what I was doing. I felt like I didn't have a personal connection to the activity and the students didn't really connect with it either. We then began an activity on conflict in Invisible Man, where I felt like I was getting my momentum back. This started slow and with some tentative responses, but started really getting going as we went. Then we moved on to an AP style prompt. The prompt contained the seeds of a better essay, but itself was awkward and stilted. I got a lot of questions on it, only to have it interrupted halfway through by students needing to leave for pictures. It turned out well over half the class was leaving to have photos taken today.

I don't feel like I've really lost any of my students yet, although a number are struggling. I still cling to the slim hope that they can salvage things. Yet I am also accepting that, unlike in the medical profession, they can still take actions to save themselves. Unlike a patient on the operating table, my students can show me their work ethic and prove that they want to pull their grades up. As one of my mentors put it, the "Average B.T.U. of [a student's] inner fire" counts for a lot. I've learned the hard way through a number of situations that you cannot save someone who doesn't want to be saved, and you can't help someone who doesn't want help. If they are determined, for whatever reason, to continue this course then you can only let them remain as they are going and wish them luck.

I am trying very hard not to beat myself up over this setback. It sucks and at the moment it feels very sharply cutting, but I am trying to look objectively on what I considered a failure and find what went wrong, what went right and how I can excise the former and promote the latter.

I don't feel like my doing poorly reflects badly on me. I am a student, who is still learning and studying and is bound to make mistakes. I don't think it reflects poorly on me to my cooperating teachers or even my students, who understand I am learning alongside them. What upsets me about this is that I feel in some ways I've let down my students by not being more successful, and that is what I can't stand. I am really committed to doing the best job I can for them, and so I want to take what went wrong and drag it (maybe kicking and screaming) back to the drawing board and rework it until it's in a shape that I like.