Before I started my freshman year of college
my mother asked me this question:
"Why don't you try to become a teacher?"
"...no thanks. It's not for me," I replied.
Sure, it can be hard to find a job as a Writing or English major,
and becoming a teacher is a nice fallback.
The world will always need teachers,
but I couldn't see myself being one.
This is largely because of my speech impediment.
How can I teach children when they can barely understand me?
What if I mispronounce a word and they say it like that for the rest of their life?
I didn't want to mess any kids up like that.
Fast forward to the Summer of 2011.
A broke, bored college student
finds it difficult to find a job
until his church reaches out to him
to tutor children in reading and writing at an enrichment camp.
He works for free, but as stayed before
he is bored.
At some point I found out I was teaching math as well.
Most Writing/English majors would buckle upon hearing that,
but I've always been better at math than writing anyway.
I just don't enjoy it as much.
Rather, I couldn't see myself enjoying a job that entailed
cranking equations all day.
The children I was given charge of?
Let's call them... inner city youths between the ages of 6-12.
Niglets. I mean black.... they were black.
Reaching an age group that wide would prove to be a challenge as well.
I'll never know how teachers in the olden days did it.
I commend them.
I ended up splitting my kids up into halves though:
little kids (8 and down) and big kids (9 and up).
I didn't have a textbook or anything,
so I made up my own curriculm as I went along.
...I mean I had a syllabus. Yup, sure did.
Worksheets I found online did help structure my class, however.
How was it to actually tutor/teach kids?
Well, as expected, I found it difficult at first.
I felt as frustrated as Mr. Cartmenez:
"How do I reach these kids?"
Well no, I lied.
Math was easy to teach.
The kids actually wanted to learn that.
Mostly because it was like a competition.
Kids love to be able to say they're better than someone
so I used that to my advantage.
Don't worry, I told the kids not to say,
"Why you so slow? You so stupid. Gosh!"
One little girl kept saying it anyway, though.
It got her sent out the classroom a couple of times.
No, English proved to be the real challenge,
which hurt me as not only a teacher but a writer.
They considered it boring or hard.
Taught the wrong way, language arts can be rather boring.
And the English language is without a doubt a hard language.
But I still tried anyway.
I created vocabulary list and held spelling bees.
I held grammar lessons (because let's be honest,
most everyone's grammar in the hood is atrocious, including adults).
I even printed out short stories for them to read and comprehend.
Everything didn't reach any child,
but every child took something away from my lessons.
But all these feels static.
I should tell you about the children.
For the most part, they all called me Mr Charles.
I mean, I am an elder to them so it made sense.
I didn't feel like being called by my last name though.
That would have made me feel too old.
Some of the kids called me Uncle Charles for a while.
That was cool, too.
When I came to teach,
the kids would usually be at recess.
Seeing me meant recess was over,
so of course some kids resented me for it.
One had even more reason to resent me for mispronouncing his name all the time.
It wasn't even one of those ultra ghetto spectacular names, either.
It was just two letters.
But one of those letters was an R.
My mouth struggles to make R-sounds,
so it comes out more like a W.
Mispronouncing a student's name
wasn't my only speaking fail,
but I was able to overcome it.
Most of the kids were able to understand me enough.
They heard me whenever I yelled, as well.
They're kids. Bad ass little black kids.
I expected to have to yell at them to be quiet and pay attention.
It honestly was my least favorite part of the job.
Screaming always gives me a headache.
Eventually I stopped shouting at them and sent them out of the room
whenever they became too much of a hassle.
After seeing the leader of the camp,
they would usually return quiet and ready to learn.
Remember how I mentioned kids loving competition?
Well at some point or another, they all wanted to be my helper for the day.
What kid doesn't enjoy feeling important?
I used that to keep them quiet and in check as well
In fact, some of the kids kinda played teacher's pet to me.
This one kid, he kept trying to impress me.
It made me like him and I started to treat him like a little brother.
I found this was bad as far as demanding respect in the classroom.
But he disappeared two weeks later.
By disappeared I mean that his parent(s) stopped bring him to camp.
Kids were always coming and going.
I think I had 5-7 constant kids
and that's only because they were the kids of the counselors of the camp.
Because of this, I realized I wouldn't be able to teach everything I wanted.
I never set an end goal for my english lessons,
and I only made the little kids practice adding and subtraction over and over.
But the big kids, I wanted to get to decimals and order of operations.
I guess I should be happy though.
I got them through multiplication, division, and fractions
including mixed, addition, and subtraction.
I was on multiplying and dividing fractions when camp ended.
I sincerely hope I taught the kids enough to put them ahead
or at the very least catch up to their classmates.
As I typed that I realized how much I actually care for those kids.
I think that's what really makes a teacher:
their level of commitment to their student's excellence.
Needless to say, I'm reconsidering my job options.
With a year left of school, I might just take some education classes
to make my career as a teacher more of a possibility.
Next time, though, I'm dealing with teenagers.
Teaching the fundamentals is draining.
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