Finding Relevance In Content For Our Students' Lives.

Teachers everywhere are finding a balance between what we have to teach and what students are really into. In my first year of teaching, I often taught lessons I had no connection to. I taught them because I just wanted to live through one more week of teaching and keep my students busy. Keeping students busy has become a shameful activity. The goal of a modern lesson has grown more and more sophisticated, more conceptual than practical, more daring and seemingly unrelated to the reality of a classroom and a huge phycological crisis we find our students in.

Although I have just started shaping my teaching practices and figuring out the juice of a good lesson, I sometimes catch myself noticing that our system is presenting students with a fraudulent idea of their own future. The system seems to know that all students will eventually get their high school diplomas, enter college, get financial help, graduate with a 4-year degree, find a job, and become happy. Is that so indeed?

Labels instead of character traits.

In my first class where I asked my ELLs freshmen to fill out a questioner about themselves, a student puzzled me with her answer to the prompt, Describe yourself using only one word. What I really wanted to hear is them describing their characters: funny, friendly, enthusiastic, happy. She wrote: “I am bipolar.”

Schools are packed with differently wired students. Multiple programs are often in place to accommodate those students’ needs. School phycologists, counselors, other professionals are at the disposal to design and implement the best learning practices for students who need more support. Yet, the availability of those descriptions of learning accommodations or psychological and social services to students have somehow distorted students’ perception of themselves. Instead of character traits, they started owning differently wired “labels” as if their characteristics, and what worse, they started falling into thinking that those “labels” will eventually determine their lives. English language learners don’t want to accept they speak or will eventually speak two or three languages because this automatically “qualify” or not “qualify” them for a specific life path. That’s alarming. And that’s the disconnect that is either created or emphasized in our classrooms because curriculums are not perfect, teachers are overwhelmed, and it takes tiiiiiimmmmeeeee to find oneself as a teacher and crack the code of an ideal lesson.

Does a school prepare for a college career? Does a college career prepare for a job?

Changing the status quo.

After graduating from my university with a degree in teaching, I found myself being entirely unprepared to teach or even talk about what I was supposed to be teaching. And when I did start working in a public-school system two years ago, I wasn’t prepared to function, and it would have gotten me out or burned-out, or disappointed, had I not started the path of my professional and personal transformation. Sounds like cliché, funny, weird. Not, I didn’t join a cult or anything like that. I just started looking for tools that would switch my life back to efficacy, satisfaction, and relaxation from a total survival mode.

I managed to change the status quo because I chose to invest in myself. What about my students? Will they have a moment of truth? Will they question whether their life deserves more? Will they have the tools to evaluate their status quo and start fighting? Will it depend on me because I am their teacher? What about parents, counselors, school systems?

The truth is being a teenager is quite a journey in itself. When you are a teen, all you want is to become something more significant. Who exactly? No idea, but someone smarter and greater. After observing and being with my English language learners for two years, what I have learned is that my students dream of becoming something greater, too. But not always. Very often they just want a stable job to be able to pay rent and necessities; they want to be happier; they want someone to care about them; they want to reunite with their lost families; they want to escape abuse or an unsupportive environment, and many more. Many of them do aspire to be great architects and scientists; the dominant trend, however, is my students just want to be happier and have more cash.

That’s so simple and hard. How does my interpretation of the curriculum can create a learning environment where I can differentiate for both Alberto who wants to become a history teacher and Juan Pablo who just wants to find another, cleaner, more decent, more paying job to pay his rent and provide for his month-year old baby? How do I engage and create an academically challenging environment for all 28 students in my classroom? How is my instruction relevant to students’ lives and needs? How does the content that I teach answer my students’ questions?

The truth is every teacher comes closer and closer to answering these questions based on his/her path of professional and personal development. In my book-digging and blogging endeavor, I have come to understand certain truths about life. 9 to 5 rat race is a social disease, and the goal is to escape. To be an entrepreneur is the new career goal. YouTube-ing can make thousands or millions by reviewing toys or making slime. A virtual nomad is a new tier of “employees” who actually work for themselves and for their convenience. 401-K is a fraud if taken as the only retirement option. Should I continue?

How can I translate what I have learned about real life to my students? How can I justify teaching about story characters, plot, conjunctions, transitions, and cliff phrases in a sentence? How can I find relevance for the content that I teach to my students?

My answer is I am making some progress. It takes so much experimentation and honing one particular skill before you even start noticing the shortcomings of other aspects of your lesson or lack of skills in some areas. I started listening more to my students and having more communication about my students’ needs. I started listening to my students’ stories and learned to prioritize value and ditch junk even in books.

In the end, as I made my way through confusion and anxiety in my profession and life, so will my students have to find their truth. Will they become YouTubers, nurses, construction workers, pediatricians, waitresses, and waters, or CEOs? They are free to choose. Happiness and personal fulfillment can be found in any occupation or the lack of it. And, maybe, it’s not really about finding an occupation, it’s about creating one.

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Handling The Overwhelm In First Years Of Teaching And Beyond.

10 Lessons I Learned In My First 2 Years Of Teaching.

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