My First Job

Four years ago I started my first job working as a teacher's aide at the private summer school, Mt. Helix Academy and boy can I tell you, school does not prepare you to teach. Knowing the information or even just being reading it out loud from a book is not enough for students to understand the information. Teaching requires a hidden component of communication that is not easily visible and can truly only be learned by doing. In "Learning to Serve: The Language and Literacy of Food Service Workers", Tony Mirabelli cites Hull and Lankshear in, "The New Work Order: Behind the Language of the New Capitalism," where they state that literacy is, "a range of practices specific to groups and individuals of different cultures, races, classes and genders." Mirabelli goes on to describe how service workers, in particular waiters and waitresses, have to have to practice this literacy constantly in their jobs. The literacy required for waiting is very similar to that of teaching. Both professions require the worker to constantly interact with people who each have their own needs to be satisfied, whether it be the customer who has a special request for every item they order, or for the student who has a ADD and requires extra help. This posed a bit learning curve for me, because when I first started working as a teacher's aide, I worked with small groups of students with learning disabilities. I had to learn about each student so that I could better interact with them and create a better learning environment. With some students this was relatively easy, however there were many students that required not only just an understanding of them, but also a sense of trust between you as the teacher and student. I found this became more and more true with the more students I interacted with. On top of that I had to learn a new way of teaching with each new subject I taught. The first two summers I worked in small groups with students with learning disabilities, but come the third year and I started teaching the computer class. My class sizes went from five to twenty. I could no longer use the same method of teaching I had used before, and on top of that I had to create my own curriculum. In addition I was teaching the same material to all of the in each of their respective grades, no matter what skill level they were at. I had to learn how to manage multiple problems going on at the same time, and keep a calm classroom, which is harder than you might think when you put a child in front of a computer. This compounded the next summer when I started teaching activities and arts and crafts. Trying to make sure that kids have fun, be safe, and learn something, can be a very difficult challenge to complete. As well as teaching activities and crafts this last summer I also took on the responsibility of after school care. With this came learning how interact and become familiar with the parents of various students. I also had to learn how to diffuse or prevent tantrums from kids who didn't want to leave. But overtime I became more comfortable and got much better at it (it helped that there was at least one tantrum a week). In the course of my four years teaching I spent just as much time learning as my students.