My Personal Best
My personal best occurred just two years ago. I entered my seventh year teaching; however, this particular year would be quite different for me. For six years prior, I had been teaching senior English (British Literature) college and technical preparatory classes and a language arts elective speech class. I had also acquired my gifted certification my sixth year of teaching. Even though I had applied various differentiation strategies in my classroom, I found that there were so many techniques and teaching strategies that I had not yet learned. The following year I was finally able to apply many of these new strategies. Not only did I enter the new year equipped with effective differentiated learning strategies, I was also given new classes. I continued to teach speech, but now I added a career pathway “Examining the Teaching Profession” and an Honors American Literature class to my repertoire and did not teach any senior British Literature classes. This is the first year that I would be teaching an “honors” class. I achieved my personal best in the Honors American literature class. I had been placed with an elite group of teachers—those teachers one hears about through students and former students proclaiming the teachers’ fantastic ability to teach anything and reveling in how much they learned as a student from these teachers. I instantly felt overwhelmed and a bit fearful. I had been confident in my teaching especially after teaching the same classes for years—I had finally gotten good at what I did. My confidence took a big anticlimactic shove and I immediately felt like a brand new teacher. I had learned some awesome new strategies and could not wait to apply them; unfortunately, the material and literature was all new to me. I had not had a true American literature class since high school. I was afraid that this elite group of “honors” teachers would send me packing before I even started. Another thing I realized quickly: this course had an End of the Course Test. This particular test would essentially measure if I am teaching what I should be teaching and how effective did I teach that material. I began to worry. How would it look if my students scored lower than the other students who have those seasoned teachers? How would I look as that teacher whose students scored lower than everyone else’s students? I did not factor in the students’ abilities at the time. It seemed to be all on my shoulders. Thankfully, I had a class full of focused, hardworking students. These students made the transition easy—they were ready for discussions and made my job so enjoyable.
Throughout the year, my students and I tackled time periods, created mnemonic devices for literary terms, practiced identifying terms in literature, discussed the profundity of quotes, researched banned books, and constructed art projects focused on the literature we read. Overall, it was a gratifying teaching experience. It was finally time for the EOCT. Honestly, I was not nervous for my students; I was nervous about how I would be evaluated along with my colleagues who taught the same class. Perhaps I did not teach everything the students needed for the test or did not cover something intently enough. I know it is all about the students and I have always put their learning needs ahead of everything else—they deserve a quality education and I wanted to be sure and deliver. Nevertheless, I thought about how I would fare with the veterans. Upon receiving our scores, I learned that over 90% of my students received “exceeds” scores and the rest of the students “met” the required EOCT standards. I was elated. I know it was not me, the teacher, being graded, but in a sense I was being compared to the other teachers. One thing I remember most was when another teacher mentioned in passing “your students did as well as [those other teacher’s] students and maybe even better.” I must say I was less than shocked by what she said. I understood that expectations may have been lower because I had not taught this level of students, but knowing that I actually had something to do with their achievement and success brought a new confidence and self-worth as a teacher.
