30 Day Challenge: Day 24

Day 24: Something You've Learned

Something I've learned over the past year is that my dreams have changed. Since I was a little girl, I wanted to teach math. The age group that I wanted to teach has changed, ending up at middle school, but math has stayed constant. I have always loved math. It makes sense to me. There is [almost always] a right or wrong answer, but the beauty is that there is generally more than one way to get to that answer.

On the flip side, I always hated science. The irony here is that I took more science classes in high school than any other type. I took gifted biology in 9th, gifted chem in 10th, AP chem in 11th, AP Physics B in 11th, and AP Physics C in 12th. With the exception of biology, there was enough math in each of the other courses for me to figure my way through the class.

And somewhere along the way, I fell in love with science.

I took another physics course in college, and it was no surprise that I excelled in it. Labs were hard, but I succeeded. Then I got into my major, where we have to pick two subject areas to focus on. I'd applied with math and social studies the year before, but my social studies grades were rough, so I tried again with science the second time, since they were all A's. I also took chemistry over the summer and made over a 100 in both the class and the lab. It was a 4 week long course with a quiz every day and a test on Thursday [no class on Friday]. The catch? IT WAS OPEN NOTES. And people STILL failed! How in the world do you fail when it's open notes AAAAANNNNNDDDDD she GIVES. YOU. THE. NOTES.

But alas, I digress. It was after taking this class that I realized that lots of sciences weren't so bad if I could incorporate the math. In fall 2009, we took physics for middle school teachers as well as a methods class to teach us how to teach science to middle schoolers. Basically we got to pretend to be middle schoolers in that class and see different models and experiments that we could use for our students. As someone who'd had several physics classes, I was not stressed at all. I was the only one, however. People were having a hard time with the class, so I tried to help them whenever possible.

They got to pay me back the next semester: earth science. No math whatsoever. I was freaking out. But it ended up being alright. Not just alright.. it was interesting. Fun, even. That was when I decided that I wanted to teach 6th grade [earth science] or 8th grade [physical science] rather than math. I was too afraid that it would screw up my placement in Gwinnett since I would be living at home the next year, so I didn't switch my specializations, intending to just take the GACE in math and science and apply for science jobs.

Then I got into the math classroom in the fall of 2010. What a culture shock. I've struggled with depression and anxiety throughout my life, but it has been under control for the past year and a half: no medicine, no episodes. That all changed. I had a mild panic attack the first time that I got in front of the kids to explain a concept. It was not the "being the center of attention" thing.. I was stressed that I was not explaining myself well enough. Unlike science, it's really hard to vary the way in which you teach math. It is the way it is, and that's that. My teacher said I did fine, my supervisor said I explained things extremely well, and my class's grades were higher than my mentor teacher's other two classes on the test at the end of the unit that I taught. But I can't handle that kind of pressure every day. I won't survive. I wasn't happy. I was stressed and unhappy, eating too much and sleeping too little.

One morning, I arrived before my teacher, so I went next door to the science teacher's room. I felt an immediate peace as I looked around her room at the different signs, diagrams, and objects related to earth science. That's when I knew what I needed to do.

I emailed Dr. Andrews that day and asked what she thought I should do. [background: the way our program is set up, we are ideally supposed to stay in the same classroom from our fall experience during our full-time student teaching in the spring. that way we already know the teacher, some of the student, etc. if I switched specializations, I would need to switch teachers, which would possibly mean that I would have to switch schools. Which would require me to switch counties, and since I'm living at home, this was NOT something I wanted.] Dr. Andrews said that I needed to do what would make me happy. I told her that science would make me happy. So she told me to switch my specializations and that she would do her darnedest to keep me at the same school or at least in the same county, even if it meant teaching in an elementary school.

The whole thing has been a mess ever since, but none of that is my fault or even because I switched specializations. Gwinnett has a lot of red tape to go through, and the contact person at UGA kind of dropped the ball, which has put me and another student teacher WAY behind. The snow week hasn't helped AT ALL. So we'll be starting about 7 days later than we should have, if not more. I still haven't gotten my confirmation about my placement, but I know that everything is working out; it's just paperwork at this point.

I'm gonna be a science teacher. After YEARS of claiming "this is my last science class EVER!" and throwing a mini party. God sure has a sense of humor.