Learning to Teach

I'm about halfway finished with my Masters in Education. I'm taking some teaching courses this summer on curriculum and classroom management. These are important things to know, but I confess, I just don't understand what the big deal is. Maybe I will when I become a teacher and I realize that I've been harboring false confidence this whole time. I have no doubt that teaching is a challenging and frustrating profession. I get that, and I'm rightfully scared. I also understand why it's important to be as prepared as possible. But, I find myself sitting in these classrooms, listening to people preach from their soap boxes on the joy and hardship of teaching, all the while thinking, "ok, when am I going to start learning something useful."

It's not that I don't appreciate the classes. Every now and then, I pick up something that I think will be helpful to me when I start teaching. For the most part, however, I'm sitting there trying not to look bored and disrespectful.

There is a lot of reading and discussion involved in these classes. I don't mind the reading so much. Some of it is pretty useful, most of it's a waste of time, but I try not to pay attention to that aspect. But it seems to me that I could simply read the material and forego class and still finish well. Besides the fact that the teacher has experience, I see little need for him. I haven't taken a course yet that hasn't covered verbatim the chapters in the book. There's not a whole lot of ingenuity. Maybe that's just how teaching courses go. I miss my physics classes.

Maybe that's why I'm having a hard time adapting to teaching courses. I spent five years living, eating, and breathing physics. Physics is hard and has a higher level of critical thinking required. I'm still in that mindset. Teaching courses don't require that you figure out how to solve a problem or run an experiment on your own. In fact, it's designed in such a way that there is very little guesswork. There are decades of documented theories, practices, lesson plans, and ideas on teaching that have been accumulated for the next generation. I guess teachers are better at documenting than scientists. Not much of a surprise there. I suppose I have to wait until I start teaching before I understand completely.