The Way It Starts

I am mentoring a new English IV teacher this year, a true first-year, brand-new, just-out-of-the-box teacher.  As a part of that process, I have been trying to pass on things I've been given or learned over the years.  Some of these things are "hard copies," a copy of the text book, a sample syllabus, a few extra supplies, activities and resources that have worked for me in the past.  Some of these things are far more intangible, information that the copy room will be jammed from the crack of dawn to the time they run us out with sharp sticks tomorrow, the strange and mystical power of a shower curtain hung on Command hooks stuck to the front of a bookcase to hide mountains of chaos, the locations of the cafeteria, counselors, and mail room, the fact that our administrative secretary and our facilities manager are all-knowing and almighty magicians who keep our little universe upright and spinning.

This evening, after a quick tour of campus, I asked my fledgling if there were any other questions, and when I asked it, my own first year in K-12 suddenly loomed large in my mind.  There was so much that I didn't know that I was even unaware of my own spectacular ignorance.  

(And that's probably just as well.  Had I known how clueless I was, I probably would have run away as fast as the ancient Evil Jeep would have permitted.)

I was fortunate to have had two wonderful veteran teachers who took me under their wings and made sure I didn't just crawl into the space under my desk and hide there giggling hysterically.  I was doubly fortunate to have parents who were classroom teachers as well.  Even with all their assistance, learning took time.  I didn't know we had a photocopier on campus until nearly Christmas....  (Look.  It was a really, *really* hectic semester, okay?) 

As helpful as the veteran teachers I had access to were, there were so many things I had to figure out for myself.  Since I came to it alternate route from adult collegiate English as a Second Language instruction, I was caught more than a little flat-footed when I transitioned into a high school classroom quite literally two days before the opening of the school year.  Suddenly, I was surrounded by a sea of procedure with which I was totally unfamiliar, shorthand names for locations and people everyone assumed I knew, and enough new K-12 education acronyms and jargon to fill a dictionary. Vast quantities of my knowledge that first year had to come from trial and error.  I wonder how many afternoons I walked into one of my mentors' classrooms with a look of confusion on my face and a question on my lips.

Probably, it is this way for most of us.  Maybe there are teaching prodigies who walk in on the first day and know exactly how to handle every aspect of the profession with careless ease, but I have never met one.  Despite my best efforts, my mentee is going to have to puzzle out the things that work best for her by herself.  While I can expose her to ideas and to things I have found useful in my own practice, she will have to find what fits her teaching persona, her students and their needs.  All I can really do is try to smooth the way with the little things, offer resources and strategies, answer as many questions as she has whenever they arise, and keep telling her that "all will be well and all will be well and all manner of things will be well" (even though sometimes it really doesn't feel that way during the week of homecoming.  Or state testing. Or just prior to a major holiday.  Or approaching the full moon....).

Rest assured, when we parted this afternoon, she knew exactly where the copier was.....