Warning: Reflection Ahead

I was humming a hymn in the hallway today, when I messed up the words in my head and sang "All things bright and beautiful, all teachers great and small." I laughed at myself, and then I thought about those stories of little kids mixing up the words of songs into something adorable and ridiculous. Like my mother who imagined the infant Jesus surrounded by vegetables when she misheard the line from "Silent Night" as "Sleep in heavenly peas."

Since I'm a little too old for that to be cute anymore, I started thinking about how I want to be a "teacher great," but more often I feel like a "teacher small." Someone asked me recently if I feel like a veteran teacher with a year of experience under my belt. The answer is no. Emphatically. I'm still waiting for the day when lesson planning comes easily, when classroom management is a breeze, and when I feel like I have enough time to teach/grade/prepare/review everything I need to.

In some ways, I'm a better teacher than I was last year. But mostly, I feel like I have a long way to go. In particular, I've realized how little I know about teaching English to non-native speakers. It's a different ballgame, and I'm still learning the rules. Sometimes, I feel sorry for these kids because they're my first batch, my experimentees, and I improvise a lot.

But here's where my reflection ended up: what I love about teaching is that I always have another class, another day, another week, another unit, another chance to do better. If nothing else, this job forces me to accept grace for my failures. And grace spurs me on to make myself a better teacher tomorrow than I was today.