Have you ever embarrassed yourself in front of forty-five 12-year-olds? Since starting my teaching career, I’ve been in that fiery and uncomfortable spot plenty of times. And I’m entirely certain I’ll be there again.
What they don’t tell you when you begin teaching is how often your lessons can just plain fall flat. Whether it’s the lesson’s lack of connection to your students or how you deliver it, sometimes teaching misses the mark. Trust me; even a carefully planned lesson with multiple models of engagement for students can still take an unexpected turn.
Having a lesson go awry can feel embarrassing, and when I was a new teacher, I viewed these misses as moral failures. Coming from a family that highly prioritizes education, I view the profession as something of a calling. Thus, when faced with classes and lesson plans that were not impactful to my students, I questioned if I was not someone who belonged in teaching. For me, teaching had to equal perfection; if it did not, then surely that meant I wasn’t worthy of assisting students in their learning journeys.
I later realized that this cycle of continuous reflection, failure, and success in lessons, as well as making adjustments, is what teaching is at its core. This was supposed to be happening! This great realization came when I began teaching equity and inclusion concepts to middle school students. At the time, there was the assumption that the topics talked about most in the news would be what students were most interested in. Following that assumption, I created an extensive lesson on environmental justice. I spent weeks crafting a learning experience that I was sure would provide them with a launching point into this systemic issue. It did not. When I stood in front of their 45 sets of eyes, I noticed that while the information was important, it wasn’t being made relevant to their lives. The practical connections were lacking, leaving my students and me with a lackluster feeling as we exited the classroom.
Fortunately, my mentor encouraged me to change my approach—get to know the topics students were most interested in and adjust for the following lessons. At a minimum, she advised me, the process would strengthen my conversations with students, leading them to give open and honest feedback. Her suggestions worked, but it was still hard to see something I had poured my heart into become a source of frustration. That first year of teaching equity concepts was challenging. Still, it was also when I found acceptance in being someone who needed these hard (and occasionally even embarrassing) moments to teach more authentically. In this first year, I realized that it is okay to have some lessons that didn’t quite hit their mark, so long as I was taking risks and willing to make amendments in the future.
Teaching wrapped in perfectionism is antithetical to how we want students to view education and their learning. If I cannot make mistakes and display moments of uncertainty or failure, how can I expect them to? You will not always be perfect and the lesson will not always go perfectly. It is okay to have a hard day in the classroom regarding content—what matters most is how you react next.
So, how did I amend that failed environmental justice lesson? My students investigated how cities are built and evolve. We studied the city of Boston and surrounding communities to learn how systemic structures impacted different areas. Students took on concepts such as redlining, environmental injustice, and socioeconomic status. Later, these students made a model of how they hoped to create a “just and equitable city for all.” Through my errors and efforts, I landed on something much more relevant and real for my students.
In my first trimester at Belmont Day, I’ve had a few lessons that I thought my students would love, but they’ve told me they were confusing. I’ve also had instances where I’ve gone off script because the students have latched onto a particular point, allowing them to go deeper on a concept. When I step into my classroom, I know that while there is always the potential for something to go wrong, there is always the potential for things to go not just right but very right. Teaching is joy, pain, excitement, heartache, curiosity, fear, freedom. It makes you examine how you were taught and how you’d like to make that experience different for the next generation. It’s a continuously evolving profession that requires teachers to evolve, too, regardless of our comfort levels.
I’ll end with my original question—Have you ever embarrassed yourself in front of forty-five 12-year-olds? I highly recommend it for teachers. It can feel uncomfortable, but I think of it as a forge in which we craft healthy risk-taking, fire the learning process, and build trust.
