Thinking about running to this blog to get all of these nagging thoughts out of my mind got me excited for a while. I have actually always enjoyed taking the time to slow down and re-think anything I have thought before and form them into actual visible words on either paper or screen. Just something I've done since I've learned to read and write as a child. But lately, in the last year or so, that joy has waned. Well, I can't say that for sure. I still enjoy word vomit. I just find it harder to do. I find it harder to peel myself off the sofa, turn off the the mind numbing television and other various distractions (facebook, instagram, cellphone in general) and just sit and go within my own mind. Even now I have the TV running in the background, although on mute, I enjoy its ability to keep me up to date on meaningless and pointless little tidbits. Like that new CGI movie coming out, or that new company down the street that is hiring. You never know what you want to know!
But I digress. The whole point of me saying all of this is that I have been having a hard time forcing myself to sit down and get the words out. The words are there. The desire is there. The action is just not. I guess we can simply call that laziness.
One of the most persistent thoughts lately (with regards to teaching of course) has to do with my experience in high school and the teachers I had there. Well, what first initiated the thought was the question "why did you become a teacher?" and not only is the answer because I love art and I want to help share that love with others too but I also didn't like the teachers I had in high school. Just down right hated them actually. I always told myself "I could be so much better than that". I knew that teaching was so much more than what they were showing me, and I wanted to prove it. I had to prove it. I almost feel like some of my teachers gave on teaching, and I almost feel like some of my teachers gave up on some students specifically. Like me, for example. Like they saw me as a problem student and just turned away. But they had now idea that I actually enjoyed learning. I loved learning. I wanted to learn. I wanted to get better grades. They just didn't want to teach ME. They were problem teachers. I almost became bitter, in a way. I almost gave up on myself too.
And as far as art goes, I learned nothing. Just down right nothing it was not until I got into college that I began to actually learn how to be a real working artist and I saw what a terrible dis-service my art teacher in high school did to me. She had a degree in art yet she held her knowledge from me because she had no desire to teach. In fact, she often put down my work because she thought of it as being too immature. She cross her arms and shake her head and walk away, looking totally disappointed. She never accepted what I did. She was a terrible teacher. I always told myself I would never be like her.
And I'm not.
I teach my kids things I never learned in middle school, I never learned in high school. Things I never learned until college. By the time my students get to high school, they will know more than I did when I entered college. And you know what, I am damn proud of that. It was my goal to never be like the teachers I had in school. It was my goal to prove that they were bad teachers. And I did. I was I able to show that I am better than they ever will be. I think I am ready to keep moving forward.
Right now I am teaching middle school. And I hope to keep pushing to greater things. Who knows, maybe one day, I'll be a professor in college teaching other young adults how to become art teachers themselves.
Bah.
