By Jocelyn McLean
I have never been big on New Year’s Resolutions. As Renee mentioned in her recent post, resolutions are monthly, weekly, or even daily occurrences – I make them when I feel that I need to.
For the last five years, I have been a student, so twice a year I would find myself making a truckload of resolutions: January and September. My first year of university was a shock for me. I was still applying the work ethic I had in high school – that is, pretty much no work ethic at all – and when grades from my first semester rolled in, they were not up to my standards. I quickly set resolutions for the following semester. I would go to every 8AM class! I would do all of my readings before discussion! I would meet with my professors in office hours! Similar to many New Years Resolutions, my behaviour changed for a week before I went back to my old habits. Another set of grades came in April, and again I was unhappy.
I repeated this pattern for two years before deciding to take a year off to figure some things out. Looking back on it, it’s one of the best decisions I’ve made for myself. I knew something wasn’t working, I knew I was unhappy, but still I found myself unable to make the necessary changes to fix it. I took my time off to ask myself a lot of questions. Was university the right choice for me?
Three months into my gap year, I had the answer: yes, it was, and I had been taking it for granted for two years. I found myself missing school constantly. I missed learning. I missed surrounding myself with smart people who disagreed with me. And instead of setting relatively superficial goals about my behaviour, I tried to get to the root of my problem and change my perspective. Why was I in school? What did I want to get from the experience?
When I went back to school after my year off, I began to approach my classes from a truly groundbreaking perspective: I was in school to learn! For two years, I had perceived school as the means to an end: a degree. Suddenly, school became the end in itself. I started seeing my readings as learning opportunities, instead of words to study and memorize. As soon as I started caring about the material, I started actually learning the material. I thought about it outside of class, I talked about it with my friends, I started connecting it with all of my other subjects. I didn’t need to set an arbitrary goal of speaking to my professors during office hours; I was so engaged with the material that it became a natural thing to do.
This ties in with the Triad of Change: that to fix a problem in your life, you need to make a change to your behavior, your perspective, or your structure. In changing one, the others should more easily follow. Semester after semester, I found myself unable to change my behavior. When I reflected on this, I realized this applied to almost every area of my life: my health, my relationships, my education. The only thing that has worked for me is to change my perspective on each of these areas, and my behavior and life structure followed quickly. I have friends who can snap their fingers and change their behavior: for them, it may be better for them to start by setting behavioral goals, such as creating a study schedule or meeting regularly with professors. Structural changes may include changing your school schedule entirely: taking fewer classes, or starting class later in the day. A lot of change comes from trial and error: but goals are meaningless if you abandon them, so start by making the changes you know are within your capacity.
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By Mark McLean
When I was going through the Education program, one of the first things they told me was to take whatever plans I had and throw them out. They were right. At the moment I teach English as a Second Language, though it wasn’t what I originally intended to do.
Because governments around North America have been slashing budgets for Education, it’s difficult to find stable, full-time employment. I decided not to try getting into the public system; because of my wife’s job I move often, and getting full-time work in a public high school often takes years. So I looked outside, into after-school ESL teaching programs, and I hobbled together a pretty full schedule from three different jobs.
The result has been surprisingly rewarding. Teaching in three environments, under three styles of management, with three different educational systems, makes you hone what you believe. And it’s changed the way I see teaching.
First, I’ve learned that playing is everything, both for me and my students. There is remarkable pressure from parents to use worksheets whenever possible. These can be helpful, and the lower the level, the more useful they are. But the most progress I see is when children are given a blank piece of paper and a crazy question, and then told to write. The key is to provide helpful feedback right away, and have them write some more. When they can play, they see the point of what they’re doing in real-time. They also have fun, which is pretty nice.
Because of this, I’ve learned that I need to play, and that often I’ll fail. I often fail in class. For the students to be creative, I need to be creative in challenging them to do more, and do better. I’ve had to defend my belief in giving students room to create, and the fear of failure is a constant nagging force in the back of my mind. But when I have the confidence to ignore it, I can watch my students thrive. I know that this is not only beneficial for their English: if they can grow comfortable with playing and failing and growing, then they’ll be better equipped to deal with whatever economy they’re faced with when they graduate. I know that if I continue to accept the occasional failure, I can make my classrooms better.
Finally, I’ve learned that a good employer will act as a constructive buffer between teachers and parents. If I want to have my students play, they need to have confidence in me. If I want to be confident, I need an environment that lets me try new things. The after-school programs are there to make money, and this can be an added pressure, as teachers try to justify how much parents are spending. It can be distracting and counter-productive, exactly because we need to be able to fail, and a good manager will help minimize that concern. At the same time, teachers and parents need to talk often, since each has invested so much time in the well being of one person. When there’s a healthy environment, those conversations are helpful to everyone.
My career definitely has not progressed as I had planned, but that turned out to be for the best. I’m fortunate that I’ve been able to experiment with my style and that I’ve had employers willing to invest in me. If I do decide to move into the public school system, I am confident that I’ll be that much stronger for it, and hopefully I’ll give my students the same opportunity to fail that I had.
