Wise One?

Twice this week I have been addressed as "Wise One" by a co-worker. Actually, the first time it happened it was my principal, turned partner teacher, who strode into my room and said, "Okay, Wise One.." and proceeded to ask me a procedure question. I don't even remember what he asked. But I had an answer that he liked, so in that moment I lived up to his vision of me as wise. The second time was in a text thread, that I didn't see until the question had been answered by a fellow "Wise One."

How wise am I though, really? These days I feel like I'm just barely keeping my head above water. Having my boss as a partner teacher is... interesting. It's great to have his energy and know he really knows what it's like to be "in the trenches," really sees the work that goes into doing what I do. But it's still less than ideal. As thin as I feel stretched, he is stretched even more. I mean, he's holding down two full time jobs that are both notoriously MORE than full time jobs. Before and after school there is literally a line of people waiting for his attention.

This means he has no time for lesson plans. So, when I put my slides together for tomorrow's lessons, I have been making a copy and tweaking them for my boss to use. I tweak the schedule slide so his specialist class of the day is on the list instead of mine. I remove my bitmoji - but really, I've just been building without my bitmoji more and more so that I can skip this step. I delete the math and reading slides after the one that introduces the topic and switch out the spelling slide for the one I used on the corresponding day last week. (When my partner teacher left, she was one week behind me in spelling, so the homeroom my principal is teaching is still one week behind.) Admittedly, now that I know what needs to be done, this all takes less than five minutes. But when I am teaching and run across a typo on my slides, I am embarrassed spend more time wondering if my boss noticed than is probably warranted.

Every morning I go into the classroom across the hall and bring up the copied slide show on the SmartBoard. I leave copies on the teacher's desk, and on Fridays, put together a tray of supplies for the art project. I feel responsible for the progress toward meeting academic standards for two homerooms. On some level I know my boss would disagree - he is the adult in the room across the hall. But he is using my lesson materials.

The past two weeks with my boss as my partner teacher definitely have me feeling less than wise. Instead, I am seeing many areas where I could grow and do better. 

For example - how can I really embed my math and religion lessons into our IB units of inquiry? I've spent this year tweaking writing and reading to fit within the units. But I have not spent any time at all working toward enveloping the math and religion standards into the transdisciplinary units. 

On a lower level of overall importance, but an extremely practical one for every day - how do you really get kids to understand that there is a correct way to use a piece of binder paper? By high school I think most kids know the holes go on the left and the margin lines have a purpose. But kids do not know this innately, they have to be taught. I have a couple of kids who, despite my best efforts this year, still don't seem to understand.

I know my principal knows I'm good at what I do, and I know he's not looking for mistakes or problems in what I produce. However, it does add a heightened level of attention to detail to know he is not only seeing, but actively using my slide presentation every day and relying on my expertise to answer questions about procedure, daily lesson plans, long term unit plans, student background... and anything else relevant to the day-to-day operation of a classroom.

The silver lining in all of this goes back to a thought I had on repeat in my brain during my first year of teaching: "If I ever feel like I know everything there is to know about this job, that's when it will be time to get out." I'm still a long way away from feeling like I know everything there is to know. That's fantastic because I'm not ready to get out of the teaching profession yet.