Learning to Ride

Okay, I have a confession to make: Chapter 7 (in the Tomlinson book) was a hard one for me to get through. It starts with a long, bulleted list of things that effective teachers do. As I read through the list, my eyes started to glaze over a little bit. How will I EVER do/be all of those things? Or even SOME of those things? And then, three times in a row, Tomlinson starts a paragraph with the words “It’s really quite simple.” Is it? IS IT? Not to me. To me it seems complicated, overwhelming, and maybe even impossible.

But then, Tomlinson says that living the simplest truths is seldom easy. Now that’s a statement I can get behind.

My truth right now is that I’m kind of freaking out a little. I want desperately to be good at this teaching thing. I want to be a teacher who makes a real difference in her student’s lives. BUT—I know that in order to do that, I’m going to have to take risks. I’m going to have to allow myself lots of room to make mistakes. I’m going to fail at some things. And that’s scary. It really, really is.

Tomlinson says that to teach effectively, we ultimately need to accept 2 challenges. First, we must cultivate a passion for what we do. That feels like the easy part to me. I’m already passionate about this. The next part is the one I feel unsure about: “We need to remove our protective armor and allow our students to shape us.” Wow. It’s hard for me to imagine being that vulnerable.

I love the metaphor that talks about how teaching is like learning how to ride a bike. The best way to ride a bike is to climb on, try it out, inevitably crash and burn, but then stand up, dust ourselves off, and climb back on again. I feel like my career as a teacher will be a lot like that metaphor. I’m nervous (okay fine, I’m terrified), but I think I’m ready to give it a try. I don’t look forward to the metaphorical bumps and bruises I will suffer along the way, but I do look forward to the feeling of exhilaration when I finally learn how to ride.