Staying Engaged

When I first started teaching, everything was important. I stressed about details from the desk arrangement in my classroom to the number of minutes I was allotted for every single lesson. I worried if I didn’t address each of the learning objectives (which must be prominently displayed), the lesson was a bust. No learning happened. Student discussions never went according to the scripted curriculum, and I would regularly cut things off mid-sentence to transition to our next content area. Teaching felt performative in a way, as I was constantly trying to “get it right.” I felt like there was one correct way to teach, with each day bringing another frenzied attempt to teach the way I felt like I ought to teach; according to my colleagues, administration, or curriculum guides. I remember those first five years feeling very stressful and exhausting, but I was young and eager and full of energy to be the best teacher I could.

Much of how I taught in those early years consisted of me throwing ideas at my students and seeing what worked. Some ideas came from veteran colleagues who felt confident in what and how they taught, and decided they had an obligation to tell me what to do. Others came from professional development touting “research-based” maxims. Teacher-led, direct instruction dominated my on-the-job training. I remember one morning, after a particularly frustrating lesson, I was complaining to a teammate. She politely listened and then grabbed a roll of masking tape from her classroom. I watched her tape a large X on the floor at the front of my classroom. “I’ve watched you teach. You move around too much trying to interact with the kids. Give all of your directions from this spot. When delivering your lesson, stand here. You’ll find that your students are more engaged and learn better if you teach from this X.”

I came to teaching with a constructivist methodology. In college, I had studied Piaget and Vygotsky’s Zone of Proximal Development. I read John Dewey and Jerome Bruner. I came prepared to incorporate real-life activities and problem-solving in my lessons. I planned to have students build new understanding through discovery and building upon their prior schema. While everyone around me was standing at the front of the classroom, delivering their lessons, I was flitting around my room desperately trying