On teacher fatigue and contradictions resolved, I hope

The first week has passed at Young Oak Kim Academy.  At the end of the day Friday I was exhausted.  I remember that feeling of exhaustion from 20 years ago at Crenshaw HS.  It isn’t just physical fatigue like you’d feel from a full day of hard labor like loading trucks, harvesting crops, or building a house.  In fact teaching is little more exercise than walking around.  The fatigue comes from interacting with so many people in a dynamic and purposeful way.  

Everyone knows that it’s tiring dealing with children.  In large part that’s because you’re expected to guide, teach, manage, nurture, control, govern them, and ALL people young or old resist to some extent being controlled.  So teachers have up to a hundred young people a day coming into and out of our lives, all of whom we are expected to guide, teach, etc.  And notwithstanding all of our knowledge of human behavior, brain function, learning styles, etc., each of these young people is still unique and requires at least some small measure of special treatment.  So that is what’s exhausting about teaching, and I remember that feeling even from 20 years ago. 

Monday I’m going to begin organizing them into small groups, and I expect that all the rest of the year they will function in groups.  Theory and my experience tell me that learning is a social activity (thank you Vygotsky) and that small groups are a better social environment than one big group of 30. 

I also know that it will be important to structure the work so that the group really has to collaborate to get it done, rather than just sitting next to each other while they do individual work.  This means devoting some time to developing the processes for working in a group such as the different roles for group members, a means for the group to assess the work and to assess themselves, etc. 

I think that the use of small groups will bridge the gap between strict teacher-centered management and open-ended student-centered exploration.  And I think the next step for me is to understand and process the vast amount of district-provided curriculum material.  More on that later.