Autobiographical Poem

As I was reading chapter 2 of William Ayers To Teach, I came upon the examples of autobiographical poems on page 40. The format for these poems is as follows:

First Name
       Three words that describe you
       Something you love
       Something you hate
       Something you fear
       Something you wish for
Last Name

I found the two examples of the kids' to be quite profound and revealing. They also created quite a bit of room for conversation between Ayers and the students which wouldn't have been available otherwise. Ayers wouldn't have learned or this "raper man" that one student was afraid of, and he began to see this student in a whole new light after their conversation turned to his brother being on trial for murder. While the student's main teacher had wanted to get rid of him because "His mind [was] wandering and he [didn't] want to work," Ayers stumbled onto the root of the problem through this simple exercise.

It bothered me that Ayers didn't talk about the other boy's poem though. The other example creatively used the three words in the first body line to read "flunky but funny" creating a sentence rather than a list of adjectives. It also had the line "I hate being whipped." What? What did that mean? Ayers didn't say anything about this child or whether he asked this child about his statement. I would be very surprised if Ayers had not asked about it, but he didn't even touch on it in his description of this exercise. I wanted to know more and find out what this child's experience with whipping was. Did he actually get whipped by someone, or was it a figure of speech for losing badly? I may never know.

However, this conundrum did not stop me from thinking about my own autobiographical poem. Maybe it will start a conversation, and maybe it wont. It will, however, enable me to reflect upon myself in a different way and provide insight for me to continue my journey to becoming a teacher. And also provide me with an example to use with my class when I use it in the future. ;)

***
       Awesome Ambitious Reliable
       I love creating beautiful things
       I hate close minded people
       I am afraid of spiders
       I wish for more time
******

The road is long

The road is long; particularly my road to teaching. My road has been relatively short compared to many others in my newly acquainted teaching certificate program, but I feel as though my road to teaching was longer than it needed to be. If I may begin to elaborate....

In junior high and high school, I toyed with many career options for myself, one of the forerunners being teaching. Being a math teacher seemed like a great choice for me in that I loved math, my favorite teachers were my math teachers, and I had a knack for teaching/tutoring others in the subject of math. 

So why did I go to college with my eyes set on a dual degree in architecture and construction management? 

First off, my beloved math teachers seemed to think I shouldn't go in to teaching. Not because I wouldn't have made a good teacher, but because teaching wasn't something they would have recommend to many, if anyone at all. Similarly, my mother, who is also a teacher, discouraged this career path because of the extremely poor monetary compensation of the profession.

Secondly, and somewhat connected to the first reason, was this societal notion that teaching was somehow not a high ranking or intellectual career. When I read this notion presented by William Ayers in To Teach (2010) just the other day was when I finally made the connection to this concept and how it had actually affected my career path. My math teachers didn't want me to teach because they thought it "beneath" my "skill and intelligence level" as Ayers says on page 18 of his book. Furthermore, I felt this pressure as well in my personal competitiveness with my sister who had chosen to pursue civil engineering. I wanted to show the world I was a smart, intellectual person by choosing a challenging and rewarding profession.

I reasoned that I like art as well as math, and the combination, therefore, would be architecture. Architecture would get me further in life and more praise than other careers I had 'previously considered.' 

So, after wading through prerequisites for the program, battling for admission to the architecture department, challenging myself with topics I pretended to be fully invested in, adding the intense dual degree in construction management, and avoiding the computer programs needed to succeed in the profession, I realized that the construction industry was far from what I wanted for my life.

I talked with my mother about my unhappiness and my regret for not going for teaching, and she relented saying that I should do what makes me happy; she finally gave me her explicit blessing to pursue teaching.

I finished my dual degree, researched certification programs, completed general knowledge prerequisites, was accepted to a program, and am currently in my first month of instruction.

Let's see where the road takes me now.