Saturday, January 19, 2008

A New Semester



Being a teacher educator has its pros and cons. I love the freedom to pick and create the course I teach and seeing new teachers begin their journey toward becoming professionals. I love the freedom to make my own schedule and choose what I want to do and when. I also like meetings - funny, huh? Some days that is the work of the day - attend meetings and make plans for future.

What I don't like about it is you are always responsible for everything - even if you don't know or feel that you are responsible! I am finally learning not to leave anything to chance and make sure I find out all the info I need (such as making sure all my students have all their paperwork in order and turned in). And though I lie having the freedom to make my own choices, sometimes that is a burden particularly when it comes to being aggressive in getting additional consulting work or extra funding. Which brings me to my final dislike - the money. I do understand that as a professor you are not working a 9-5 job, and that is great. But, come on! Having a PhD should count for something!!

I am pretty loaded with work this semester - I am working with 5 intern teachers (all math interns which is great!), I have 20 students in a new introduction to education class, 12 students in Children's Literature (which believe it or not I like teaching), and the seminar for student intern teachers to prepare them to complete an action research project before the end of the semester. So it should be very interesting - I hope to make it through unscathed and learn the names of all my students!

1 comment:

Undomestic said...

Those "students" are very fortunate to have an awesome teacher like you. Maybe you can take up a collection after each class to pad your salary...ha ha!