📷
I have only just begun my teaching journey; I am only one full year in. I have known from a young age that I wanted to be a teacher. When I was in elementary school, I would gather the neighborhood kids into the our garage (where I asked my father to hang a whiteboard) and “play” school. I was always the teacher, of course. I taught lessons from old teacher’s edition textbooks, assigned homework, and kept a gradebook.
I always knew teaching was my calling, yes, but I had no idea that middle schoolers would capture my heart. I did not want to teach middle school. I wanted to be with the littles; but as a fresh college graduate, I took the first job I found.
I was terrified. I had no experience with middle school. I thought that sixth graders would be big and bad, that I would have no classroom management, and I would not be able to build relationships. My first day, I was shaking.
I always knew teaching was my calling, but my calling within teaching found me. I was meant to be a middle school teacher. I find great joy in building positive relationships with the students in my building and helping guide them through the crazy that is middle school.
We all know middle school is a unique time in a student’s life. They are finding themselves, realizing they have a voice, and figuring out how to use it, figuring out who they want to be and why, and they begin questioning the boundaries. They are able to have mature, adult-like conversations and still throw a temper tantrum, all within a 10 minute window. They are kind and compassionate, yet have the ability to be down right mean. Simply put, middle school is where the fun is.
As teachers of these unique creatures, we have the ability to take the negative and help guide them to kindness, responsibility, reasonability. They are, of course, our future. In my humble opinion, middle schoolers are the best schoolers!
Jessica Kocanda, Sixth grade RLA, Central Illinois, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.