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Webcam

I want to be a good teacher. I want to. I want to I want to. So, what does that mean exactly? I am in a mental tug-o-war about the whole thing.

The laws here are so flexible that it allows me to declare that family time, going swimming, and playing in the park are sometimes even more valuable than writing with proper sentence structure and being able to multiply in our heads. That is basically who I am. I didn't used to know this about myself.

I think that a lot of what is wrong with the world today comes from people being so uptight and conforming. I also think that having a mid life crisis and quitting your job, moving onto a boat and drinking orange juice and Captain Morgan's while sitting in a lounger watching the sun go down over the horizon is basically just a delayed realization of what is really most important in life. It is all about quality. It has nothing to do with quantity. For me that would be time well spent. There are things to see and do. If you are sitting with your nose to the grindstone all of the time your life will pass you by.

This is not to say that I want my children to grow up uneducated and unrefined. I want the exactly the opposite. But I think having freedom and independence in learning makes children resourceful and more uninhibited in pursuing their own interests.

My children are very bright and have a natural capability of learning. I believe all children have that. I just think that there aren’t many adults out there willing to allow them to learn at their own pace. I am fortunate that mine learn very easily and quickly. I feel for many parents out there with children who have special needs and are either fighting the system that holds them back because of those needs, or completely unable to provide the environment that their child needs to strive and be successful.

My son is an artist. He will be artistic when he grows up. He knows it. His dad knows it. I know it. We all know it. An education will definitely help that dream along, whatever he does with it. In the long run though it will be his artistic creativity that makes him happiest.

And yet I still plug along each day, assigning workbook pages and reading assignments and battle him over the lack of interest in writing projects. I obsess over curriculum and whether I am doing enough. Is our stack of completed papers big enough for the evaluator? Has he read enough books this year? Were they challenging enough for his reading level?

Why? When I know that if there wasn’t someone there at the end of this road judging us both, I wouldn’t be overly concerned with curriculum and standards.

I hate that what I do, I do for the approval of people I don’t even know or care about. Everything in me says to do it my way. I don't know what I am waiting for.

Posted by gwendolyn on February 14, 2001 at 04:54 PM