Raise or Raze?

Why Raise or Raze? As a teacher, mother, and wife, I am constantly responsible for the care of others in one way or another. In this nurturing capacity, there are so many ways to help others, to make others feel loved, and even to teach students wonderful things that they are very thankful for. I am happy to do these things – I rather love it! As a teacher, I even feel rather self-congratulatory because I can see how much of a difference I have made in someone’s life.  At home, maybe I taught one of my kids how to spell a new word, or maybe it was how to cut their own food for the first time. Maybe I took my teenager out to practice driving, or helped him with some homework. A thank you, a hug, a feeling of appreciation warms me up from the bottom of my toes to the top of my head.

The flip side to raising kids and to teaching is that life isn’t always so perfect.  Maybe I yelled at my kid because he was dawdling instead of getting ready for school on time. Maybe when my child came out with mismatched long-patterned socks, striped shirt and plaid shorts, I just sort of laughed out loud (yes, just today in fact). Or maybe I lost my cool to my entire class of middle schoolers and yelled at them to quiet down immediately or they would stay after the bell rang instead of going to lunch. For any number of reasons, we are imperfect creatures and we make mistakes even though we have the best intentions. Life just happens and instead of encouraging a learning environment, we feel as though we razed our students, our kids, our entire day.

I am trying out blogging about teaching composition (OK it began as a class assignment!) and if all goes well, I hope to learn a lot about being reflective with my teaching as I ponder the many many ways I can raise students up (teach them, and lift up their self esteem) and even raze them with my imperfect teaching methods. I hope that this reflective teaching practice – reviewing and reflecting on how I feel about teaching composition, what composition practices and how my previous experiences inform my philosophy of teaching, and also give me insight into my teaching practices. I will also be analyzing various aspects of being a composition instructor.