What College Didn't Teach Me About Teaching

Going into my fifth year of teaching, I still face new experiences that I never would have imagined while back in college.  I have the theory that teacher preparation should really involve more classroom experience and less formal schooling.  Most of what I learned in college did not prepare me for the day-to-day surprises that goes with being a teacher.  In particular, the beginning of the school year tends to catch me off guard the most.

Three years ago, I arrived at my classroom ready to prepare it for the new school year.  I had learned about all the guidelines for setting up a classroom, arranging desks, and decorating the walls.  I had not learned about the possibility that there might be faulty piping in the school.  My classroom was on the corner of the school, having two exterior walls.  I chose it because it had a door to the outdoors, allowing me to see daylight once in awhile.  Apparently, the contractors thought my corner classroom would be the best location for a drainage pipe.  Therefore, rainwater on the roof could drain through a hole in my ceiling and into the sink.  Unfortunately, the contractors did not deem it necessary to align the drainage pipe with the aforementioned sink.  The result: one week before school started I got to spend the day cleaning up a classroom flood instead of setting up my classroom.  That turned out okay, because the district ordered kick-proof walls for my classroom and made a mess of the place during their installation, so my things would have been moved anyway.  Floods and kick-proof walls?  Where was this in the college textbooks?

Last year, I started at a new school in a new district.  On my first day of school, I was scheduled to start my day as the special education teacher in a kindergarten classroom.  I entered the classroom to see a screaming, yelling, kicking five year old.  Though I didn't know this child and he was not one of the children I was assigned to work with, I went to help out so that the general education teacher could manage the rest of her class.  As soon as the child saw the opportunity, he bolted from the classroom and ran across the campus.  I quickly went into running mode and sprinted after him.  Here I was, the new teacher at a new school, giving my first impression to all as the teacher who chases after kids.  In dress shoes.  And a skirt.  There weren't any conventional tactics I could use to stop the child and he was heading for the parking lot, which exits into a busy intersection.  I had no choice but to reach out and scoop the child up in my arms, screaming and kicking, in front of lots of parents and teachers and the principal.

This year I faced some more surprises.  I arrived at school a week early to start planning for the year and arranging my classroom.  My to-do lists for school preparation are often a mile long.  This time I had the pleasure to add to my list "sweep up dead cockroaches."  There were about a dozen.  But, as usual, I managed to get everything cleaned up, floods and walls and cockroaches, before the students arrived on the first day of school.  It was a great day.  It went by in a blur, but everything went according to plan, or at least as close to plan as I expected.  During one of my groups, a child informed me in his own unique way that he needed the restroom.  He went to the in-class bathroom and I realized that he had had an accident.  So, while continuing instruction with the rest of my first graders through a crack in the bathroom door, I attended to the boy.  It turns out, he surprised me with much more than expected.

So, college, I have a bone to pick with you.  There are many things you taught me, but not nearly enough.  In all of those textbooks, where were the lessons on leaky roofs, kick-proof walls, cockroach infestations, runaway children, and poopy pants?