Terrence Foushee - On lessons learned as a teacher (clip)

Kathryn Wall (KW): When you got into your own teacher education, what were some of the things that you know, was there anything that surprised you learning about how to be a teacher, or things that were more or less challenging or?

Terrence Foushee (TF): Yeah, there's absolutely no way to make a lesson plan that works for all the classes that you teach. In my first few years, so, in my first few years as as an English teacher I taught English 2, Standard English 1, and Honors English, and there were some times, there were certain years where I taught, pretty much, just taught English 1 and sometimes just English 2, and you can write the same lesson plan, with changes and things that will fit the demographics of each class, right. You understand that not every class is the same, and you can try your best to account for that, but as a teacher, who knows what is going to be the mood or the temperament of a class that you’re going to be teaching on any day. So, I think, for me, it was like temper your expectations and be able to adapt, because I've had moments like where in first period, I’ll have a lesson plan and it does not work at all; like students are not engaged, they don't care what I'm talking about, and in the next period, I’m like ugh, I don't want to have to go through that again, and then it completely works, and it's like oh my goodness, they seem to really enjoy what I was talking about. Then I’ve had the exact opposite happen, where in that first class they love it right off the bat, and I’m like I'm going to ride this momentum into the next period. And then the next class is just not interested at all. So just being able to adapt, and this is what I tell a lot of students who are in like leadership roles or do some sort of peer mentoring, or you’re like a junior counselor, I was like you have to get comfortable being goofy and uncool. Because if you act like you don't care, the students will more than likely act like they don't care. But if you are ok with looking goofy, and being laughed at, and being picked on, just a little bit, for how inexplicably passionate and excited you are to teach the thing, after a while, they are going to connect and latch on, right? They might never show the same level of excitement as you do, but they’ll appreciate it because you care about your job and students are aware, and I’m not talking about just high school students, elementary, from every level of education, from pre-K all the way to 12th grade; these students are perceptive, they are aware, they can tell if the teacher in front of them enjoys what they do or not, and they can also tell if you come in with a good attitude or a bad attitude. Like you might love your job, but some days are not going to be great and students are aware and perceptive of that, but what have you placed as a teacher to have those students to be able to adapt to how you might be feeling, where they can still respect and maybe understand that teacher’s not in the best mood, but I’m still gonna do my job to the best of my ability. And that’s one of the…