[This week’s guest blogger is Dan Meyer, a 21-yo student teacher who doesn’t know a quality faculty even when dropped into the middle of it.]
Not long after you begin student teaching (two days in my case), you’ll begin to notice something a bit…off, a little…askew, about your co-workers. Let me hasten your discovery along: they’re old.
Most were born old and they’ll all, without exception, die old. Most will be twice your age, and if that doesn’t feel awkward to you, be concerned.
These people, your “peers”, cling to every passing buzzword as if it is the rope that will save their very lives. They are the lumbering, aging Brontosauri and as you skip nimbly about their elephantine feet, please never forget: don’t show them up.
(yet)
There will be a time and place for their eventual extinction but until then, don’t ever forget that, though their feet are large and clumsy, they still have claws. And only the old lions hunt humans.
4 Comments
ken
January 22, 2008 - 4:56 pm -Clearly, you’re only on your second day. Everyone, no…make that EVERYONE, knows that ‘the old’ have no interest in buzz words.
Words of Exception:
1. Early Retirement
2. Pension
3. Grumble, Grumble
4. Mimeograph
Laelia
January 22, 2008 - 6:12 pm -Oh honey, one might refer to your post as the result of the ‘innocence of youth’, however, in your case we might need to adjust that phrase to the ‘ignorance of youth’. FYI — I’m more than twice your age. We too face a dilema — that of how to deal w/ those still wet behind the ears, those that trip over their own feet, those who believe that the ‘truth’ resides only within them, those who have not learned the lessons that history has taught (that what goes around, comes around), oh wait….I must be talking about some of my peers — those 20-somethings.
My extinction? Sweetpea, I SERIOUSLY doubt that prediction! Demise, certainly, but not before I’ve had the opportunity to watch you quit (yes, that’s ‘quit’) this profession. It’s obvious by your attitude towards your ‘peers’ that you just ain’t got what it takes — research has shown that a high percentage of people entering the teaching field leave after three years — my money’s on your leaving in less than 9 months. I just hope your attitude towards others doesn’t extend towards your students because I just hate to imagine the mess others will have to clean up.
Jen
January 23, 2008 - 7:04 am -Wow, hard to comment after that last posting. Laelia, you might want to read through the archives a bit — or at least notice that they are there!
I’m going to have the reverse situation — for one of my observations, my teacher was 16 years younger than I was and was in the process of getting her master’s — the same one I was observing her to get.
Maybe I’ll get lucky and they’ll want to hire me because I’m old and unlikely to teach for 30 years ….since I’d be in my mid-70’s.