Collecting Stories

I love watching great teachers in action. I sit back and observe and daydream about how I would love to be as great of a teacher someday also.

Back to reality: I am not a great teacher.

I am a first year teacher. I am doing the best I can with what I know. It is the ultimate test of patience - I want to be good now, but teaching is a craft that only can truly be learned in the process of doing it.

I recently heard a talk by Dr. Glenn Nierman, the president of the National Association for Music Education. He had the persona of a great teacher - clear, charismatic, engaging, accomplished. But he said something very interesting as he reflected back on his first year of teaching:

"That first year, I wanted everything to be perfect. But I got to a point in which that was impossible. I almost didn't come back after Thanksgiving. I felt terrible to scale everything back, but I had to just to survive. I had to focus on only one thing being really good and let the rest be just ok."

Here I was listening to the president of the entire National Association for Music Education telling me that his first year, even he thought about quitting. I found it inspiring that his decision to push beyond that first Thanksgiving was the first step that led him to the speech he was currently making.

At this moment, something started to click for me:

This year isn't about being a great teacher, or vaguely "changing students' lives."

It is about collecting stories.

I need all these stories of fatigue, and temptations to quit, and imperfections, because they are the stories someone will need to hear from me 30 years from now. They will see the [hopefully] great teacher that I aspire to be. That won't need to be talked about. They will need to hear the memories I tucked away in my back pocket, the stories of struggle, of being a little less than ok and somehow making it anyway.

I will make it, because I have the story someone else will need.

Back to reality: I am not a great teacher.

Yet.

I am
Collecting Stories.