I never liked to split my focus in high school and college. I wanted all my attention and efforts on my academics rather than balancing enough extracurriculars and part-time job to be considered a well-rounded student. My grades mattered above all else. I could say the same about my first two years of teaching: I focused on what was happening in my classroom. I didn't coach a sport or run a club because as a young teacher who was making her own curricula and materials while also juggling graduate school, I figured my focus was split enough as it was. As a leader in my school, my classroom was my space and I needed to own it.

 

My teaching role model was Mrs. G, my high school Chemistry teacher. She was serious. She made us work hard and many students felt she was overly strict, demanding, and graded too hard. Her personality and caring nature became apparent when we realized the way she ran her classroom was solely for our benefit. She may not have been the type of teacher who told us she loved us everyday, but her caring shaped her leadership style: rigor, high expectations, before-school tutoring, after-school tutoring, review games, lessons that appealed to visual, auditory, and kinesthetic learners, and so on. She was tough, yet dedicated with a subtle sense of humor (at first, definitely more obvious later), but she had our backs as long as we were working hard too.

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I have always been quiet and reserved when I first meet new people, so I believed adopting a teaching style similar to Mrs. G would be right up my alley. Although I knew how I wanted to teach and interact with my student, everything was still a work in progress after my first two years of teaching (which makes sense; I'm still new after all!). My leadership style, first and foremost, was centered around hard work. My students knew when they came to my class that we were working. They might have been resentful of this and they might have asked on a near daily basis if we could go to the gym, library, or play outside instead, but my answer never wavered. They knew what to expect when they stepped into Ms. Lindsay's classroom.

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I excelled at being a hard-worker and taking my job seriously. I was not the most personable teacher, though. I typically kept a neutral face and avoided answering personal questions during a lesson. So I found small ways to let my personality show through: dry humor, pun of the day, laughing with my students at my clumsiness. (I tripped over the same wires hundreds of times!) I also offered students choices on assignments, handed out rewards for good grades and/or behavior, allowed students to make test corrections, and provided missing materials, such as pencils, pens, scissors, glue, and markers. I did this in an effort to make my classroom feel like a place they could comfortably learn and have some control (and ultimately investment) in their education. Even if they didn't always like how seriously I taught and managed my classroom, my students at least didn't doubt what I was there to do and that I was serious about getting it done.

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Read further on tough decisions I have made as a teacher: Tough Decisions

Read further on on how I feel others perceive me as a teacher: Perceptions of Teaching

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