Out of the Cauldron – Into the ‘Apples’!

The popular medical TV sit-com Scrubs details the trials, tribulations and joys of the learning journeys of a group of fresh-out-of-Med-School doctors, trying to cluelessly find their way in their new career. We watch their growth, both as doctors and as people, over many seasons – empathising as we watch them strike a very poor work/life balance, find that they are without money or accommodation, deal with catastrophes both at work and in their personal lives, and grapple with reconciling maintaining a ‘normal’ life whilst playing a role in determining the life and death of others each and every day. The stories are very cleverly strung together with the common thread of humour, weaving in and out of their individual and collective journeys, but the reality of life in a hospital is not overlooked, and we share in their pain of death, debilitation and failure.

In one particular episode, JD performs very well under pressure and saves the life of a patient who is ‘crashing’ – and Elliott laments that she has not had the opportunity to do the same and thus feels that she cannot call herself ‘a real doctor’. Despite all of the work that she had done, despite all of the techniques that she had perfected, despite all that she had achieved, despite the many lives that she had touched, because she had not experienced the ‘moment of truth’ that JD had, she felt as though she not a legitimate a doctor. She is blind to her achievements due to her inability to look past this one event, and thus her validity as a doctor is undermined.
I bring this to your collective attention not because I am converting my blog to a sit-com review site (ha!) but because I am constantly searching for analogies that will resonate with a wide array of people who would otherwise have a poor understanding of a concept. I feel that striking parallels can be seen between the shenanigans of learning to be a doctor and that associated with learning to be a teacher. Scrubs captures the personal struggles of a group of people entering a workforce where their every action impacts upon a person’s life, their motivations play a very large part in the decisions that they make, they are subject to immense public scrutiny, they must deal with unqualified ‘know-it-all’ individuals, and their best judgement can be called into question weeks, months and even years following an event…this sounds somewhat familiar!

I am teaching chemistry to students in Years 11 and 12. I am planning lessons, deciding which approach is the best, and attempting to gauge understanding whilst delivering the material. I am adapting my practice to suit my classes’ responses to the information, observing the group dynamics, getting to know them as people. I am coordinating practical experiments and encouraging them to think critically about their observations. I am trying to be good at what I am doing, and I have certainly made many mistakes, but I am confident that I am persevering through the challenges of floundering in an unfamiliar and unpredictable environment.

And yet I am forced to question: am I a teacher? Am I truly ‘one who teaches’? Should I dare to claim such a title without having graduated yet? Is becoming a ‘teacher’ a rite of passage that necessitates the signing of the contract, the official namebadege, the personalised posters on the classroom wall, the labelled pigeon hole, the coffee mug in the staffroom cupboard, the Bloom’s Taxonomy poster above the desk? Or is a ‘teacher’ simply one who has the courage to face the trials and tribulations of education head-on?

I do not believe the coffee mug makes the teacher, but I am unsure whether simply having the motivation to try is enough, either. Am I Elliott – blind to my successes and abilities by being fixated on whether I feel that I can call myself a teacher – or am I truly not at the stage where I should be labelled as such? I have not had that ‘defining moment’ that speaks of my true teacherhood – you know the one, portrayed in every ‘tame the challenging students’ movie ever made! – but I have observed a faint light of understanding in the eyes of my students…do such little things not count for big achievements?

I think that what I am grappling with is the convolution in the Venn diagram of my teacher and personal identities: the relevance of titles, assumptions, achievements and emotions, attempting to reconcile my tenuous sense of teacherhood with my equally tenuous sense of self. But the fact that I am struggling with these concepts surely speaks of my investment in them, and indicates the importance that I am placing on understanding what it means to be a teacher in the eyes of society, and what it feels like to be a teacher within myself.

I have been moving through my prac with excitement, anticipation, uncertainty and a little regret, but with only two weeks remaining, I am not feeling much of anything at all. I am having fun conversing with my colleagues, and the students, and trying to be an effective teacher, but I am honestly feeling less and less as the days pass. What does this mean for my developing selves and how I view my future as a teacher? The mental fog in which I  currently reside could be an artefact of not being able to process the overwhelmingly different environment which I have delved into – or it could be that my perpetual state of unknowing is seeping into every aspect of my teaching.

Prac has thus far been enjoyable, challenging, educational and trying. I feel as though I have emerged from the cauldron of university and its trappings of awakening and continual uncertainty, only to dive head-long into the equally unpredictably amazing world of the teacher. It may not always be a barrel of laughs, but the apples do not spoil for such minimal discomfort – the teacher’s apples remain stoic in the face of degradation.

– For Science!