Reflecting on the Summer Training (sniff, sniff!)

Summer training was a fast-paced learning and friend-making adventure.  I would compare it to diving into a pool. I knew exactly what was coming, and it felt even more refreshing and invigorating than I expected. Also, like a dive, I felt queasy and nervous at first. Looking down into the waters below, I was apprehensive in the beginning weeks. Formal evaluation days and befriending new people and getting up in front of a class for the first time were inevitable growing pains of training. Any training requires pushes into un-comfortable zones. That is how I would describe summer training: a series of pushes into that zone of discomfort, which got gradually more and more do-able. The encouragement and support along that route was more than sufficient to keep me willing to step into each new day and each new experience. Soon enough, each day became a thrill.

Summer training also entailed bonding with my second years and fellow first years. I learned so much from these five people (plus my team teacher).  Through my daily interaction with them, I gained strength, a sense of know-how, a direction to my professional growth, and most of all, a love for the job. My questions, fears, concerns, ideas, dreams and hopes: they were all in safe territory with these “teaching kin” in place.

This brings me to the most helpful aspect of summer training: the social interaction that is built into it. I love being roommates and neighbors with the people I work alongside. I love growing as a teacher, not on my own, but as part of a group of people who share the same journey and desires in their future vocation. I love the fact that benefitting from peers’ ideas is so effortless in this environment, and that sharing resources is made so natural and easy over the course of the summer training. This is hands-down the absolute strength of summer training: centrality of social exchange between, and proximity to, first- and second-years -- and then, the magical transition to an intensified bonding between first-years in July. I feel like this enables us to survive. When I refer to this strength of ‘social interaction,’ I refer not only to the vocation-related advice the second-years and team teachers gave (and continue to give!) us, but also to our own closeness to each other – in terms of age, energy levels, idea flow, etc. – made summer training very productive and satisfying.

What needs improvement about summer training? I say, keep the rigorous pace, the early mornings  of school and lesson prep, and late nights of LP-ing. Keep the afternoon class, the inclusion of the more seasoned team teachers and all the evaluations and assignments to blog, to do projects and to read books. All I’d like to add is, more books (one or two to give us even more classroom management food for thought), and somehow making our class time a time when we can start thinking about planning for our year ahead. Perhaps some end-of-summer re-boosting from the second years would be good, like a jump-start to mentoring before the first day of school hits. I definitely feel compelled to read all of Wong & Wong now. I can’t suggest much for summer training improvement at this point; perhaps being in my own classroom within the next two weeks will show me where summer training left me unprepared. From where I stand now, though, I feel well-prepared and ready (though still nervous as I imagine what lies ahead- but no amount of preparation could take that away. A little edge is good in order to function anyway, isn’t it?).