Create successful ePaper yourself
Turn your PDF publications into a flip-book with our unique Google optimized e-Paper software.
The Beauty of Teaching<br />
A LETTER FROM CAITLIN POW, CO-BRANCH CHAIR, GRADE SCHOOL<br />
In the summer of 2014, just before I was to start teaching my first First<br />
Grade at Maine Coast Waldorf School (then Merriconeag), I remember<br />
telling a friend that I had a sense that I was going to get a large,<br />
rambunctious, and, yes, a rather naughty class for this eight-year journey.<br />
‘Don’t jinx yourself,’ she admonished, but it was too late! The universe and I<br />
were in agreement about what the constellation of the class would be and,<br />
sure enough, as I greeted their very cute faces on the first day of school at the<br />
doorway of the first-grade classroom, I knew my hunch was delightfully true. I<br />
was in for a handful as a new teacher<br />
Now, eight years later, having passed that more mature, but still rambunctious<br />
group of Eighth Graders off to the joys of summer before they begin High<br />
School next fall, I’ve been reflecting on what it meant to me to have the group<br />
of students that I had for eight happy years.<br />
As many new teachers do, I began my first year of teaching with very wellplanned,<br />
precise, and rigid ideas of how each lesson would flow, what<br />
questions I would ask to generate the answers I was looking for to achieve<br />
the learning goals, and how we’d seamlessly segue from one activity to the<br />
next. This all worked marvelously for about a month as the First Graders<br />
showed me their best behavior in their big kid classroom at their big kid<br />
desks, but after that honeymoon phase, they began to do what children do<br />
best: give their teachers honest feedback about how the teaching was going.<br />
The beauty of teaching is that you receive instant feedback on job performance.<br />
If the lesson is boring, pedantic, or confusing, young children will immediately<br />
let you know through their questions, engagement, and behavior. During<br />
those first few years as a new teacher, this boisterous class of students<br />
gave me excellent and instantaneous feedback each and every day as only<br />
The beauty of teaching is that you receive instant feedback on<br />
job performance. If the lesson is boring, pedantic, or confusing,<br />
young children will immediately let you know through their<br />
questions, engagement, and behavior.<br />
children can, forcing me to develop<br />
the flexibility to pivot, switch up the<br />
activities, spend more time on a topic<br />
than I had planned, and sometimes<br />
realize that my entire lesson plan was<br />
really not that good or exciting and<br />
scrap it altogether.<br />
Teachers around the world have this<br />
experience, but unique to the Waldorf<br />
model, I got that feedback from the<br />
same children year after year. This<br />
prolonged model of relationship<br />
allowed me the opportunity to see<br />
how their learning and engagement<br />
changed each year as they aged<br />
while simultaneously allowing me to<br />
fine-tune and hone my teaching as I<br />
learned to read the room, work with<br />
the energy of the students that day,<br />
and meet the interests and strengths<br />
that I was able to witness developing<br />
in my students over years.<br />
I could write a whole novel full of the<br />
adventures, activities, and anecdotes<br />
from the experience of teaching<br />
this class; this group of children and<br />
I summited mountains together,<br />
put on plays, rode the subway,<br />
kayaked, and made outrageous<br />
messes during art projects, had<br />
conversations ranging from hilarious<br />
to serious, worked on endless math<br />
problems, and enjoyed each other’s<br />
company for eight long years. Yes,<br />
they were rambunctious and a little<br />
naughty throughout, but because<br />
I had the privilege of being their<br />
teacher year after year, I also got<br />
to witness them being wise, funny,<br />
kind, compassionate, innovative,<br />
profound, enthusiastic, thoughtful,<br />
and educators themselves as they<br />
truly taught me how to be a teacher.<br />
As I turn my thoughts away from<br />
the graduating Eighth Grade Class<br />
of 20<strong>22</strong> and to the little ones I’ll<br />
be starting over with again this<br />
upcoming fall, I feel well prepared<br />
to begin again. This time, however,<br />
I’m excited to have the hard-earned<br />
experience to allow me to craft even<br />
stronger lessons than my first-yearteaching-self<br />
could have imagined,<br />
while at the same time having the<br />
experience to be ready to toss it out<br />
and pivot when my students show me<br />
that they need something different.<br />
12 MAINE COAST WALDORF SCHOOL 20<strong>21</strong>-20<strong>22</strong> ANNUAL REPORT 13
Change language