Back at it

I am a teacher again. Started last week at St. Paul Preparatory School in down town St. Paul working on orientation and team-building activities with the 50+ new students who just arrived to the tundra from all over the world. They are 14-18 years old and come to this international high school primarily to improve their English and to prepare themselves for college in the US. They stay with host families all over the cities and take public transportation to school every day, sometimes commuting over an hour, maneuvering bus transfers and city skyways.

I love working downtown. It’s just St. Paul, but it is a city . . . and the skyway system is the most amazing thing ever! Walking 4 blocks to get a coffee without stepping foot outside! Walkers are everywhere whether it's on the coffee mission or the fat-burning mission. It's people and energy and I love it! I take public transportation to school too. Park the car about a mile from dad's and hop on a bus for a 15-minute ride into town. Brilliant!

I teach a high intermediate level of reading and an advanced English composition course. Once again, in a different city with diverse-background teenagers, my never-ending observations come to the same conclusion . . . teenagers all over the world are the same. The new ones in the school are scared and shy, afraid they won't fit in and fearful of failure. The ones that have been around for a while - or just six months - think they rule the roost, having earned their position high on the school's totem pole. They of course have had their speed bumps and growing pains, but they survived and spread the wings they believe they've earned. That's what's visible. What isn't visible is that they all are vulnerable. No matter the veneer, they are often a pile of scared goo underneath. Success to me happens when I can get them to reveal some of the goo. Encourage them to own it and see that they will be successful and loved despite or even because of it.

Being it’s my first semester and I am only a part-time teacher, I am the lowest on the staff totem pole. It’s always a good place to start, though. Easy to stay below the radar and get my feet wet while figuring things out. The Assistant Principal is really good at trusting her teachers to do their job and not be controlling at all. It allows me to do what I know how to do. The resources aren’t abundant. I move around from room to room, hanging my coat in the conference room. But that just means that it’s easy to hide if I want to. However, my colleagues are extremely nice and willing to answer any question that I have and that is always good. They are young and seem like they could be good fun too. Look forward to the opportunities to get to know them better. So here I am, beginning my teaching career in Minnesota!