Chapter nine of "Fires in the Bathroom" talks about when teachers and students begin to feel discouraged by school. At one point, the essential problem for teachers is summarized as being a "balance between maintaining their authority and letting students know they care about them."
I feel this gets to the heart of a bigger issue in teaching: The balance between teaching as a profession and teaching as a lifestyle. All teachers end up somewhere on this spectrum. At one extreme, they consider teaching to be just a job, and are so disconnected from their students that learning the material becomes difficult. At the other extreme, teachers strive too far to become connected to students, and either lose the ability to control them or lose the ability to keep track of them. I feel like maintaining this balance is essential, and that it changes day-to-day, rather than being a constant ethos. Some days, it will be important to remind myself that it's just a job; other days, I will have to remember that these kids have lives of their own, and that what's happening in those lives is just as important as what I'm teaching them.
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