Categories
Learning and Leading

Growing Together

By India Miles
Middle School Teacher, Lakehill Preparatory School

Originally, this piece was supposed to be about the growth of my students. I was prepared to wax philosophical about the maturity of my students and how much more of their “peopleness” I saw and liked, this, their sixth grade year. However true, I wonder if it is really our relationship and my understanding of their struggles that I better appreciate this year.

As their fifth grade teacher, it was largely my duty to not only provide engaging content, but to facilitate the transition to middle school. Students spent the first half of the year triumphing in the exhilaration of being with the “big kids” while navigating lockers, acclimating to different teachers for each subject, and figuring out how to take care of their business within a five-minute passing period. The second semester dawned cold and bright, and though this would be their last January as the newbies of middle school, they still showed signs that they were not quite ready for independence. I’ll never forget one sweet student asking me if she should use a second sheet of paper to finish her work, since she’d filled up the first. Looking back, I realize that it was not a lack of problem-solving ability, but merely the need for assurance: “am I doing this right?

At the time, I was fairly stupefied by this question. With time and understanding, and by seeing a new fifth grade class exhibit those same assurance-seeking behaviors, I’ve come to the realization that so much of what I do in the middle school classroom goes beyond instruction, curriculum, and content. Though I’ve known for a while how we educators do much more than teach, it is in this, my fifth year of teaching, that I have a better understanding of my students’ minds, how they work, and the soon-coming but not yet achieved “light bulb” moments that every teacher longs to see. In short, it is not just my students who have grown; I believe I have as well.

India Miles