Full Time

Today was my first day teaching all of the theatre classes at McNamara. I have already been working my way into teaching full-time, and now am at that point.

The day went very well, the students responded very enthusiastically to the lessons. In the Intro classes I had used Human Slide Shows to introduce script writing, and today shared an original scene that I wrote in Oxford. They also brainstormed ideas for their own scenes, which they will be writing next class. In Acting I did a fun classroom activity where the students are "born" and rapidly age to 7 years old, as a way to demonstrate given circumstances and characterization, as they begin scene work.

Student teaching is great in that you get to teach in your subject, while still receiving feedback. It's not so great in that you get to work for a full semester, full-time, without any pay, and instead have to pay your university tens of thousands of dollars for the privilege of student teaching. In fact, given that last detail, I'm sometimes surprised anyone becomes a teacher.

Honestly, it is rewarding, and I like encouraging students to engage with material in a meaningful way.  However, it'd be nice to have an actual teaching job.  Yesterday one student said "Mr. M- you're like almost a real teacher."  "Thanks," I replied.  "That's almost a compliment."