Week 2 at my CFE in an IB school was a worthwhile experience.  It has been interesting to see how beginning with the question ‘what can I do to be useful’ has led me to being defined by the teachers at the school.  How so?  Well, I came in and found the grade 6 classes preparing for a play and a musical.  So I offered to help prep them.

It was a great chance to teach drama, which I hadn’t done in a deep way in my practicum.  I’ve spent enough time in high school drama classes, performing in musicals, choral concerts and doing public speaking that I could quickly and easy reflect those experiences to the kids and coach them on finding their voices.  It was a great way to be useful to the kids and support the life of the school.  As I helped students with their blocking, projection, emphasis, characters, backstage management, etc., I found I soon became known as someone who was particularly experienced as a drama teacher.  I’m flattered, but until now, I hadn’t even thought of including this on my resume as an area of strength.

To me, that is the magic of teaching elementary school and the reason I am so glad to come to teaching with a varied set of experiences.  As elementary teachers, we need to move from being able to support a school play, to teaching kids to be numerate and literate, to exploring science, to making meaning out of current events and history, to helping to explore visual arts.  All the while while building student buy-in for the idea that building the community up is the preferably path to getting a cheap laugh by tearing the community down.

And so, to me, good teachers are clearly chameleons.  They make themselves appear to be native to any subject under the sun, often simply by knowing how to formulate the right questions.

So this week, I’m the drama specialist.  Next week, who knows?  This experience has led to what is perhaps my new definition of what it means to be a great elementary teacher: A great elementary teacher is a chameleon; someone who makes it seem as though whatever they are needed for is what they are meant for.