Today was another kind of strange day, but it has nothing on Friday's ridiculousness! We had a police officer at the school kind of patrolling around, but at least he didn't have a rifle strapped to his chest. There was apparently another threat over the weekend, and it was on the news and in the newspapers. A lot of parents were hesitant to send their children to school because of all of this, so we had a small class today (20 instead of the regular 26). It's amazing what a difference it makes when even one child is gone, not to mention six! I hate to say it, because it's best for the children to be at school...but one day with a smaller class is a nice break.
I also did my midterm evaluation today. I did a self-evaluation and then Aryn did hers for me, too. We compared afterwards. Let me just put this out there -- I am VERY tough on myself when it comes to evaluations. If it is set up on a 1-4 scale (as this one was) with 4 being "exceeds expectations," 3 being "meets expectations," 2 being "approaches," and 1 being "you are terrible - what are you even doing here?" I will never give myself a 4. It's so weird to me to rate myself that high. I just think of it like this: I set expectations for myself at all times, and they're really high. Like, really high. I have high expectations for myself but pretty low confidence, so it is nearly impossible for me to exceed my own expectations. I either meet them or I do not. There is no "exceeds" to me. So I gave myself mostly 3s with a lot of 2s, and each one got an explanation on why I think I need help with whatever it is. This is also how I think at work when I do these self-evaluations, where I actually am super confident...but I still don't think it's possible to do better than I expect of myself. And every time, I hear other people telling me I'm "too hard on myself" and I see other people give me mostly 4s with some 3s (like Aryn did today). I can't help it. I am hard on myself.
This got me thinking, though...maybe it's not that I'm just too hard on myself. Maybe it's that I legitimately do not see the things that others see when they look at me. I think I'm doing something one way, but it doesn't look that way to everyone else. I think that's why comparing our own perceptions of ourselves to others' evaluations of us is so important, because it helps us to see what we might be overlooking. It makes me feel better about myself and my teaching, knowing that Aryn thinks I'm exceeding in all of these areas that I thought I was lacking in. I feel dumb, because I hear people say these things and I just ignore them so that I can tell myself that I'm doing worse than they say. That makes no sense.
I'm beginning to see that one of the biggest parts of teaching is just believing that you can do it, and that you can teach it, and that you're doing a good job. If you don't think you can teach it, the children aren't going to think they can learn it. I'm finally seeing that -- now, in week 9. I see it.
Maybe we're all a little too hard on ourselves sometimes. We want to be great, but we trick ourselves into thinking that we aren't. It's interesting how other people see the strengths that we miss in ourselves.
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