For the past 22 years, I've had conversations with people I meet that sound something like this:
New Person: So, what do you do for a living?
Me: I'm a teacher.
New Person: Oh, really! Wh\at do you teach?
Me: I teach language arts and computers.
New Person: Oh, wow! Language arts! So you teach things like writing and spelling and vocabulary? Reading, too? You have kids read novels and things?
Me: Yep, I sure do.
New Person: So that means you must keep yourself pretty busy, especially with teaching writing. You must have to grade a lot of essays.
Me: Yes, that takes up a lot of my time!
New Person: There's a lot of stuff to cover in language arts.
Me: Yes, I have to do my lesson plans every week, and often they change because I tend to over plan!
New Person: What grade do you teach?
Me: Junior high, 7th and 8th grade.
New Person: Yikes! You're brave! I give you a lot of credit! That's a hard age to teach!
Me: Nah, I love that age! The kids are a lot of fun!
Now that I've started my new position with the district, conversations have gone more like this:
New Person: So, what do you do for a living?
Me: I'm a teacher.
New Person: Oh, really! What do you teach?
Me: I'm the instructional technology resource teacher for my district.
New Person: Oh. What's that?
Me: Well, I help teachers and students integrate technology into the curriculum for learning and instruction.
New Person: Oh, like computers, iPads? Things like that?
Me: Yep!
New Person: Oh. So what grade do you teach?
Me: Well, I work with teachers and students grades kindergarten through 8.
New Person: Oh. So you don't have your own classroom of students?
Me: No. I have an office. But I do get to come in to other teachers' classrooms to work with them and their students.
New Person: Oh. So you're not like a regular teacher.
And this is where I don't know what to say. I consider myself a teacher, but am I? I don't really have any of the "markers" that indicate I'm a teacher -- I don't have a classroom or my own class of students, I don't use textbooks, I don't make lesson plans, I don't grade papers. So, am I still a teacher?
One of the things was was the most difficult to me when my daughter was getting ready to leave for college was finding a "new identity". I had spent 18 years being lots of things -- Jim's wife, Becky's mom, a teacher -- and I felt like having my child leave home to go to school was almost like taking away one of my identities. I wasn't the mom of a kid anymore. This is how I am starting to feel about myself and my job. Am I losing my identity? Am I not a teacher anymore?
Don't get me wrong -- I like my new job. I get to do some really fun things (and I admit -- some not-so-fun things, like do NOT talk to me about Apple Configurator!!!!) and I get to work with teachers that I haven't had the chance to work with before but I admire very much. But I don't teach every day. So what am I? What makes a teacher a teacher????
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