Last week, after I posted, I realized that I never explained the title of the post, so here I go. A lot of the people in my program think I'm a hippie ! because I "wear fun earrings" and am "artsy". I do not know how these labels got thrust upon me but they have been. But, I'm here to set the record straight cause while I'm flattered, I don't think I really identify with hippies.
This past weekend, I went to Vienna but since Naoni wrote about this I won't rehash the details. On Wednesday, I went to Sankt Peders Bageri for the first time. It's the the bakery that everyone goes to for Wednesday snails, which are just cinnamon rolls but they're supposed to be the best in town. The one I had was pretty good but I haven't had a bad pastry since I've been here, so I don't know if I'm a great judge.
That night I went to a place called American Pie for dinner. They had little dinner pies. I got the beef and mashed potatoes one.
Then, I had to watch a movie with my Danish class. It was called Across the Waters and it was about the German occupation of Denmark. It was quite sad but it depicts very real and complex part of Danish history. Our professor was telling us that in textbooks and things this event is usually characterized by "passive resistance" and how that doesn't necessarily do what happened justice. And I feel like a lot of things in history are like that. I don't know it was an interesting convo.
I had another super interesting conversation with someone from my core course the other day, too. I tweeted about it afterwards (naturally) but I feel like even that tweet didn't fully explain what we talked about. I guess I shouldn't really explain it on a public platform, wouldn't want to call people out, but basically our conversation ended with us talking about the misconceptions of working in a field with children in it. When I tell people that I'm going into teaching I usually get a handful of responses. One of them being some sort of variation of: you must be a saint to want to work in education. Or they tell me that they thought about teaching too and then some sort of excuse as to why they didn't end up doing it. And I never know what to say in conversations like those because I guess it feels like other peoples' perceptions of what it means to be a teacher are so different from my own? You could say this for any field of work but unless you're in it it's hard to understand the ins and outs of it all. Even within the education field everyone's feelings/motivations/outlook on teaching are so different. But I guess the point that I want to stress is that I'm not going into teaching with this mindset that I want to change the world or the lives of the kids I work with. I think inherently the job comes with some of that because you are working with real people, but if I went in with that mindset it would be 1) so overwhelming and 2) imply that I think I'm the smartest person in the room. And I wouldn't be. You learn so much when you work with kids even as the "adult" or authority figure. And more than anything I think teaching is a job that's based in acceptance and growth. And that both of those things start with learning. Ugh I am not explaining this to the fullest extent but I guess what I'm trying to say is (and this may seem like a jump but I promise it's not 😅) that if you want to work with kids you have to be open to learning. And in order to do that you need to challenge your beliefs and things that you consider to be facts and be okay with other people challenging those too.
Sigh lol I kinda wanna delete all that because it's not really what I was trying to say but oh well. If you wanna know my actual thoughts you'll just have to talk to me in person...words are so much easier when they come out of your mouth. Anyways, hopefully this didn't come off as preachy, but also I'm not exempt from any of this I got shit to work on too. But no more writing. I gotta go grocery shopping now. Til next time folks.
Yeah, I understand and agree with you. From my experience with teachers tho, I feel like they ever have a savior complex as much as they have a serious passion that they have that they want to share and want to support you through tough times. So when I hear that you want to become a teacher, I think that’s why you want to (that’s me projecting my perception of a teacher like you were saying). Is it tho?
I think I kind of understand what you're saying about going into teaching, too! it's weird in any case to deal with people projecting why you want to go into any kind of profession, and I feel like people as treat kids as, like, something to be dealt with or something to mould into something else if that makes sense? Instead of like, people with unique sets of experiences. I don't know but yeah I feel like from talking to you in the past you've always known that you're not one of those people who sees themselves as some kind of role model and you're good at articulating that
Wednesday 🐌 snails?! That’s such a better name than cinnamon rolls. Also the pies look really tasty Even if it didn’t come out exactly how you’d want, I think I get what you’re saying there! It’s weird bc when we think of our teachers (or adults in general) it’s hard to view them as people who are learning themselves.... but then you realize oop I’m old enough to be a teacher and I still have so much growing to do! It reminds me of naoni and Erin said about teaching in the Japan program and how throughout you learn from the students as much as they learn from you 😌 so if that was somewhat what you were getting at…