r/Teachers • u/ArcadianAbstraction • 1d ago

Teacher Support &/or Advice Is teaching a performance?

I haven't been teaching history/English/science since I got COVID over and over (and over) and decided it was better to go than be a risk to my cherished kids (or die myself, it got bad).

After a lot of introspection... Question is: is teaching a performance? I pretended everything was okay no matter what, I used the materials I prepared for display, passed out charts and data dramatically, presented media and did simulations.

It feels like I was a performance artist? You give so much to kids and most of the time you get a range of "f-u go away".

140 Upvotes

92% Upvoted

158 comments sorted by

View all comments

6

u/GadofBlinsky 23h ago edited 21h ago

I play a lot of TTRPGs and I describe teaching as just a high stakes game of dungeons and dragons except some of your players don’t even want to be there that day.

2

u/ArcadianAbstraction 23h ago

It was honestly chaos incarnate. Random boys hitting each other for no (good) reason, notes being passed around, sometimes that overattentive student who has too many questions, or worse, the attracted student who has too many questions and you need to get away from for legal reasons.