"Just remember, once you're over the hill you begin to pick up speed."
-- Charles Shulz
A lot of education reformers seem to think that a young teacher is better than an older one. But as this quotation reminds us, an older teacher is a more experienced teacher and has lots to offer more novice colleagues.
Certainly, when I was new to public school teaching, the learning curve from teaching adults--which I'd done for about six and a half years--to teaching lower elementary students was steep. The younger the students, the more difficult it was for me. It took several years, and a lot of support from other expert and experienced kindergarten teachers before I ever felt comfortable teaching that age group and lower elementary kids in general.
And teaching content subjects to middle school ELLs using the approach called content-based ESL, which I was told to do my second year, also involved a transition that took quite a few years. Every year I taught social studies, I added more and more English language development. My courses shifted from a class that was little different from the mainstream regular ed social studies classes to a class that incorporated language support specifically designed to help ELLs access the social studies curriculum. It wasn't until I'd been teaching those ESL Social Studies classes for perhaps a decade that I truly felt I was doing them justice and teaching the students what they needed to be successful.
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Age has its benefits! source: Graphicstock |