Teaching Hope: Anticipation

I found these anecdotes to be not only interesting but the perfect length to keep my attention and also to portray their messages in a concise and meaningful manner. While some of the stories truly impressed and motivated me, others caused me some serious concern. In the third entry, the teacher describes being petrified on her first day teaching and ends up sharing with her class some very personal stories right off the bat, such as the fact that she used to stutter and never used to talk in her own classrooms. I found this to be far too much information for a new teacher to share with her students. It is my personal opinion that this particular teacher, rather than connecting with her students, had rather given them all the ammunition they would ever need to not only distract the class by trying to get under her skin but also to potentially truly hurt her feelings, causing her to possibly burn out quickly or even reconsider her choice to be a teacher. Although I do believe that sometimes a personal anecdote can truly enhance a classroom, too much information can cripple a teacher's effectiveness and also cheapens teachable moments where a teacher could truly connect to a student by sharing a piece of their own experiences with them.
I was both impressed and a little disconcerted by the entry where the teacher discussed being asked by a class of his/her students sexual questions that they weren't aloud to ask in sexual education. This situation truly frightens me as a future educator, because like the teacher in question I believe that the worst thing that could have happened was for those kids to have received no answers for their questions, but I would also be afraid of the potential fallout from parents and other teachers if the students told them about the impromptu sex-ed class in my English class.
I really like the teacher that talked about the 'three birthdays' who wished all of his students a happy birthday on their first day of high school. I thought that this was a wonderful idea, and also a wonderful way to explaining to students that there are different times in one's life when everything that they had known before is about to change, and the expectations the world has for them are changing also. I feel that this idea is one that will stay with students right up until their 21st birthdays, and they will celebrate these milestones appropriately.