Email from Kate in France

I had the good fortune to have Ms. Kate Heidemann in my spring 2006 Social Justice class. Now she is working as a teacher in France, and I like her teaching savvy in the following email she sent me.

Dr. Chmiel

Sometimes, when I’m having a particularly bad day (don’t worry, it doesn’t happen often!) I open up your emails and read them. I have a REAL message in the works, headed for you, but internet time is scarce here, and I’m finding that planning lessons that won’t flop is more time-consuming than I thought! I expected to be nervous to get up in front of a class and teach, but it turns out that if you just pretend to be confident and in charge (and if you act like your lesson is insanely interesting and you can’t imagine any student not loving it) then you somehow end up becoming the teacher, sans problème. Jumping around in front of a class is the easy part for me; it’s engaging the students and getting them to talk and use their IMAGINATION (which it seems there is considerable lack of here) that is the hard part.

But then there’s that student who tries hard and who actually gets something right, or those two girls who run up to you and say they missed you when you didn’t come to class yesterday, and they make it all worth it.

I guess that, as a teacher, you probably know what I’m talking about. I just hope I am making some students’ hearts smile–like you did to mine!

Love,

Kate