Teacher is Getting Old.

Today I felt so old.

I guess for the most part, I don’t feel all of my twenty-nine years…I don’t even dress the part most of the time! I still watch the Disney Channel, I like lollipops and still have a penchant for the Super Mario video game. Today, however, I realized, I am indeed almost 30.

What led to this realization?

Well, for one I had to run up and down six flights of stairs today, twice, in order to settle my classroom mix-up. I used to be able to do that without getting winded, but today, I could barely breathe!!!

To be fair, today wasn’t the first time I said I was getting old. When I’m with my preschoolers, I am starting to find it difficult to keep up, especially during Music and Movement. Running after a bunch of toddlers is not as easy as it used to be!

What took the cake was when I decided to show the film Dangerous Minds (with Michelle Pfiffer) to my college students today. None of them had heard about it! It was such a big hit back when in the day! Then I realized it first came out when I was still in high school. And yes, that wasn’t just yesterday.

As I watched the movie with the students, I couldn’t help but cringe at the fashion and laugh at what we once thought was cool. It also occurred to me how far technology has gone in the past 12 years. There was a scene where a student was carrying a boom box and dancing in the streets with his pants hanging lowly the way the hip-hoppers of my time used to. One girl even pulled out a camera…yup, the black, square ones that you have to peer through to take photos. Even the cinematography was so much different!

What struck me most, however, was how different teaching has become in the past twelve years. I suppose I see this first hand in the classes I teach, but seeing it for myself solidified my assertions that the learning process is different now from the, both in good and bad ways. Nowadays, as long as you have technology on your side, you can get the classes attention. Then, teaching was really a hands-on activity: you had to work hard to be creative, without the aid of technology. Research was different as well, as one needed to spend so much time in the library, as compared to today where everything is online.

One thing that remains, however, is that teaching is never for the money. It is, and always will be, for the love of the craft.