Sierra’s Professional Fingerprint

When I graduated from SUNY Albany in 2017 with my Bachelors in linguistics, I joined numerous other classmates in decorating my graduation cap. I’d bought the supplies for it nearly a year prior when I’d spotted some particularly cute fake flowers for sale at Michaels. I already had a vision for how it was going to look, and I knew exactly what it was going to say.

I wrote the phrase in Latin as a nod to the language that first made me interested in pursuing linguistics, but the message itself represented one of my core beliefs. I was graduating and moving directly into my Masters program for teaching (also at SUNY), and while I felt that I was walking across the stage knowing far more than I had four years prior, I knew that there was an endless supply of things I still did not know.

Once, long ago it seems, I viewed this thought with terror. I wanted to know everything, to understand everything, and it honestly pained me to know that this was an impossible dream. I view the thought rather differently now. I imagine this shift in my thinking came mostly from the yolk of adolescence slipping off of me. Regardless of the reason, I now view the unknown in a far more friendly light.

Everyone around me knows something I don’t. And I probably know something a lot of them don’t either. This understanding fascinates me completely and this fascination follows me into the classroom. I relish the moments in class when a student sees something I didn’t, a new meaning in a poem, a theme I hadn’t quite recognized, a word I didn’t know. Every one of my students knows something I don’t, just as I know a lot they don’t know yet. Together, I can help them discover just how much knowledge they already have and can share, and I can share the knowledge I have as well.

I don’t pretend to know everything in class and I deliberately make that point clear. I tell students when I honestly don’t remember how to spell a word (how often do I have to spell limousine, c’mon), and I tell students when I’ve messed up and either taught them something incorrectly or just went about it in the wrong way. I don’t relish those moments in particular, my ears often burn when I admit I was wrong, but I need my students to know that I am still learning too, and that it’s okay to mess up so long as you own up and learn from it.

Just this past week: “I have to make a confession to you guys.”
J.B.: “What did you do wrong Ms. Clegg?”
Myself: “I did exactly what I tell you all not to! I didn’t cite all these quotes I pulled from the book so I don’t know where they all come from!”
Various students: “Ms. Clegg! You have to cite!”
Myself: “Exactly! Apparently I needed to learn that lesson again. Don’t make my mistake!”

My classroom must be a place of inquiry and exploration, a place where my students can question honestly and openly. I do not want velvet ropes barring my students from discovery. English class, writing and improving your writing, the act of self exploration and discovery must take place in a room with no ceiling, no limits, no barriers saying “no”, “you can’t”.

So much of my former conception of teachers is that they must be absolute masters of their subject matter, how else could they teach. Yet so much of my own teaching has come to revolve around not just my imparting knowledge, but the building of knowledge together, as a classroom community. I am not just a teacher in the room with my students, I am a student alongside them. They teach me new ways to look at poetry, offer radically different opinions on subjects I hadn’t realized I was rigid on, and they inspire me to continue to grow and improve. It is incredibly important to me that my students learn with me, that I learn with them, that they learn together, that as a community we come together to discover that learning and understanding is not just an individual accomplishment, but a collective inquiry that we can all share and connect over.

I want my students to walk out of my class with their wonder still alive. Because I believe this is a foundational skill in becoming a better human. I take the header “humanities” very seriously and believe my classroom is not just a space to learn about English, but to learn about bettering and growing into ourselves. Moreover, English, literature, story telling, reading, writing: it all works into understanding the world around you, understanding yourself. And, through this, becoming a better human.

I did not stumble into the role of teaching, in fact I graduated high school with the full intention of being a high school English teacher, and although I have questioned my path a few times along the way, I know ultimately that I am meant to be a teacher. Who else would be upset when they had to take two days away from their students because of a cold? More importantly, I know that I am not a great teacher, not yet, because I am still growing and learning. Every day, every setback, every student eye roll at a “totally fun lesson”, I learn and adapt to become better. I will always be a student, I will always be learning, and I hope ultimately that this helps me become a better teacher. For my students, always.