It hasn't been easy.
When I took this first teaching position after a short phone interview, I had no idea what was in store for me. I entered my classroom, lovingly decorated in the days prior with bright posters and blue curtains, green as grass and ready to succeed where older and better teachers had failed. Coffee cup in hand, I demonstrated to my brand new students how to fold their rainbow cardstock hamburger style three times to make nameplates for their desks. I passed out my Sharpie collection, which would slowly dwindle and then disappear over the next two weeks, and studied the names, wondering if Jamal's parents really call him "Peter Snake" (they do) and why Lekeisha goes by "Monet" (I still don't know).
I was surprised by how much I hurt. Over the next few months, bunions and bunionettes would appear on my 23-year-old feet, and I would start to carry this tension in my neck that never really goes away, even when I sleep. But during those first two weeks, I was feeling pretty good, cheerfully shoving foam inserts into all the shoes I own, and blissfully unaware of how this was all about to go down.
I still don't know exactly where I went wrong in those first few weeks. The kids tell me that I acted too nice to them. I think what they're trying to articulate is that I didn't give them enough structure. They're probably right. I'm used to high school aged kids, who have a general understanding of what they need to. Twelve year olds are a completely different story. They still need a lot of help.
I don't remember the first time a kid cursed me out. What I remember is this.
The first write-up I sent to the office this year was about the third week of school. The kids were all trying to tattle about something that another kid in my fourth period class did. Threw a pencil or something. I, very honestly, told the kids that I didn't see it and that I can't punish someone if I don't see it.
Enter Jaquelyn, stage left: "But you have four eyes, don't you?"
She was referring to my glasses. I don't know why it made me so mad. Such an elementary insult. Something that I outgrew being hurt over in like the third grade. It just really pissed me off.
I could go through the long, long list of everything that has brought me down this year, from the day my second period brought little rubber bands in and shot them at me the entire class from all directions while I steadily ignored it and continued the lesson (snaps for me), to the day one of my favorite students sent me to the ER with a concussion, to the two weeks straight between Thanksgiving and Christmas break that my sixth period was throwing me into a full-blown anxiety attack every day. Or the morning that a student brought a Glock to school to kill me and my principal because I confiscated his cell phone (this happens in schools across America so much more than you think or will ever find out about). But I can't focus on the negatives. I refuse to focus on the negatives.
My students show me love in small ways. After a long Easter weekend, two of them brought me little pieces of candy that had been stashed in pockets all day until they got to their reading class period. Something so simple, but so special. I had a lot more than some of my kids have growing up, but I don't ever remember a time when I saved candy out of my Easter basket for my teachers. Sure, I got them their mandatory Christmas gift, but that was more my mother's doing than mine.
When my principal and lead teacher called me into their office at the beginning of the second quarter, I broke down in a beat-up leatherette chair and told them I was drowning. I wasn't sure how to articulate at the time exactly what I was drowning in, but these days the answer is easy. Paperwork. I'm drowning in the paperwork. When I called for volunteers during my planning period today to help me file student work, something I have allowed to pile up for nine weeks, hiding behind a curtained shelf in my classroom like some monster from the abyss, kids lined up outside the door to help. Even kids who I didn't think liked me very much.
I have come home in a great mood for the past five days in a row. Even Don asked me what is going on. I have not sustained a good mood this long in months and months. I don't think there is anything particularly different going on in my classroom. I have gotten stricter with my rules and procedures as I've gained experience, built better relationships as the year has gone on, and gotten my kiddos more invested in their work. But I think that over my spring break, I made the choice to be happy here.
I am sitting in the lobby of a 6-12 private school campus. I have already noticed that the grounds are landscaped better than those at my former university. I am staring at a gigantic portrait of the Headmaster Emeritus, and glancing feverishly down at the schedule that was just handed to me for my interviews that afternoon. I was thinking what you're probably thinking right now.
"An interview schedule, really? Are these people for real?"
I was escorted around the school to speak with school directors and department directors and assistant headmasters and headmasters, all the while determined to put my best foot forward. This beautiful landscaped campus with its wood-beam atrium and students studiously sitting in desks without a peep would be my ticket out of my current situation. I interviewed with comfortable people who had grown up in my same comfortable hometown and spoke my own comfortable language. For the most part. They threw me a little when they told me the tuition for their school. Or when they handed me a water bottle that was custom printed with the school's label.
They asked detailed questions about my current classroom teaching job. I told them how I have brought most of my kids up two reading levels in one year. I explained how I hold my Mississippi kids to the same high expectations as my Tiftarea kids. I walked them through how I taught an upper level college text to kids reading on fourth and fifth grade levels at best. They asked me why I wanted to leave, and I listed all the normal reasons. Unsafe working environment. Pressures of state testing. Feel more like a paper pusher than a teacher.
One interviewer assured me that she understood. She commended me for my strength in a bad situation. She said that I am leaving my kids better than I found them.
I realized, in that moment, that anyone could do with my kids the few things I have accomplished with them this year. I don't get a special commendation for teaching my kids. The challenges we face in my classroom every day are no greater than at most public schools across the country, and far less great than in many. A better, more experienced educator could have done a lot more in my place than I was able to do this year. I wish I could say that my love for my students and my passion for my job is unique in a world of burned-out, grumpy teachers, but I didn't even have that. I did burn out. There were days, sometimes days in a row, when I came in and told them to pull out their textbook. Silent class.
I went for months without saying a curse word in the class. I was determined to keep it professional, even though that is not a norm at our school. When I finally lost it on my 7th period in December ("Shut your damn mouths and put your asses in a chair!"), it didn't make me feel better. The kids were so gleeful over the fact that the finally made Ms. Hancock curse that it was more a battle lost than won.
What I saw during my interview and what I shared with my interviewer, is that my kids have made me better. I'm tougher than I was in August. I can teach not only through dozens of rubber bands being shot at me, but also while cleaning puke off the floor and getting someone else a band-aid. I can break up any fight, anywhere, and go right back to the lesson. I can get out of bed the morning after the gun or the concussion or the otherwise terrible day and face my students with a smile on my face. I'm tougher, but I'm kinder. I can bandage that little finger with more tenderness in my heart than I realized I was capable of. I can look at the tearful student, the one who has made my life a living hell for the last nine weeks, begging for some extra credit so she doesn't fail the quarter, and give it to her. When Eden accidentally breaks my favorite coffee cup when she walks by my desk, I can help her find a broom and not say any more about it. I'm kinder, and I'm smarter. I can plan the lesson, crunch the data, grade the papers, manage the class, call the parents, and be in bed by ten. I can do it all. My kids and this job have challenged me in more ways than I thought possible, and I will be a better teacher forever because of this year.
I walked out of an interview with one of the most elite private college prep schools in the nation feeling confident, but torn. It was supposed to be my ticket out, but I left the interview feeling sick. It was very strange to drink chilled bottled water in spacious window offices and explain how I use interventions to get thirteen year olds reading on a first grade level to a third grade level. It felt dirty to admit that I want to leave my current position due to an unsafe working environment and watch satisfaction flit across white faces as I confirmed their worst fears about Mississippi, about Title 1, and about black children.
My kids are not my complaints. For every terrible thing that has happened this year, within or outside of my control, my kids are the only ones that keep me in front of that classroom. Maybe I feel some special duty to them, to finish the year, sure. Fair enough. But I can also feel how I am growing into my own.
No one is pulling any punches here. Not the administration, not the kids, not the parents.
I'm being baptized by fire, and I am thankful for every searing, excruciating second that is turning me into the teacher, and the person, that I want to be.
And I'm not going anywhere.
When my principal and lead teacher called me into their office at the beginning of the second quarter, I broke down in a beat-up leatherette chair and told them I was drowning. I wasn't sure how to articulate at the time exactly what I was drowning in, but these days the answer is easy. Paperwork. I'm drowning in the paperwork. When I called for volunteers during my planning period today to help me file student work, something I have allowed to pile up for nine weeks, hiding behind a curtained shelf in my classroom like some monster from the abyss, kids lined up outside the door to help. Even kids who I didn't think liked me very much.
I have come home in a great mood for the past five days in a row. Even Don asked me what is going on. I have not sustained a good mood this long in months and months. I don't think there is anything particularly different going on in my classroom. I have gotten stricter with my rules and procedures as I've gained experience, built better relationships as the year has gone on, and gotten my kiddos more invested in their work. But I think that over my spring break, I made the choice to be happy here.
I am sitting in the lobby of a 6-12 private school campus. I have already noticed that the grounds are landscaped better than those at my former university. I am staring at a gigantic portrait of the Headmaster Emeritus, and glancing feverishly down at the schedule that was just handed to me for my interviews that afternoon. I was thinking what you're probably thinking right now.
"An interview schedule, really? Are these people for real?"
I was escorted around the school to speak with school directors and department directors and assistant headmasters and headmasters, all the while determined to put my best foot forward. This beautiful landscaped campus with its wood-beam atrium and students studiously sitting in desks without a peep would be my ticket out of my current situation. I interviewed with comfortable people who had grown up in my same comfortable hometown and spoke my own comfortable language. For the most part. They threw me a little when they told me the tuition for their school. Or when they handed me a water bottle that was custom printed with the school's label.
They asked detailed questions about my current classroom teaching job. I told them how I have brought most of my kids up two reading levels in one year. I explained how I hold my Mississippi kids to the same high expectations as my Tiftarea kids. I walked them through how I taught an upper level college text to kids reading on fourth and fifth grade levels at best. They asked me why I wanted to leave, and I listed all the normal reasons. Unsafe working environment. Pressures of state testing. Feel more like a paper pusher than a teacher.
One interviewer assured me that she understood. She commended me for my strength in a bad situation. She said that I am leaving my kids better than I found them.
I realized, in that moment, that anyone could do with my kids the few things I have accomplished with them this year. I don't get a special commendation for teaching my kids. The challenges we face in my classroom every day are no greater than at most public schools across the country, and far less great than in many. A better, more experienced educator could have done a lot more in my place than I was able to do this year. I wish I could say that my love for my students and my passion for my job is unique in a world of burned-out, grumpy teachers, but I didn't even have that. I did burn out. There were days, sometimes days in a row, when I came in and told them to pull out their textbook. Silent class.
I went for months without saying a curse word in the class. I was determined to keep it professional, even though that is not a norm at our school. When I finally lost it on my 7th period in December ("Shut your damn mouths and put your asses in a chair!"), it didn't make me feel better. The kids were so gleeful over the fact that the finally made Ms. Hancock curse that it was more a battle lost than won.
What I saw during my interview and what I shared with my interviewer, is that my kids have made me better. I'm tougher than I was in August. I can teach not only through dozens of rubber bands being shot at me, but also while cleaning puke off the floor and getting someone else a band-aid. I can break up any fight, anywhere, and go right back to the lesson. I can get out of bed the morning after the gun or the concussion or the otherwise terrible day and face my students with a smile on my face. I'm tougher, but I'm kinder. I can bandage that little finger with more tenderness in my heart than I realized I was capable of. I can look at the tearful student, the one who has made my life a living hell for the last nine weeks, begging for some extra credit so she doesn't fail the quarter, and give it to her. When Eden accidentally breaks my favorite coffee cup when she walks by my desk, I can help her find a broom and not say any more about it. I'm kinder, and I'm smarter. I can plan the lesson, crunch the data, grade the papers, manage the class, call the parents, and be in bed by ten. I can do it all. My kids and this job have challenged me in more ways than I thought possible, and I will be a better teacher forever because of this year.
I walked out of an interview with one of the most elite private college prep schools in the nation feeling confident, but torn. It was supposed to be my ticket out, but I left the interview feeling sick. It was very strange to drink chilled bottled water in spacious window offices and explain how I use interventions to get thirteen year olds reading on a first grade level to a third grade level. It felt dirty to admit that I want to leave my current position due to an unsafe working environment and watch satisfaction flit across white faces as I confirmed their worst fears about Mississippi, about Title 1, and about black children.
My kids are not my complaints. For every terrible thing that has happened this year, within or outside of my control, my kids are the only ones that keep me in front of that classroom. Maybe I feel some special duty to them, to finish the year, sure. Fair enough. But I can also feel how I am growing into my own.
No one is pulling any punches here. Not the administration, not the kids, not the parents.
I'm being baptized by fire, and I am thankful for every searing, excruciating second that is turning me into the teacher, and the person, that I want to be.
And I'm not going anywhere.
