When I started teaching, I thought I would teach for a few years and then….well, I didn’t know, but I sure wasn’t going to be one of those old teachers who stay in teaching because they don’t know what else to do.
I scoff at my younger self often. How silly I was to think that experienced teachers didn’t know what else to do, because now I am one of those old,experienced teachers. Only I’m not that old, unless you think 44 is old, and don’t lie, some of you do. It’s okay. Don’t feel bad for a minute. I can handle pretty much anything you throw at me now.
Because not only am I old, but I am tough. Much tougher than I used to be. I care much less about how people think about me or what they think about me. If I think something is a waste of time, I’ll tell you. If I think an idea is fantastic, I’ll tell you that, too. I mean, after all, what are they going to do, fire me?
Maybe, but probably not.
Because every day, I am still trying to be a good teacher.
When I first started, I thought I was going to massively change the world. “Why are you becoming a teacher?” people asked me. And I would say, “Because I love children.” Barf. That’s the answer of some poor girl who has no idea what she is getting into. That would be like someone asking a newly engaged person why they are getting married and them saying, because I love so and so. Well, I guess that’s what we do say, because we don’t know any better. And believe me, I do love so and so after 20 plus years together, even more than when we first got married.
It’s like that with teaching, too. I do love children. All of them, just not all of them on all of the days and just not all the time. I love them more than I ever thought I could. I love the smelly ones, the dirty ones, the cute ones, the ones who do their homework, the ones who don’t, the ones who have parents who make a hot breakfast at home for them and walk them to school, the ones who eat at school and set their own alarms and get themselves to school, the ones who love to learn and the ones who don’t, the ones for whom learning comes easy, and the ones who struggle for every piece of knowledge to stay put, the ones whose parents volunteer and the ones whose parents I never see all year face to face. I love the ones who are friends with my own children, and those that sometimes aren’t very nice to my own children. I love the children that everyone else loves. And I love the children who it seems that no one else loves. What do I do with all of that?
I carry it with me daily. Some days it lifts me up and other days it drags me down and I wonder if I am making any difference at all.
At a recent staff development, don’t groan inwardly. It was actually pretty awesome, and I can say that exactly one time of all the staff developments I have been to over the last 18 years. Our presenter seemed to be speaking my language. Mine! Yippee! Someone understands how I think about teaching! It wasn’t about reviewing data or closing the achievement gap or new mandates or interventions or test scores or new standards. It was about creating relationships with students that go beyond the classroom. And it was about telling our stories. Our real teaching stories and why we still are teaching when somedays, we wonder if we are making any difference at all. It’s really many stories within a story. So, I’ll just tell them one at a time. Here we go. Here’s the beginning of my love story with teaching.
My first year of teaching was hard, harder than I ever imagined it would be. I thought I was prepared. I had done well in my undergrad and my student teaching. The opportunity to teach when I graduated came in the form of a graduate fellowship. I and 17 other recent college graduates became employees of Winona State University and signed on for $11,000 over 15 months plus tuition. We took classes and taught in our own classrooms for those 15 months. Some of us were amazing. Some of us were overwhelmed. All of us were poor.
We came together as a group after our first day of teaching. Everyone was gushing about how wonderful it was and how they just KNEW it was the thing for them. All their dreams of teaching in their own classrooms were coming true. And me? Well, I went home and called my mom and my fiancé and cried. I felt like an imposter. I struggled with classroom management and felt like I was steam rolled all the time. I was excited, enthusiastic, and really unprepared for the realities of teaching.
I am surprised that I survived that year in a classroom of kids with complicated needs for which I wasn’t prepared. I am also surprised if those students took much out of our shared time. During that year, I referred a child for special education services. That same third grade student told me to (expletive) off and he didn’t give a (expletive) what I thought. I called another student over to talk with him about a repeated behavior infraction and he said, “What do you want, Chicken Head?” Funny now, but then? Not so much.
Numerous other not so great things happened that year. I forgot to give a little boy a message about walking home and heard the wrath of a parent. I was in a car accident and fractured my pelvis in two places. I wore a hard cervical collar for six weeks. I finished my master’s. I completed my capstone project in the 11th hour, saved my paper, and left the school at 11 pm the day before it was due. The next morning, I booted up my computer, put in my disk, and found that my disk was corrupt. My paper and my project were gone, completely. Thank goodness I kept my handwritten copies of everything and retyped it, footnotes and all, the next day.
There were wonderful things that happened that first year, too. I hosted a families and fairy tale festival after hours where the kids served punch and families came to celebrate their precious kiddos and listen to them as storytellers. I held conferences with three families that needed interpreters. A mom came in to make sticky rice and teach my students how to eat with chopsticks to go along with our thematic unit built around a book called Everyone Cooks Rice. We built Conestoga wagons out of shoe boxes and spools. We made gingerbread people.
At the end of that school year, each of us graduate fellows interviewed with the school district that we had been teaching in for the last year. I wasn’t one of the lucky ones who were offered positions. My assistant principal said it was because I had missed school during my car accident recovery and that the students suffered because of that. I interviewed for a position out in western Minnesota and didn’t get that one either. When I called to inquire about what I could do better, the committee chair said that I was the first choice, but they had had to pick the hometown girl instead. With my 4.0 and my master’s degree, I resigned myself to subbing for a year to try to “get my foot in the door.” Again.
A phone call came in late August. Did I want to interview for a position in an EBD Day Treatment? Nope. I didn’t. But, I did anyway. And I got the job. It turned out to be one of the best things that I ever did.
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