Last night the football team played their home opener against a rival school. Over the last year or so, I've picked up the job of unofficial school photographer and about half of my work occurs on Friday nights. I've found in my photos that the gridiron is a place where all of our truest emotions are on display and this Friday was no different.
I cannot deny that my eyes may have teared up a bit at the sight of my boys walking on the field not as the playful sophomores I met two years ago, but as senior captains who carry the world on their shoulders each Friday night with more grace than most men twice their age. I feel so much pride when I think about these boys and all of my other students, too.
This is the best part of teaching the same students for three years: You fall in love. With every single one of them. I cannot quite verbalize how special it is to be able to work with these same wonderful children every day for three years and to get to watch the young men and women they become. I get to share in such a special time in their lives as they refine their sense of self and set out to explore the world. It fills my work with a meaning I'm not sure I'll ever find again. Over these years, I have given my students a piece of my heart and they have given me pieces of theirs in return.
This, too, is the worst part of teaching the same students for three years: You fall in love. If their victories are my victories, then their heartbreaks are my heartbreaks, too. I play witness to losses of all shapes and sizes and my students' lives have not been short on loss.
It is in those times of loss that the strength of the relationships we have built becomes so clear. Time and time again I have found comfort in my students as they have found comfort in me, even if it is just a hug on the sidelines after a particularly bad defeat. There is such a trust and understanding amongst us that could not have existed after only a year together.
This year, as my students prepare for high school graduation, I find myself also wondering what will come next for me as our district faces consolidation. As we wander together into the still-bleary future, none of us can say what will happen, but I feel blessed to know that with every step I take I will carry these kids in my heart forever.
Bayou
Saturday, August 19, 2017
Thursday, May 25, 2017
Bittersweet: The End of Year Two
On Monday I put on the same dress that I wore on my first day of teaching and wore it to watch my first group of students graduate. I've always struggled with graduations. Monday night was as much a celebration as it was a goodbye, a hard goodbye. I think if there is a word for the unique emotion of graduation it must be "bittersweet."
The more I think about it, the more I believe that "bittersweet" might actually be the perfect word for all of this year from day one to day one hundred and eighty. It was a year of incredible loss from the turnover of two thirds of the staff to the loss of a student just months short of his graduation. But it was also a year of incredible joy. My students grew their ACT scores and completed awesome and meaningful projects. I created memories with our ragtag softball team even if we never won a game. I watched the salutatorian address her class eloquently knowing that this girl is going to set the world on fire with her brilliance. I have never been so proud.
I can say with confidence that if I have cried more this year, then I have laughed more, too. I think it comes with the territory. As my relationships with this place and these people have deepened, so too has the emotion that comes with that.
This year was as trying as it was rewarding. Though I was often promised it would be easier than my first year, it wasn't. It was just harder in different ways. In the fall, I started running as a way to do something that was just for me. One day I complained to my younger brother, an avid cyclist, and he shared with me these words that have resonated ever since: "It doesn't get easier; you just get faster." That has become my motto this year. The truth is your second year isn't any easier than your first; you just know what you're doing (sort of). Bad things still happen. Sometimes they are worse than all the things that happened before, but now you have the knowledge to navigate it with a little more grace though never with ease. This work isn't meant to be easy; it's meant to be worth it.
The more I think about it, the more I believe that "bittersweet" might actually be the perfect word for all of this year from day one to day one hundred and eighty. It was a year of incredible loss from the turnover of two thirds of the staff to the loss of a student just months short of his graduation. But it was also a year of incredible joy. My students grew their ACT scores and completed awesome and meaningful projects. I created memories with our ragtag softball team even if we never won a game. I watched the salutatorian address her class eloquently knowing that this girl is going to set the world on fire with her brilliance. I have never been so proud.
I can say with confidence that if I have cried more this year, then I have laughed more, too. I think it comes with the territory. As my relationships with this place and these people have deepened, so too has the emotion that comes with that.
This year was as trying as it was rewarding. Though I was often promised it would be easier than my first year, it wasn't. It was just harder in different ways. In the fall, I started running as a way to do something that was just for me. One day I complained to my younger brother, an avid cyclist, and he shared with me these words that have resonated ever since: "It doesn't get easier; you just get faster." That has become my motto this year. The truth is your second year isn't any easier than your first; you just know what you're doing (sort of). Bad things still happen. Sometimes they are worse than all the things that happened before, but now you have the knowledge to navigate it with a little more grace though never with ease. This work isn't meant to be easy; it's meant to be worth it.
Tuesday, February 21, 2017
The Hardest Part
You are 21 years old and have just agreed to take a leap of faith and do this thing and teach. You know all too well just how little you know. You are going into this blind even if you are aware of your lack of sight.
At every point in this process, you are going to believe that this must be the hardest part. Passing the Praxis, surviving the first week of school, planning for three preps, balancing teaching and coaching and a life of your own, teaching 150 kids in the poorest corner of the poorest state in the country and finding something to love in each and every one of them. At every point in this process, you will be wrong. None of these tasks is the hardest part.
The hardest part starts the moment you agree to do this and will stay with you years after you leave teaching. It stares you in the mirror every morning when you wake and again at night before you lay your head down to sleep. Nearly two years in, you have not even begun to master it, though, you know it is the only thing that will allow you to survive in this job. Here is the hardest part, the skill no one tells you you must have in order to teach: Forgiveness. You must learn to forgive yourself.
Forgive yourself because you have no idea what to do. You will stumble through lessons on topics you are not quite qualified to teach. You will write a kid up when they don't deserve it and not write them up when they most certainly do. You will realize two days into a unit that you have taught an entire skill wrong. You will write tests that are too hard, too easy, and never quite find the right spot in between. Forgive yourself. You are doing the best that you know how to do.
Forgive yourself because you will make every mistake in the book and then write a few new pages of your own. For most of the first half of the first year, you are going to do more things wrong than you do right. You will regret words as soon as you have said them and more than that you will regret the words you do not say at all. Forgive yourself. You are doing the best that you know how to do.
Forgive yourself because even after you have learned how to do better and be the teacher your students deserve, you will not always be allowed to do it. You will be forced again and again to make decisions that you know are wrong for your students. You are working within a system that is stacked against you and your students. You will give test after test after test and know the whole time that it is wrong. You will postpone learning for the sake of "education" and again you will know that it is wrong. When you can you will fight it, but too often you cannot. Forgive yourself. You are doing the best that you know how to do.
Forgive yourself because your students are slipping through your fingers. You will always be running out of time in the class period, in the marking period, in the year. Your time will run out and you will wonder if they have learned anything at all. Forgive yourself. You are doing the best that you know how to do.
Forgive yourself because even if you are the perfect teacher it will not be enough. You will lose some of your students to all manner of misfortune, to jail, to the streets, to time. Rational expressions and binder grades and performance tasks will not stop a speeding bullet when it comes for one of your students. Forgive yourself. You are doing the best that you know how to do.
At every point in this process, you are going to believe that this must be the hardest part. Passing the Praxis, surviving the first week of school, planning for three preps, balancing teaching and coaching and a life of your own, teaching 150 kids in the poorest corner of the poorest state in the country and finding something to love in each and every one of them. At every point in this process, you will be wrong. None of these tasks is the hardest part.
The hardest part starts the moment you agree to do this and will stay with you years after you leave teaching. It stares you in the mirror every morning when you wake and again at night before you lay your head down to sleep. Nearly two years in, you have not even begun to master it, though, you know it is the only thing that will allow you to survive in this job. Here is the hardest part, the skill no one tells you you must have in order to teach: Forgiveness. You must learn to forgive yourself.
Forgive yourself because you have no idea what to do. You will stumble through lessons on topics you are not quite qualified to teach. You will write a kid up when they don't deserve it and not write them up when they most certainly do. You will realize two days into a unit that you have taught an entire skill wrong. You will write tests that are too hard, too easy, and never quite find the right spot in between. Forgive yourself. You are doing the best that you know how to do.
Forgive yourself because you will make every mistake in the book and then write a few new pages of your own. For most of the first half of the first year, you are going to do more things wrong than you do right. You will regret words as soon as you have said them and more than that you will regret the words you do not say at all. Forgive yourself. You are doing the best that you know how to do.
Forgive yourself because even after you have learned how to do better and be the teacher your students deserve, you will not always be allowed to do it. You will be forced again and again to make decisions that you know are wrong for your students. You are working within a system that is stacked against you and your students. You will give test after test after test and know the whole time that it is wrong. You will postpone learning for the sake of "education" and again you will know that it is wrong. When you can you will fight it, but too often you cannot. Forgive yourself. You are doing the best that you know how to do.
Forgive yourself because your students are slipping through your fingers. You will always be running out of time in the class period, in the marking period, in the year. Your time will run out and you will wonder if they have learned anything at all. Forgive yourself. You are doing the best that you know how to do.
Forgive yourself because even if you are the perfect teacher it will not be enough. You will lose some of your students to all manner of misfortune, to jail, to the streets, to time. Rational expressions and binder grades and performance tasks will not stop a speeding bullet when it comes for one of your students. Forgive yourself. You are doing the best that you know how to do.
Friday, December 16, 2016
Are You Better Off Than You Were a Year Ago
"Are you better off than you were a year ago?"
It's a question that always comes up around election time, posed by politicians and media outlets and other special interests, but lately it's a question I've been asking myself. A year ago I was writing about and reeling from the shock of going home for the first time since moving to Mississippi. Things that had always felt familiar felt so different and strange. The world had shifted around me and I needed time to make sense of how odd the world felt, in it's new colors and hues.
This year I find myself looking inward instead. I know now that the world had not changed last year at all; I had. As time has passed since then, I have become more cognizant of this. When I think back to college and high school, I wonder at how far I've come from who that girl was. I sometimes find it hard to believe that she was once me, so care free and yet so convinced that she carried the weight of the world on her shoulders.
Surely to some extent this is what happens with time and age. People around you change and you do, too, but it feels as if this experience has accelerated that change for me. I don't remember feeling this much distance between the girl I was when I graduated high school and the girl I was my sophomore year in college, but the difference between the girl who walked off Ohio State's campus in spring of 2015 and the woman who walks the halls of a Delta high school is a profound one, though, not necessarily a bad one. Sometimes different is not better or worse; sometimes it is just different.
In recent weeks, I have found myself pondering the same question frequently: Would you do it all over if you could? If you knew then what you knew now, would you still do this thing? Or if you had the chance to start fresh, would you push rewind and tape over this place and this job and this experience?
I cannot say whether I am better off than I was a year ago, but I do know this: I am more compassionate than I was a year ago. I am also more confused than I was a year ago. I am more disheartened at the world than I was a year ago, but somehow I am also more hopeful. I know this, too: I would not press rewind.
It's a question that always comes up around election time, posed by politicians and media outlets and other special interests, but lately it's a question I've been asking myself. A year ago I was writing about and reeling from the shock of going home for the first time since moving to Mississippi. Things that had always felt familiar felt so different and strange. The world had shifted around me and I needed time to make sense of how odd the world felt, in it's new colors and hues.
This year I find myself looking inward instead. I know now that the world had not changed last year at all; I had. As time has passed since then, I have become more cognizant of this. When I think back to college and high school, I wonder at how far I've come from who that girl was. I sometimes find it hard to believe that she was once me, so care free and yet so convinced that she carried the weight of the world on her shoulders.
Surely to some extent this is what happens with time and age. People around you change and you do, too, but it feels as if this experience has accelerated that change for me. I don't remember feeling this much distance between the girl I was when I graduated high school and the girl I was my sophomore year in college, but the difference between the girl who walked off Ohio State's campus in spring of 2015 and the woman who walks the halls of a Delta high school is a profound one, though, not necessarily a bad one. Sometimes different is not better or worse; sometimes it is just different.
In recent weeks, I have found myself pondering the same question frequently: Would you do it all over if you could? If you knew then what you knew now, would you still do this thing? Or if you had the chance to start fresh, would you push rewind and tape over this place and this job and this experience?
I cannot say whether I am better off than I was a year ago, but I do know this: I am more compassionate than I was a year ago. I am also more confused than I was a year ago. I am more disheartened at the world than I was a year ago, but somehow I am also more hopeful. I know this, too: I would not press rewind.
Wednesday, November 9, 2016
What Happens Now?
Last night I watched the election results come in with my roommates. Some time after North Carolina and Florida started to look bad I started to do what I also do when I begin to panic: I imagined the worst case scenario. At first, I ticked off the big ones. The population my mother serves, her friends, might get deported. The economy might crash and people might lose jobs. The country might go to war and my students who are in the armed forces might get deployed.
Then, it sunk in that these were the far off things to worry about, the things I have no control over. Something larger loomed: What do I tell my students? What do I say, what can I say tomorrow morning to my beautiful, intelligent, terrified, Black students? Can I tell them not to be afraid when I am so scared myself? Can I tell them it will be okay when I am not sure I believe it? How can I look them in the eye and say anything comforting when I am so desperately in need of comfort myself?
These were the questions that kept me tossing and turning long into the night. In the sleepless hours of the early morning, I began to figure out what I needed to say.
This morning, as anticipated, my students asked me what I thought, how I was feeling and I told them the truth. I told them that I did not know what to say to make it better. I told them that I love them, that I loved them yesterday, that I love them today, that I will love them tomorrow. I told them I will be here for them, as long as they need me. I told them that today will be a hard day for all of us, but we must begin to look to tomorrow. Today, we are sad and scared and defeated, but tomorrow we must begin again the work of American democracy or, in the words of Barack Obama, "We must pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and begin again the work of remaking America." Tomorrow, we must model in our own lives the very qualities we did not see this election cycle. We must show kindness, demonstrate community, listen and speak with respect, and live our lives with love for one another. Together is the only way we will move past this and move forward.
Then, it sunk in that these were the far off things to worry about, the things I have no control over. Something larger loomed: What do I tell my students? What do I say, what can I say tomorrow morning to my beautiful, intelligent, terrified, Black students? Can I tell them not to be afraid when I am so scared myself? Can I tell them it will be okay when I am not sure I believe it? How can I look them in the eye and say anything comforting when I am so desperately in need of comfort myself?
These were the questions that kept me tossing and turning long into the night. In the sleepless hours of the early morning, I began to figure out what I needed to say.
This morning, as anticipated, my students asked me what I thought, how I was feeling and I told them the truth. I told them that I did not know what to say to make it better. I told them that I love them, that I loved them yesterday, that I love them today, that I will love them tomorrow. I told them I will be here for them, as long as they need me. I told them that today will be a hard day for all of us, but we must begin to look to tomorrow. Today, we are sad and scared and defeated, but tomorrow we must begin again the work of American democracy or, in the words of Barack Obama, "We must pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and begin again the work of remaking America." Tomorrow, we must model in our own lives the very qualities we did not see this election cycle. We must show kindness, demonstrate community, listen and speak with respect, and live our lives with love for one another. Together is the only way we will move past this and move forward.
Sunday, September 18, 2016
What Teaching Feels Like
If I had to sum up my first year of teaching in a single cliche, then that single cliche would easily be "Fake til you make it." And, oh, did I fake it. I faked knowledge where I had little, authority where it felt like I had none. Always, I faked confidence; sometimes I faked preparation. I imitated poise and calm when I had none; I pretended to be okay when I most certainly was not. And then one day I got so good at faking it that I didn't have to fake it at all. It probably took until January to have a "no-faking" day and then until March to have another. By the end of the year, I might have been able to string enough together to make almost a full week of not faking it.
I still feel like I'm faking it most of the time, but if you asked me the difference between my first and second year of teaching I would tell you that this year I actually feel like a teacher. What, then, does teaching feel like? I am just beginning to fully find out.
Pride. It feels like the rush when a student who failed geometry last year gets a B on her segments proofs quiz, when she tells you that it's not as good as she wanted but "it's better than last week and isn't that the point?"
Defeat. Doubt. Hope. It feels like trying every possible test taking method for a student who can verbalize his answers perfectly out loud but can't manage to get them on paper, like defeat when he fails the fourth quiz in a row, like doubt when you tell him that together we'll figure this out, like hope when he promises that together we will.
Fear. It feels like the pit in your stomach when you think of your seniors who have worked so hard for the last twelve years, but who cannot seem to pass their graduation tests. Like a shiver down your spine when you let yourself wonder what will happen to them.
Joy. It feels like the smile you cannot hide when one of your students informs another that "mistakes are okay because that's how we learn," a line you spent all of last year repeating to them, like happiness uncontainable when the other students nod and clap in agreement. It feels like maybe they learned something last year after all.
Exhaustion. It feels like forcing your eyes to stay open through the fourth after school meeting of the week in a room full of colleagues who look just as tired as you feel. It feels like dragging yourself to school sometimes with too much to do and not enough time or energy to do it.
Love. It feels like the warmth that your students exude when you put their names on the board and they cannot contain their excitement. "You know how to spell all of our names!? Even the apostrophes!" It feels like an overwhelming dose of affection when your students from last year tell you how glad they are to have you again.
Faith. It feels like assurance that you'll be back tomorrow and the day after that and the day after that. The knowledge that some way, some how you'll get through this roller coaster because your kids deserve better. And at the end of the day that's all that matters.
I still feel like I'm faking it most of the time, but if you asked me the difference between my first and second year of teaching I would tell you that this year I actually feel like a teacher. What, then, does teaching feel like? I am just beginning to fully find out.
Pride. It feels like the rush when a student who failed geometry last year gets a B on her segments proofs quiz, when she tells you that it's not as good as she wanted but "it's better than last week and isn't that the point?"
Defeat. Doubt. Hope. It feels like trying every possible test taking method for a student who can verbalize his answers perfectly out loud but can't manage to get them on paper, like defeat when he fails the fourth quiz in a row, like doubt when you tell him that together we'll figure this out, like hope when he promises that together we will.
Fear. It feels like the pit in your stomach when you think of your seniors who have worked so hard for the last twelve years, but who cannot seem to pass their graduation tests. Like a shiver down your spine when you let yourself wonder what will happen to them.
Joy. It feels like the smile you cannot hide when one of your students informs another that "mistakes are okay because that's how we learn," a line you spent all of last year repeating to them, like happiness uncontainable when the other students nod and clap in agreement. It feels like maybe they learned something last year after all.
Exhaustion. It feels like forcing your eyes to stay open through the fourth after school meeting of the week in a room full of colleagues who look just as tired as you feel. It feels like dragging yourself to school sometimes with too much to do and not enough time or energy to do it.
Love. It feels like the warmth that your students exude when you put their names on the board and they cannot contain their excitement. "You know how to spell all of our names!? Even the apostrophes!" It feels like an overwhelming dose of affection when your students from last year tell you how glad they are to have you again.
Faith. It feels like assurance that you'll be back tomorrow and the day after that and the day after that. The knowledge that some way, some how you'll get through this roller coaster because your kids deserve better. And at the end of the day that's all that matters.
Friday, August 5, 2016
Ready, Set, Go
"Are you ready for Monday?" they keep asking me.
"Ready" isn't really the word for it, I think. I don't have a roster. I know the subjects I'm teaching, but not the class periods I'm teaching them. I have three preps including the new-to-me algebra III and, to be honest, I'm not really all that sure what, exactly, algebra III is. My shelving units won't show up until Tuesday so everything in my classroom is shoved under a table and behind my desk. Yet, despite all of that, I feel oddly prepared.
Maybe it's just a false sense of confidence from surviving the storied First Year Teaching that will come crashing down at 7:30 on Monday morning, but I think it might be just a little bit real. I may not have all of the details figured out yet, but I do have way more figured out than I did at this time last year. I have unit plans for two of my classes and I know exactly what my students will be doing on the first day I get to see all of my classes. My long-term calendars have been constructed (except for algebra III) and I'm relatively confident that we'll get to cover all of the required topics despite the outlandish amount of testing.
It's more than just the details, though. In some bigger sense, I feel more prepared which I suppose I'm supposed to feel. I've learned a lot in the past year and most of what I learned will help me be a much better teacher this year than I was last year, but there's one lesson that stands out in particular. In fact, if I sat down and picked the single most important thing I learned during my inaugural classroom year, it would be this one: I love my students so much and at the end of the day that is enough. I want to be clear it is not enough to love your students and not teach them the content, but for me when it came down to it loving them was powerful enough to get me through everything else that happened.
There were so many times last year when I thought I couldn't go on and at each of those junctures I was surprised to learn that, when I remembered why and for whom I'm here, I could. At each of those points, I had to remind myself that whatever I found so bad in that moment had been keeping my students down for years. Yes, administrative changes suck when you're a teacher. They suck more when they define your education as a student. Yes, the amount of state testing is oppressive to teachers. It's more oppressive to students who have known nothing else. As a veteran teacher put it, I can pack up and leave at the end of the day. I can drive home at the end of the school day and drive back to Ohio at the end of the year, if I so choose. My students cannot. Leaving is a luxury and it is one my students so often do not have. Going to school every day is my job; for my students, it is their lives.
My students cannot leave and they deserve so much better than this and I love them enough to want to stay here for as long as I can to make it happen. It's this love that keeps me going on the hard days and even on the easy days. I was pretty overwhelmed yesterday with the amount of things that had to be done for the coming year and it left me feeling pretty zapped of energy. And then in walked my students. Some of the football players came by whom I taught last year and whom I will have the singular pleasure of teaching again this year. They were there to help teachers move classrooms and they were actually excited to see me! One of them walked in my room and said with his trademark grin, "Did you miss me?" Of course, I did. I missed all of them. And suddenly, the energy was back. I really have missed them and as physically and mentally unprepared as I may be for Monday, I am so, so ready to be back.
"Ready" isn't really the word for it, I think. I don't have a roster. I know the subjects I'm teaching, but not the class periods I'm teaching them. I have three preps including the new-to-me algebra III and, to be honest, I'm not really all that sure what, exactly, algebra III is. My shelving units won't show up until Tuesday so everything in my classroom is shoved under a table and behind my desk. Yet, despite all of that, I feel oddly prepared.
Maybe it's just a false sense of confidence from surviving the storied First Year Teaching that will come crashing down at 7:30 on Monday morning, but I think it might be just a little bit real. I may not have all of the details figured out yet, but I do have way more figured out than I did at this time last year. I have unit plans for two of my classes and I know exactly what my students will be doing on the first day I get to see all of my classes. My long-term calendars have been constructed (except for algebra III) and I'm relatively confident that we'll get to cover all of the required topics despite the outlandish amount of testing.
It's more than just the details, though. In some bigger sense, I feel more prepared which I suppose I'm supposed to feel. I've learned a lot in the past year and most of what I learned will help me be a much better teacher this year than I was last year, but there's one lesson that stands out in particular. In fact, if I sat down and picked the single most important thing I learned during my inaugural classroom year, it would be this one: I love my students so much and at the end of the day that is enough. I want to be clear it is not enough to love your students and not teach them the content, but for me when it came down to it loving them was powerful enough to get me through everything else that happened.
There were so many times last year when I thought I couldn't go on and at each of those junctures I was surprised to learn that, when I remembered why and for whom I'm here, I could. At each of those points, I had to remind myself that whatever I found so bad in that moment had been keeping my students down for years. Yes, administrative changes suck when you're a teacher. They suck more when they define your education as a student. Yes, the amount of state testing is oppressive to teachers. It's more oppressive to students who have known nothing else. As a veteran teacher put it, I can pack up and leave at the end of the day. I can drive home at the end of the school day and drive back to Ohio at the end of the year, if I so choose. My students cannot. Leaving is a luxury and it is one my students so often do not have. Going to school every day is my job; for my students, it is their lives.
My students cannot leave and they deserve so much better than this and I love them enough to want to stay here for as long as I can to make it happen. It's this love that keeps me going on the hard days and even on the easy days. I was pretty overwhelmed yesterday with the amount of things that had to be done for the coming year and it left me feeling pretty zapped of energy. And then in walked my students. Some of the football players came by whom I taught last year and whom I will have the singular pleasure of teaching again this year. They were there to help teachers move classrooms and they were actually excited to see me! One of them walked in my room and said with his trademark grin, "Did you miss me?" Of course, I did. I missed all of them. And suddenly, the energy was back. I really have missed them and as physically and mentally unprepared as I may be for Monday, I am so, so ready to be back.
Monday, July 18, 2016
There's Something About This Place
When I first stepped foot in the Delta, it was February and the fields and trees were bare. Without a leaf in sight, it was hard not to notice the emptiness caused by the pristinely flat landscape. All around was nothing and amidst that nothing it was hard not to feel obvious, like a stranger in a strange land. I've always worn my heart on my sleeve and surely in this flat landscape the magnitude of my fears and my insecurities about myself and about this job and about this place could be seen for miles.
A year later, I ran into two students at the school gate after school and one of them offered to walk with me out to the baseball field where he had practice and I needed to talk to the coach. That February day a feeling so different from the discomfort of a year ago hit me: Belonging. It was not belonging in the sense that this is the place I am "meant to be", though increasingly I wonder if this place is exactly that. It was belonging in the more simple sense that I was a part of something, a part of this place. Yet in all it's simplicity, it was profound and it swept me right off my feet. It is a feeling I have been privileged to feel a few other times since and each time it captures another tiny piece of my heart and sews it indelibly into this landscape.
A week ago, I drove back into the Delta after more than a month away and the same flatness that had so frightened me early on, now enveloped me in a sense of comfort. Yes, I am still a stranger in a strange land, but that strange land has become my home and the often strange people I surround myself with have become my family, not the one I was born into and the one I so often miss, but my family nonetheless.
In three short weeks, school starts and as the time ticks by I find myself feeling stressed out about all of the change this year will bring. Though my courses, my students, my administrators, and my colleagues may all be different in the coming year, I know I am surrounded both here and afar by people who love me and support me and want me to succeed so when fear creeps back in I remind myself that here in the Delta I have found a place, where in every sense of the word, I belong.
A year later, I ran into two students at the school gate after school and one of them offered to walk with me out to the baseball field where he had practice and I needed to talk to the coach. That February day a feeling so different from the discomfort of a year ago hit me: Belonging. It was not belonging in the sense that this is the place I am "meant to be", though increasingly I wonder if this place is exactly that. It was belonging in the more simple sense that I was a part of something, a part of this place. Yet in all it's simplicity, it was profound and it swept me right off my feet. It is a feeling I have been privileged to feel a few other times since and each time it captures another tiny piece of my heart and sews it indelibly into this landscape.
A week ago, I drove back into the Delta after more than a month away and the same flatness that had so frightened me early on, now enveloped me in a sense of comfort. Yes, I am still a stranger in a strange land, but that strange land has become my home and the often strange people I surround myself with have become my family, not the one I was born into and the one I so often miss, but my family nonetheless.
In three short weeks, school starts and as the time ticks by I find myself feeling stressed out about all of the change this year will bring. Though my courses, my students, my administrators, and my colleagues may all be different in the coming year, I know I am surrounded both here and afar by people who love me and support me and want me to succeed so when fear creeps back in I remind myself that here in the Delta I have found a place, where in every sense of the word, I belong.
Tuesday, May 3, 2016
5 Ways to Celebrate National Teachers' Day
As the lovely Google doodle may have informed you, it is National Teachers' Day, a day that falls amid Teacher Appreciation Week, so to all of the wonderful teachers I know let me say "Thank you!" Most people that I know have had more than a handful of awesome teachers who influenced the person they've become. If you're one of those people and you're looking to appreciate a teacher in your life, then allow me to make some suggestions:
1. Just Say Thanks
As simple as it sounds, saying "thank you" is a powerful act. Though most people appreciate teachers and all they do, that gratitude often goes unexpressed. Think about it. When was the last time you thanked a teacher? If the answer is anything other than "today", consider taking a few minutes to give a shout out to a favorite teacher. Make a phone call, send an email, or even stop by in person. I promise you from first-hand experience that it will warm your teacher's heart and they just might keep your thank you note in their desk for the rest of the school year.
2. Volunteer
If you have the time, think about spending a little bit of time in a local classroom. From pre-K to high school, almost all teachers could use a helping hand in their classroom. Whether you want to help throw an end of year party for the little ones in kindergarten or just spend an hour after school helping a teacher get organized, there's probably a place for you. Teachers have a lot on their plates and having an extra set of hands in the classroom every once in awhile can be tremendously helpful.
3. Make a Donation
It's no secret that teachers pour time, energy, and love into their classrooms, but in most cases they're also pouring their own money into their classes. A recent survey showed that teachers spent an average of $485 on supplying their classrooms last academic year. That comes to a whopping total of $1.6 billion nationally. Fortunately, organizations like DonorsChoose are trying to ease the burden. DonorsChoose allows teachers to post projects asking for donations which donors can then fund. It's host to a variety of projects so whether you want to donate to a classroom at the school you grew up at or to fund a specific subject like early literacy or even help out a math teacher who desperately needs shelving in her classroom, there's something for you.
4. Write to a Government Official
In public schools, teachers often operate at the whim of government organizations they have little to no control over. If you really want to help a teacher, make your voice heard on the variety of issues that affect education. This might mean reaching out to a state representative about fully funding education or writing to your US senator about the rate at which students are tested. There are a number of political issues affecting the classroom so talk to a teacher you respect and see what issues touch their life everyday. You might learn something new and feel inspired to lift your voice on the behalf of teachers and students everywhere.
5. Consider Becoming a Teacher
If you're at a point in your life where you don't know what's next, take some time to seriously consider the classroom. For the 2015-2016 school year, all but one state reported at least some teacher shortage. Whether you're a soon-to-be college student or grad or someone looking for a career change, look into offering your talents to the nation's students. One of the best ways you can thank a teacher is by paying it forward.
No matter how you decide to celebrate National Teachers' Day, a teacher near you will appreciate it so take a few minutes and raise your voice to say "Thank you, teachers!"
1. Just Say Thanks
As simple as it sounds, saying "thank you" is a powerful act. Though most people appreciate teachers and all they do, that gratitude often goes unexpressed. Think about it. When was the last time you thanked a teacher? If the answer is anything other than "today", consider taking a few minutes to give a shout out to a favorite teacher. Make a phone call, send an email, or even stop by in person. I promise you from first-hand experience that it will warm your teacher's heart and they just might keep your thank you note in their desk for the rest of the school year.
2. Volunteer
If you have the time, think about spending a little bit of time in a local classroom. From pre-K to high school, almost all teachers could use a helping hand in their classroom. Whether you want to help throw an end of year party for the little ones in kindergarten or just spend an hour after school helping a teacher get organized, there's probably a place for you. Teachers have a lot on their plates and having an extra set of hands in the classroom every once in awhile can be tremendously helpful.
3. Make a Donation
It's no secret that teachers pour time, energy, and love into their classrooms, but in most cases they're also pouring their own money into their classes. A recent survey showed that teachers spent an average of $485 on supplying their classrooms last academic year. That comes to a whopping total of $1.6 billion nationally. Fortunately, organizations like DonorsChoose are trying to ease the burden. DonorsChoose allows teachers to post projects asking for donations which donors can then fund. It's host to a variety of projects so whether you want to donate to a classroom at the school you grew up at or to fund a specific subject like early literacy or even help out a math teacher who desperately needs shelving in her classroom, there's something for you.
4. Write to a Government Official
In public schools, teachers often operate at the whim of government organizations they have little to no control over. If you really want to help a teacher, make your voice heard on the variety of issues that affect education. This might mean reaching out to a state representative about fully funding education or writing to your US senator about the rate at which students are tested. There are a number of political issues affecting the classroom so talk to a teacher you respect and see what issues touch their life everyday. You might learn something new and feel inspired to lift your voice on the behalf of teachers and students everywhere.
5. Consider Becoming a Teacher
If you're at a point in your life where you don't know what's next, take some time to seriously consider the classroom. For the 2015-2016 school year, all but one state reported at least some teacher shortage. Whether you're a soon-to-be college student or grad or someone looking for a career change, look into offering your talents to the nation's students. One of the best ways you can thank a teacher is by paying it forward.
No matter how you decide to celebrate National Teachers' Day, a teacher near you will appreciate it so take a few minutes and raise your voice to say "Thank you, teachers!"
Thursday, April 21, 2016
Hard to Love
Sometimes I have to admit that my students are a little bit hard to love. Sometimes they are obnoxious and whiny and pesky and a million other things that teenagers often are. They regularly make me exhausted, frustrated, fed up. I wonder occasionally why I am putting in so much effort for a group of people who can be so cruel and so ungrateful, but even on those days when they leave me wondering why I even like them, I try to do as Mother Teresa said and love them anyway.
It's the other days, though, that they are hardest to love. My students are hardest to love when they fill my days with joy and laughter, when they fill my heart with pride and warmth. It is on the days when my students are easiest to love that I have the hardest time loving them. On these days, it is sometimes difficult to forget the world that spins madly around them. On these day, I sometimes cannot let go of the fear I feel for my students.
Maybe this is the hard part about loving teenagers, of giving a piece of your heart to these young people who are so rife with a sense of independence, recklessness, invincibility. You hear them whisper about their plans for prom night. You hold your breath in the bleachers on Friday night as you wonder whether your student will get up uninjured from the hit they just took on the football field. You listen as they recount the first time they heard gunshots outside their window. You kneel by your bed and pray for the second time this year that a student will make it out of the hospital alive.
And here is where the oxymoron comes in: The more you love them, the more you fear what could happen to them and yet the more you find yourself fearing what could happen to them, the more you know just how much you love them.
I think perhaps this is on my mind because the end of the year is ever so close and with it looms the reality that soon my students will no longer be mine. I've known all year that there is much in their lives that is out of my control, but at least in that time I could watch out for them if only for one hour of the day. For that hour I could do my best to make sure they were safe and they were learning and they felt loved, but when May 24th passes, that ends. When May 24th passes, all I can hope is that they leave me a little bit smarter, a little bit kinder, a little bit more prepared for what's ahead of them. And more than that I hope that they know they matter to someone and, in the immortal words of Dr. Seuss, that "When you get mixed up or hung up or blue, remember there's someone who's pulling for you."
It's the other days, though, that they are hardest to love. My students are hardest to love when they fill my days with joy and laughter, when they fill my heart with pride and warmth. It is on the days when my students are easiest to love that I have the hardest time loving them. On these days, it is sometimes difficult to forget the world that spins madly around them. On these day, I sometimes cannot let go of the fear I feel for my students.
Maybe this is the hard part about loving teenagers, of giving a piece of your heart to these young people who are so rife with a sense of independence, recklessness, invincibility. You hear them whisper about their plans for prom night. You hold your breath in the bleachers on Friday night as you wonder whether your student will get up uninjured from the hit they just took on the football field. You listen as they recount the first time they heard gunshots outside their window. You kneel by your bed and pray for the second time this year that a student will make it out of the hospital alive.
And here is where the oxymoron comes in: The more you love them, the more you fear what could happen to them and yet the more you find yourself fearing what could happen to them, the more you know just how much you love them.
I think perhaps this is on my mind because the end of the year is ever so close and with it looms the reality that soon my students will no longer be mine. I've known all year that there is much in their lives that is out of my control, but at least in that time I could watch out for them if only for one hour of the day. For that hour I could do my best to make sure they were safe and they were learning and they felt loved, but when May 24th passes, that ends. When May 24th passes, all I can hope is that they leave me a little bit smarter, a little bit kinder, a little bit more prepared for what's ahead of them. And more than that I hope that they know they matter to someone and, in the immortal words of Dr. Seuss, that "When you get mixed up or hung up or blue, remember there's someone who's pulling for you."
Sunday, March 13, 2016
The End of the Starfish Story
Before I began this journey and at many points along it, I have taken comfort in the "starfish story:. The fable goes something like this:
A man was walking along a beach the morning after a big storm that had washed thousands of starfish onto the beach, where they remained in danger of drying out in the sun. As the man walked, he came across a little girl who was, one by one, picking up starfish and throwing them back into the ocean. Puzzled, he said to the girl, "Young lady, what are you doing? There are are thousands of starfish and miles of beach. Don't you realize you'll never make a difference?" The girl thought for a moment before leaning over the pick up another starfish. Looking at the starfish, then at the man, she said "It makes a difference to this one," and threw the starfish out to sea.
Many times this year the starfish story has helped me in my weakest moments. When my students do poorly on a test, when a political change hinders progress, when a national tragedy or crisis resonates within the walls of my classroom, I take heart in the idea that even if I'm not making much of a dent in systemic poverty and racism, maybe I'm making a difference to a handful of students, maybe just to one. For a long time that was enough, the loosely moored hope that my presence here has a small but tangible net-positive effect.
But as time has gone on the starfish story has changed for me. Maybe the analogy was good at first, but it's grown more distant the longer I've spent teaching. In August, I was just like that girl. I pounded away relentlessly at my mission and believed whole-heartedly that I was making a difference. By November, outside forces made me question whether my actions really mattered, but I looked at the man on the beach and threw back another starfish, chugging along down the beach. In January an unexpected gust knocked me over, but I got back up and made my best effort to throw back the next starfish, perhaps a little bruised but no less determined.
Now it is March, three quarters of the year has gone and time is running out for my starfish. I look at the starfish in my hands and am struck by the weight of it. This starfish is no longer just another sea creature. This starfish, it has a name. It has a story. It has hopes and dreams and plans. And this starfish, it has shared all of them with me. I love this starfish, and all of my other starfishes, too. I look at the starfish, heavy in my hands with the weight of the storm it has been through and I notice for the first time how tired my arm is and just how far away the ocean looks. I throw the starfish and, like many of the starfish I have already thrown, it lands just short of the safety of the waves. I walk out and pick up the starfish, remind it that I love it, and toss it again towards the sea.
I am tired and my throws keep coming up short, but I have to keep trying, because so many things have changed in the last year, but one has not: These starfish, these kids, deserve better.
Wednesday, February 3, 2016
The Monster in the Room
I wasn't tired when I drove home from work today. I wasn't exhausted, my feet didn't ache, my back didn't hurt, my voice wasn't hoarse. For the first time ever, I wasn't tired after work today and it was the worst I've felt all year.
On all those evenings in the past that I drove home angry, sad, frustrated, or just beat, I felt something else, too. Accomplishment. Meaning. Purpose. Even in the moments that I felt the weakest during the rough fall months and on the days where I felt that I was trying to do the impossible, I drew strength from the knowledge that somehow despite all the obstacles I was doing what I came here to do. I was teaching and making a difference, however small it might be. Yes, the victories were small at first, and usually very far between, but they were victories nonetheless and my students were learning.
Today was different, though. Today I did not teach. Today my students did not learn. Today my students took a test, a test I did not want to give, a test they did not want to take. Tomorrow they will take a test again. My school, like many others, is stuck in the midst of a cycle of testing, being pulled into the sticky web by higher-ups at the district who are in turn being pulled by the magnetic force of state-imposed accountability measures, all a side effect of a culture nationwide that emphasizes testing over teaching. It's a culture that is eating away at students and teachers alike, that tells us that "success" is standardized for students, for schools, for states.
Though our intentions may have been to leave no child behind during this race to the top, the train seems to have hopped the tracks. We have somehow confused learning with education. My students tell me that they come to school to get an education so they can get a diploma and go to college to get a job to be "successful." I want to ask them when they stopped coming to school to learn and discover and grow. Was it second grade? Seventh grade? Tenth grade? I wonder when school started feeling less like an adventure to them and more like a series of arbitrary hoops (read: tests) to jump through on the way to a shiny piece of paper. I wonder when it started feeling that way for me. Who exactly did I let convince me that the measure of my intelligence, of my value, was the number at the top of OGT, SAT, ACT, [insert acronym here] score report? Am I becoming that person to my students?
When I have nothing to do but walk up and down the rows of desks and look at their tired faces as they struggle through the fourth two-hour district test in a day, it's hard not to think about this bigger picture, about the state ofeducation learning not just in my classroom, but in the country at large. While day to day I my mind may be occupied with the minutiae of sharpening pencils and grading exit tickets and calling parents, on days like today the big picture crystallizes a little bit and a harsh truth comes into focus. As I fuss at students about not talking during the test, about putting in their best effort, even about always guessing C when they don't know the answer, I am forced to confront a frightening reality and ask myself a hard question: In my fight to create a more equitable system for my students, have I somehow become just another cog within the very machine I sought to destroy?
On all those evenings in the past that I drove home angry, sad, frustrated, or just beat, I felt something else, too. Accomplishment. Meaning. Purpose. Even in the moments that I felt the weakest during the rough fall months and on the days where I felt that I was trying to do the impossible, I drew strength from the knowledge that somehow despite all the obstacles I was doing what I came here to do. I was teaching and making a difference, however small it might be. Yes, the victories were small at first, and usually very far between, but they were victories nonetheless and my students were learning.
Today was different, though. Today I did not teach. Today my students did not learn. Today my students took a test, a test I did not want to give, a test they did not want to take. Tomorrow they will take a test again. My school, like many others, is stuck in the midst of a cycle of testing, being pulled into the sticky web by higher-ups at the district who are in turn being pulled by the magnetic force of state-imposed accountability measures, all a side effect of a culture nationwide that emphasizes testing over teaching. It's a culture that is eating away at students and teachers alike, that tells us that "success" is standardized for students, for schools, for states.
Though our intentions may have been to leave no child behind during this race to the top, the train seems to have hopped the tracks. We have somehow confused learning with education. My students tell me that they come to school to get an education so they can get a diploma and go to college to get a job to be "successful." I want to ask them when they stopped coming to school to learn and discover and grow. Was it second grade? Seventh grade? Tenth grade? I wonder when school started feeling less like an adventure to them and more like a series of arbitrary hoops (read: tests) to jump through on the way to a shiny piece of paper. I wonder when it started feeling that way for me. Who exactly did I let convince me that the measure of my intelligence, of my value, was the number at the top of OGT, SAT, ACT, [insert acronym here] score report? Am I becoming that person to my students?
When I have nothing to do but walk up and down the rows of desks and look at their tired faces as they struggle through the fourth two-hour district test in a day, it's hard not to think about this bigger picture, about the state of
Sunday, January 10, 2016
Teach Them Math
My roommate and I have a saying we call "going down the rabbit hole." For the most part, it refers to obsessive Googling of an often random subject that occasionally leads to momentarily increased anxiety over something inane and usually entirely out of our control. For me, on Saturday night, it was chronic traumatic encephalopathy. That's right. On a Saturday night in my prime years, I was sitting at the kitchen table reading as much as I could about brain damage caused by repeated blows to the head, usually found in professional football players.
That morning I had gone to see the new Will Smith movie "Concussion" about the doctor who discovered chronic traumatic encephalopathy and the NFL's reaction to the news. But, to be honest, the subject had been weighing on my mind since long before the movies. You see, I teach high school and some of my students play football and some of those athletes get injured and some of those injuries are head injuries. The first time you go to your school's Friday night game and your students get excited to see you there, it's fun and exciting; the first time you see one of your students get knocked down and not get back up right away, it's not.
So on Saturday night the thoughts of "Concussion" and of my football players sent me down the rabbit hole. In the midst of my reading on Mike Webster and Bennet Omalu and Roger Goodell, I would sometimes stop to pop out from behind my computer screen and tell my roommate some horrifying story about an NFL player who had tragically died after a career full of hard hits to the head or to worry aloud about my students. Finally, I said "This stuff scares me and I don't even know what to do about it. I know it's only high school football, but I'm worried about my babies. What am I supposed to do?"
"Teach them math," my roommate replied. And that't just it, isn't it? It's one of the hardest and most important lessons for teachers to learn, especially teachers in high poverty areas like the one I teach in. My students are facing a lot and it's hard not to worry about them, but at the end of the day all I can really do is my job. Everything else is out of my control, but for the 58 minutes they're in my classroom every day there are three things I can do to help them: Love them, support them, and teach them math. If I do that, I've done my job and if I want to keep doing my job and doing it well for years to come I have to be able to do that and then come home and let go at the end of the day.
There are some things in life and in teaching that you can't control and as easy as it is to say that and believe that, it's another thing to live it. It's a skill I'm still learning and one I'll probably be learning for a long time, but it's a skill that I have to grasp. There really isn't much I can do to keep my students safe and happy and secure on the football field or at home or on the bus or wherever else they may go outside of school hours, but, this semester, when I worry about those hours that they aren't with me and what I can do about it, I'm going to commit more often to do just what I'm supposed to do and teach them math.
That morning I had gone to see the new Will Smith movie "Concussion" about the doctor who discovered chronic traumatic encephalopathy and the NFL's reaction to the news. But, to be honest, the subject had been weighing on my mind since long before the movies. You see, I teach high school and some of my students play football and some of those athletes get injured and some of those injuries are head injuries. The first time you go to your school's Friday night game and your students get excited to see you there, it's fun and exciting; the first time you see one of your students get knocked down and not get back up right away, it's not.
So on Saturday night the thoughts of "Concussion" and of my football players sent me down the rabbit hole. In the midst of my reading on Mike Webster and Bennet Omalu and Roger Goodell, I would sometimes stop to pop out from behind my computer screen and tell my roommate some horrifying story about an NFL player who had tragically died after a career full of hard hits to the head or to worry aloud about my students. Finally, I said "This stuff scares me and I don't even know what to do about it. I know it's only high school football, but I'm worried about my babies. What am I supposed to do?"
"Teach them math," my roommate replied. And that't just it, isn't it? It's one of the hardest and most important lessons for teachers to learn, especially teachers in high poverty areas like the one I teach in. My students are facing a lot and it's hard not to worry about them, but at the end of the day all I can really do is my job. Everything else is out of my control, but for the 58 minutes they're in my classroom every day there are three things I can do to help them: Love them, support them, and teach them math. If I do that, I've done my job and if I want to keep doing my job and doing it well for years to come I have to be able to do that and then come home and let go at the end of the day.
There are some things in life and in teaching that you can't control and as easy as it is to say that and believe that, it's another thing to live it. It's a skill I'm still learning and one I'll probably be learning for a long time, but it's a skill that I have to grasp. There really isn't much I can do to keep my students safe and happy and secure on the football field or at home or on the bus or wherever else they may go outside of school hours, but, this semester, when I worry about those hours that they aren't with me and what I can do about it, I'm going to commit more often to do just what I'm supposed to do and teach them math.
Friday, November 27, 2015
Coming Home: 2 Americas and 27 Types of Hummus
There are 27 varieties of hummus at the local grocery store in my neighborhood in Cincinnati. Strictly speaking, it's not the local grocery store; it's one of three all on the same block. Staring at the 27 varieties of hummus tonight, the same string of thoughts and questions snake into my mind as have several times this week: Why does anyone need this many kinds of hummus? Why does anyone need this many varieties of anything? Do these people know what luxury this is? Do they know that people in their own country go without all of this? Without 27 varieties of hummus, without three groceries stores in town, without all the jobs the stores provide, without the fresh produce they sell? Six months ago, did I know?
I've been visiting home this week for Thanksgiving and it's the first time I've returned since leaving Ohio in late May. In my time in the Delta, I've been to Memphis and Jackson for a day here and there, but I haven't spent any extended time out of the Delta since leaving home. This week has been my first long exposure to the way things are outside of my bubble, and it's been a complicated week.
When volunteers and missionaries return from developing countries, they often report feelings of isolation and a sense of being overwhelmed by this place they used to call home. My experience is obviously very different from someone who has spent an extended time in a completely foreign country and culture, but that confusing lack of belonging in the most familiar setting has become one I understand. It's hard not to be overwhelmed and a little put off by the fact that there are more businesses in the Philadelphia Airport than there are in the town I teach in. Driving down a main road in a wealthier suburb north of Cincinnati, the inequity becomes staggering as I wonder aloud to my mother why anyone could need so many restaurants on one street. It doesn't seem right that such abundance should exist in the same nation where some of my students live in homes without running water. Starbucks tastes different from what it did last year. It turns out that knowing the statistics on poverty and inequity does not affect the taste of coffee the way that six months of living and teaching among it does.
In between the errands, there is time for family and friends. This time is sometimes refreshing and sometimes not. Sometimes it is an inquisition of well-meaning relatives demanding answers to repeated questions and often desiring a neatly-packaged, one-sentence explanation of exactly what makes my job so difficult (It's not the kids. Stop asking me if it's the kids). Other times it is the truly wonderful people whom I can speak honestly with either because they have been somewhere like where I am now and truly understand or because they are people who truly know me and my aversion to repeated lines of questioning and will simply listen without judgment to whatever it is I want to share in that moment. No matter whom I speak to I work to strike the right balance between speaking the harsh and uncomfortable truth about the place where I teach and working to change the outsider's narrative and perception of Mississippi and it's people.
At other times I rest and work to get ahead to make the three weeks between me and Christmas go a little more smoothly. The week goes by fast. I haven't yet had time to reconcile these 2 separate Americas, this one with it's 27 versions of hummus and the one I will return to where the black kids and the white kids go to separate schools. A week isn't a long enough time to do that, I suppose. No length of time really is.
I've been visiting home this week for Thanksgiving and it's the first time I've returned since leaving Ohio in late May. In my time in the Delta, I've been to Memphis and Jackson for a day here and there, but I haven't spent any extended time out of the Delta since leaving home. This week has been my first long exposure to the way things are outside of my bubble, and it's been a complicated week.
When volunteers and missionaries return from developing countries, they often report feelings of isolation and a sense of being overwhelmed by this place they used to call home. My experience is obviously very different from someone who has spent an extended time in a completely foreign country and culture, but that confusing lack of belonging in the most familiar setting has become one I understand. It's hard not to be overwhelmed and a little put off by the fact that there are more businesses in the Philadelphia Airport than there are in the town I teach in. Driving down a main road in a wealthier suburb north of Cincinnati, the inequity becomes staggering as I wonder aloud to my mother why anyone could need so many restaurants on one street. It doesn't seem right that such abundance should exist in the same nation where some of my students live in homes without running water. Starbucks tastes different from what it did last year. It turns out that knowing the statistics on poverty and inequity does not affect the taste of coffee the way that six months of living and teaching among it does.
In between the errands, there is time for family and friends. This time is sometimes refreshing and sometimes not. Sometimes it is an inquisition of well-meaning relatives demanding answers to repeated questions and often desiring a neatly-packaged, one-sentence explanation of exactly what makes my job so difficult (It's not the kids. Stop asking me if it's the kids). Other times it is the truly wonderful people whom I can speak honestly with either because they have been somewhere like where I am now and truly understand or because they are people who truly know me and my aversion to repeated lines of questioning and will simply listen without judgment to whatever it is I want to share in that moment. No matter whom I speak to I work to strike the right balance between speaking the harsh and uncomfortable truth about the place where I teach and working to change the outsider's narrative and perception of Mississippi and it's people.
At other times I rest and work to get ahead to make the three weeks between me and Christmas go a little more smoothly. The week goes by fast. I haven't yet had time to reconcile these 2 separate Americas, this one with it's 27 versions of hummus and the one I will return to where the black kids and the white kids go to separate schools. A week isn't a long enough time to do that, I suppose. No length of time really is.
Sunday, November 8, 2015
October is Over (Thank God)
There is something in teaching called "Darktober." It runs roughly through the month of October and, perhaps, a little bit into November. It's characterized by exhaustion, few or no days off, the end of the first grading period, and occasional fits of crying in your car for no apparent reason.
Late fall is a time of year that is notoriously rough for all teachers, but it's particularly hard on new teachers, or at least it was on me. Days were getting shorter, my kids were getting restless, and the end of the grading period with all it's paperwork was getting closer. In the midst of all of this chaos, I tried to push my emotions to the side and just deal with the day to day. Yes, I was tired. Yes, I was frustrated. Yes, I was losing hope. But dealing with all of that could wait because fall break was coming, grades were due, and for the first time I started to feel like I was running out of time with my students. The time for teaching was now; the time for feeling things about teaching was later.
Then it rained. It rained and it rained and it rained from Sunday afternoon all the way through Monday morning. I was coming off a good week that Monday. Fall break had given me a chance to breathe and see my parents and my kids had done particularly well on their quiz the previous Friday. I was all set for another good week despite the torrential downpour, but there's nothing quite like rain to remind you of the reality of your situation and the reality of my situation is simple: I teach in one of the poorest counties in the poorest state in the country. If I had lost sight of that reality, that morning it was hard to miss as I walked through the pouring rain on our flooded outdoor campus among the old buildings with leaky roofs to the copy room where I was greeted by the notable and mysterious absence of one of the copiers (the good one, in fact). There I was, standing in the copy room, slightly drenched and trying to figure out how to teach without any copies when it finally happened: I ran out of patience.
I ran out of patience with everything that Monday morning. I was out of patience with my students. ("You turn your homework into the folder. Where you've turned it in every single day since the beginning of the year. EVERY. SINGLE. DAY.") I was out of patience with myself. (Shouldn't I get it by now? Shouldn't I know what I'm doing by now? I can't keep messing up like this, for my students' sake and for mine.) But most of all I was out of patience with the system.
I was and am out of patience with this miserably failing system. I am out of patience with a system that robbed me of 11 out of 39 instructional days first quarter for testing (That's 28% of instructional time spent testing, if you were wondering). I am out of patience with a system that punishes students and schools in areas of systemic poverty by robbing them of even more resources when the schools fail to meet arbitrary measures of success. Most of all, I am out of patience with a system that treats teachers and students like the problem and not like the solution.
That day when I ran out of patience I walked to the office and filled out the paperwork to take a personal day later in the week. A day to myself to process and relax and get a little ahead of the game was just what I needed and ever since I've felt much better and more in control. I still feel out of patience, but I'm not out of energy or passion or desire to be here. When I'm running low on those things, my students help me find them back. I really, really mean it when I say that I love them, and that love kept me at it all the way through October and into the more hopeful weeks of November.
Now, as things start to look up again, it's a little bit easier to sit down and look at October from a critical distance which is why I'm writing about it now instead of as it was happening. The first week of November went by quickly and victories in the classroom are starting to seem closer and more significant. A smile from a student who hasn't cracked a smile since September, a strong performance task from a student who struggles with completing problems independently, and a kind remark from a student who I had previously had a strained relationship with. It's these things that help me put October behind me and look forward to better days to come because better days will surely come.
Late fall is a time of year that is notoriously rough for all teachers, but it's particularly hard on new teachers, or at least it was on me. Days were getting shorter, my kids were getting restless, and the end of the grading period with all it's paperwork was getting closer. In the midst of all of this chaos, I tried to push my emotions to the side and just deal with the day to day. Yes, I was tired. Yes, I was frustrated. Yes, I was losing hope. But dealing with all of that could wait because fall break was coming, grades were due, and for the first time I started to feel like I was running out of time with my students. The time for teaching was now; the time for feeling things about teaching was later.
Then it rained. It rained and it rained and it rained from Sunday afternoon all the way through Monday morning. I was coming off a good week that Monday. Fall break had given me a chance to breathe and see my parents and my kids had done particularly well on their quiz the previous Friday. I was all set for another good week despite the torrential downpour, but there's nothing quite like rain to remind you of the reality of your situation and the reality of my situation is simple: I teach in one of the poorest counties in the poorest state in the country. If I had lost sight of that reality, that morning it was hard to miss as I walked through the pouring rain on our flooded outdoor campus among the old buildings with leaky roofs to the copy room where I was greeted by the notable and mysterious absence of one of the copiers (the good one, in fact). There I was, standing in the copy room, slightly drenched and trying to figure out how to teach without any copies when it finally happened: I ran out of patience.
I ran out of patience with everything that Monday morning. I was out of patience with my students. ("You turn your homework into the folder. Where you've turned it in every single day since the beginning of the year. EVERY. SINGLE. DAY.") I was out of patience with myself. (Shouldn't I get it by now? Shouldn't I know what I'm doing by now? I can't keep messing up like this, for my students' sake and for mine.) But most of all I was out of patience with the system.
I was and am out of patience with this miserably failing system. I am out of patience with a system that robbed me of 11 out of 39 instructional days first quarter for testing (That's 28% of instructional time spent testing, if you were wondering). I am out of patience with a system that punishes students and schools in areas of systemic poverty by robbing them of even more resources when the schools fail to meet arbitrary measures of success. Most of all, I am out of patience with a system that treats teachers and students like the problem and not like the solution.
That day when I ran out of patience I walked to the office and filled out the paperwork to take a personal day later in the week. A day to myself to process and relax and get a little ahead of the game was just what I needed and ever since I've felt much better and more in control. I still feel out of patience, but I'm not out of energy or passion or desire to be here. When I'm running low on those things, my students help me find them back. I really, really mean it when I say that I love them, and that love kept me at it all the way through October and into the more hopeful weeks of November.
Now, as things start to look up again, it's a little bit easier to sit down and look at October from a critical distance which is why I'm writing about it now instead of as it was happening. The first week of November went by quickly and victories in the classroom are starting to seem closer and more significant. A smile from a student who hasn't cracked a smile since September, a strong performance task from a student who struggles with completing problems independently, and a kind remark from a student who I had previously had a strained relationship with. It's these things that help me put October behind me and look forward to better days to come because better days will surely come.
Saturday, October 10, 2015
Delta Love: You Are Not An Island
Fall, I think, is a time for gratitude. Thanksgiving looms and quiet, cool weekends lend themselves to time for reflection. The changing seasons make the quick passage of time more obvious and it is impossible not to take some time to ruminate on life.
My first fall in Mississippi has made me thankful for the monarch butterflies that are flying south for winter. I am grateful for the cool breezes and the storms that sweep across the Delta bringing rain and respite from the still persistent heat. I am also thankful for the arrival of fall break this week, signaling the end of the first nine weeks. By some small miracle I've made through a quarter of the year, though not without many bumps in the road.
More than anything this fall, I am thankful for the support I've received, especially the support from other teachers. New teachers receive a lot of advice from everyone: Don't smile until Christmas. Don't cry in front of your students. Have high expectations. Go home early at least one day a week. That's all great, but the piece of advice I think is most important for new teachers is this: Reach out. Make friends. Remember that you are not alone.
The job of a teacher is hard and it can feel isolating. For large portions of the day you are alone in your room with 20 or more students. At times you will inevitably feel alone in your struggle, but you are not an island and there are people all around you who will help you through this journey.
For me, one of the most meaningful support systems I've had is the other teachers at my school and a rough last week of the grading period has left me feeling especially grateful for them. I can say with 100% confidence that I would not have made it through the year so far without them. Countless times the special education teacher who works with the math department has advised and counseled me so many times and has been endlessly patient as I fumble through my first year and try to get get a grip. More than once he has coached me through a crisis of confidence and I could not be more grateful for his presence in my classroom and his patience and generosity. The department head always has my back and is constantly helping me out, sharing lesson plans and answering my innumerable questions. The teacher next door is always looking out for me, reminding me when I most need it that I'm doing a good job, all things considered. There is a history teacher who regularly takes new teachers under her wing and will stop at nothing to help us out. She's helped me plan lessons at the last minute and rearrange my classroom to make it more conducive to learning, but more than that she's just been kind. So often it is talking and laughing with her at the end of a particularly hard day that makes me feel human again.
It doesn't stop with the veteran teachers, though. I am just as grateful for the new and relatively new teachers as I am for those who have been in the trenches for a little while longer. After all, it's these teachers who best know what you're going through since they're right there with you. I am so grateful for the new teachers at my school who I've been on this crazy ride with. It's these teachers who I've compared notes with and commiserated with. We celebrate victories together and laugh at the craziness of all of it. It is their classrooms I escape to in the morning when I need a quiet moment or during my planning period when I need a pep talk. It's also their classrooms I return to at the end of the day to cry or laugh when I need to. I can only hope that I have managed to be there for them in the way they have been there for me.
New teachers have all sorts of voices trying to offer advice and support. There will be mentors and coaches and consultants, but at the end of the day the best support is usually right next door or across the hallway. I often tell my students that in our classroom we are a team and your team is your family. I am grateful this fall to not only have such a special student team, but also a wonderful teacher team. I may be 600 miles away from my real family, but if team means family then my teacher team is the best Mississippi family I could ask for.
My first fall in Mississippi has made me thankful for the monarch butterflies that are flying south for winter. I am grateful for the cool breezes and the storms that sweep across the Delta bringing rain and respite from the still persistent heat. I am also thankful for the arrival of fall break this week, signaling the end of the first nine weeks. By some small miracle I've made through a quarter of the year, though not without many bumps in the road.
More than anything this fall, I am thankful for the support I've received, especially the support from other teachers. New teachers receive a lot of advice from everyone: Don't smile until Christmas. Don't cry in front of your students. Have high expectations. Go home early at least one day a week. That's all great, but the piece of advice I think is most important for new teachers is this: Reach out. Make friends. Remember that you are not alone.
The job of a teacher is hard and it can feel isolating. For large portions of the day you are alone in your room with 20 or more students. At times you will inevitably feel alone in your struggle, but you are not an island and there are people all around you who will help you through this journey.
For me, one of the most meaningful support systems I've had is the other teachers at my school and a rough last week of the grading period has left me feeling especially grateful for them. I can say with 100% confidence that I would not have made it through the year so far without them. Countless times the special education teacher who works with the math department has advised and counseled me so many times and has been endlessly patient as I fumble through my first year and try to get get a grip. More than once he has coached me through a crisis of confidence and I could not be more grateful for his presence in my classroom and his patience and generosity. The department head always has my back and is constantly helping me out, sharing lesson plans and answering my innumerable questions. The teacher next door is always looking out for me, reminding me when I most need it that I'm doing a good job, all things considered. There is a history teacher who regularly takes new teachers under her wing and will stop at nothing to help us out. She's helped me plan lessons at the last minute and rearrange my classroom to make it more conducive to learning, but more than that she's just been kind. So often it is talking and laughing with her at the end of a particularly hard day that makes me feel human again.
It doesn't stop with the veteran teachers, though. I am just as grateful for the new and relatively new teachers as I am for those who have been in the trenches for a little while longer. After all, it's these teachers who best know what you're going through since they're right there with you. I am so grateful for the new teachers at my school who I've been on this crazy ride with. It's these teachers who I've compared notes with and commiserated with. We celebrate victories together and laugh at the craziness of all of it. It is their classrooms I escape to in the morning when I need a quiet moment or during my planning period when I need a pep talk. It's also their classrooms I return to at the end of the day to cry or laugh when I need to. I can only hope that I have managed to be there for them in the way they have been there for me.
New teachers have all sorts of voices trying to offer advice and support. There will be mentors and coaches and consultants, but at the end of the day the best support is usually right next door or across the hallway. I often tell my students that in our classroom we are a team and your team is your family. I am grateful this fall to not only have such a special student team, but also a wonderful teacher team. I may be 600 miles away from my real family, but if team means family then my teacher team is the best Mississippi family I could ask for.
Sunday, August 30, 2015
Everything Is On Fire
It's harvest season in the Delta and with harvest season comes fire. Farmers light fire to fields in controlled burns to clear crop residue and kill weeds before the next planting season rolls around. The fires help nourish the soils and allow for a fresh and healthy start in spring.
The first time I saw a field fire, I found it quite odd. Growing up in a suburban area, smoke was never a good sign, but I've quickly come to realize that down here smoke and fire are just another element of life in the Mississippi Delta (and possibly one reason that the Delta is home to so many asthmatics). Over the last week or so I've probably seen 3 or 4 fires burning everyday along the rural highway as I drive home from work.
Today, driving to the neighboring town, I drove through a cloud of smoke from a fire burning especially close to the road and started to think of my classroom. This week it felt like everything in my classroom and the fields that surround it was on fire.
For the last three weeks, my students have talked while I was talking and played around while they were supposed to be working. What's more, they haven't learned the content they were supposed to have learned by now and that's mostly on me. Everyday I struggle with the feeling that I am running out of resources: Out of paper, out of ink, out of money, out of patience, out of time. Everyday I struggle.
I keep waiting for it to get better, for the day I magically show up and my students respect me and listen intently as I speak and grasp the material that I put in front of them, but that day's not coming unless I do something to bring it about. The truth is my students don't pay attention and struggle with the material mostly because of me. To say my students hold no responsibility for their behavior and their grades would be a lie, but it would be just as facetious to say that I am innocent in all of this. I can do so much better and sometimes I find that I am most upset not because of anything my students do but because of all of the things I know I am failing to do. I know that my classes aren't engaging enough and that I don't scaffold assessments enough so when my students fail quizzes I'm not upset with them for failing at a quiz, I'm upset with myself for failing my students.
To say that I know I'm not doing good enough would be an understatement. I know exactly how much better I need to be, but fortunately I also know that I can be better and I've committed to a plan to ensure it. I'm ditching the lecture-practice problems format for something more challenging and fun for my students. On Thursday, I gave my last lecture and tomorrow I'm going in with a new mindset and a new game plan. We're going to use math centers and project based learning and all sorts of exciting and engaging instructional strategies. Yesterday I wrote my first set of lesson plans based on my new model and for the first time I was excited as I wrote lesson plans. It's the dawn of a new week and I'm so ready for it.
The fires have burned in my classroom for almost a month now and it's time to put them out. The fields of my classroom will be left rich with all the things learned from the fires of past mistakes. Tomorrow is a new day. The fires will end and planting season will arrive.
The first time I saw a field fire, I found it quite odd. Growing up in a suburban area, smoke was never a good sign, but I've quickly come to realize that down here smoke and fire are just another element of life in the Mississippi Delta (and possibly one reason that the Delta is home to so many asthmatics). Over the last week or so I've probably seen 3 or 4 fires burning everyday along the rural highway as I drive home from work.
Today, driving to the neighboring town, I drove through a cloud of smoke from a fire burning especially close to the road and started to think of my classroom. This week it felt like everything in my classroom and the fields that surround it was on fire.
For the last three weeks, my students have talked while I was talking and played around while they were supposed to be working. What's more, they haven't learned the content they were supposed to have learned by now and that's mostly on me. Everyday I struggle with the feeling that I am running out of resources: Out of paper, out of ink, out of money, out of patience, out of time. Everyday I struggle.
I keep waiting for it to get better, for the day I magically show up and my students respect me and listen intently as I speak and grasp the material that I put in front of them, but that day's not coming unless I do something to bring it about. The truth is my students don't pay attention and struggle with the material mostly because of me. To say my students hold no responsibility for their behavior and their grades would be a lie, but it would be just as facetious to say that I am innocent in all of this. I can do so much better and sometimes I find that I am most upset not because of anything my students do but because of all of the things I know I am failing to do. I know that my classes aren't engaging enough and that I don't scaffold assessments enough so when my students fail quizzes I'm not upset with them for failing at a quiz, I'm upset with myself for failing my students.
To say that I know I'm not doing good enough would be an understatement. I know exactly how much better I need to be, but fortunately I also know that I can be better and I've committed to a plan to ensure it. I'm ditching the lecture-practice problems format for something more challenging and fun for my students. On Thursday, I gave my last lecture and tomorrow I'm going in with a new mindset and a new game plan. We're going to use math centers and project based learning and all sorts of exciting and engaging instructional strategies. Yesterday I wrote my first set of lesson plans based on my new model and for the first time I was excited as I wrote lesson plans. It's the dawn of a new week and I'm so ready for it.
The fires have burned in my classroom for almost a month now and it's time to put them out. The fields of my classroom will be left rich with all the things learned from the fires of past mistakes. Tomorrow is a new day. The fires will end and planting season will arrive.
Saturday, August 22, 2015
121 Reasons to Come Back
My second full week of teaching has shown me quite quickly that almost nothing about this job is easy. If you are looking for a job that is easy, then turn fast and run in the opposite direction of teaching.
Lesson planning is certainly not easy. Attempting to make geometry engaging to high schoolers is probably the hardest thing I've ever done and most of the time I fail (I can tell by the way their eyes glaze over when I start to talk.)
Helping all of the students who need assistance during independent practice is not easy. There are 22 of them and only 1 of me and, despite my best efforts, I have not yet mastered the ability to be in two places at once (I keep trying, though. If there were one skill that could improve my quality of life, this would be it.)
Deciding whether to buy more pencils for the classroom or some desk organizers is not easy. On the one hand, my kids need pencils, but on the other hand if my desk weren't such a mess I might not feel like I was going insane every time I tried to sit down and do work. (Ultimately, I will buy the pencils and wait for my paycheck to organize my desk. My students' needs cannot wait; mine can.)
Getting up at 5:30 am every day is not easy. In the past, getting up in the morning, usually at 8 or 9, was the single hardest part of my day and it remains an immensely challenging part of my life (Of course, getting up is one of the easiest parts of my day, now. It really only gets harder from there.)
Managing a classroom is definitely not easy (SO NOT EASY.)
Laying awake at night thinking about students and trying to figure out how to do better for them is not easy. As I try to fall asleep my mind wanders, inevitably finding it's way to my classroom where it walks up and down the rows of desks, wondering how to make accommodations for this student and how to challenge that student and how to teach all of those students who fall somewhere in between failing and excelling, all in the same class at the same time learning the same material (No wonder I am always tired).
Holding back tears when well-meaning people ask you if you are okay is not easy. "I'm fine. I'm fine" I say, as if the complete exhaustion and stress is not evident in every feature of my face and body. One day I will be fine, even if it's not today. Holding back tears was especially hard this week when it was not a teacher asking me if I was okay but a student. He heard about something that happened earlier in the day and stopped by after school to make sure I was alright. If earlier in the day I had wanted to cry because everything was going wrong, then in that moment I wanted to cry because for one minute everything was going right (Maybe not all the tears are bad.)
There is one thing, though, that is easy. Loving my students is easy. They make me laugh. Why wouldn't I laugh when my student writes that "Geometry is important because when a toddler asks you what shape an object is you can tell them about the angles, too"? They make me cry, sometimes sad tears, sometimes happy tears. They make me question. They make me question where the ball was dropped so that a student who couldn't add or subtract made it to 10th grade geometry and, more importantly, how I can ensure that I'm not the next in line to drop that ball. They make me hope. They are not jaded by the world around them and will not let the outside world tell them what a Mississippi Delta high schooler can and cannot grow up to become.
They make me come back. They make me come back to the most challenging job I've ever had or ever will have. Almost nothing about this job is easy and I come to school and leave school exhausted, but every day I come back. In the face of many challenges and especially in the face of the exhaustion, I sometimes wonder why I come back, but then I remember. I have 121 reasons to come back. They have names.
Lesson planning is certainly not easy. Attempting to make geometry engaging to high schoolers is probably the hardest thing I've ever done and most of the time I fail (I can tell by the way their eyes glaze over when I start to talk.)
Helping all of the students who need assistance during independent practice is not easy. There are 22 of them and only 1 of me and, despite my best efforts, I have not yet mastered the ability to be in two places at once (I keep trying, though. If there were one skill that could improve my quality of life, this would be it.)
Deciding whether to buy more pencils for the classroom or some desk organizers is not easy. On the one hand, my kids need pencils, but on the other hand if my desk weren't such a mess I might not feel like I was going insane every time I tried to sit down and do work. (Ultimately, I will buy the pencils and wait for my paycheck to organize my desk. My students' needs cannot wait; mine can.)
Getting up at 5:30 am every day is not easy. In the past, getting up in the morning, usually at 8 or 9, was the single hardest part of my day and it remains an immensely challenging part of my life (Of course, getting up is one of the easiest parts of my day, now. It really only gets harder from there.)
Managing a classroom is definitely not easy (SO NOT EASY.)
Laying awake at night thinking about students and trying to figure out how to do better for them is not easy. As I try to fall asleep my mind wanders, inevitably finding it's way to my classroom where it walks up and down the rows of desks, wondering how to make accommodations for this student and how to challenge that student and how to teach all of those students who fall somewhere in between failing and excelling, all in the same class at the same time learning the same material (No wonder I am always tired).
Holding back tears when well-meaning people ask you if you are okay is not easy. "I'm fine. I'm fine" I say, as if the complete exhaustion and stress is not evident in every feature of my face and body. One day I will be fine, even if it's not today. Holding back tears was especially hard this week when it was not a teacher asking me if I was okay but a student. He heard about something that happened earlier in the day and stopped by after school to make sure I was alright. If earlier in the day I had wanted to cry because everything was going wrong, then in that moment I wanted to cry because for one minute everything was going right (Maybe not all the tears are bad.)
There is one thing, though, that is easy. Loving my students is easy. They make me laugh. Why wouldn't I laugh when my student writes that "Geometry is important because when a toddler asks you what shape an object is you can tell them about the angles, too"? They make me cry, sometimes sad tears, sometimes happy tears. They make me question. They make me question where the ball was dropped so that a student who couldn't add or subtract made it to 10th grade geometry and, more importantly, how I can ensure that I'm not the next in line to drop that ball. They make me hope. They are not jaded by the world around them and will not let the outside world tell them what a Mississippi Delta high schooler can and cannot grow up to become.
They make me come back. They make me come back to the most challenging job I've ever had or ever will have. Almost nothing about this job is easy and I come to school and leave school exhausted, but every day I come back. In the face of many challenges and especially in the face of the exhaustion, I sometimes wonder why I come back, but then I remember. I have 121 reasons to come back. They have names.
Saturday, August 15, 2015
Exhaustion: A First Week of School Story
I've completed my first full week of teaching. In the hallways, veteran teachers ask me every day how I am feeling, knowing the answer before I have even opened my mouth: I'm exhausted. I am so exhausted.
They smile and nod sympathetically, but almost never try to assure me that it gets better, easier, less tiring. Maybe it doesn't get easier, I worry. Maybe I'll be this tired for the next two years. Maybe the veteran teachers don't tell me that one day I'll be less tired because they're just as tired after their tenth year as I am after my first week.
Maybe it will always be this exhausting because this isn't just the exhaustion that comes from waking up at 5:30 every day and staying at school until 5:30 every night or from being on your feet for 8 straight hours in shoes that just aren't that comfortable or from spending nights and weekends lesson planning. No, this is something more.
This exhaustion is spiritual. It's physical. It's emotional. And, above all, it's real and visceral and consuming. It hits you when you read a student's response to the prompt "Pick an important number in your life and explain" and written in front of you is the sentence "I picked the number 7 because that is the age I was when my mom died" and then you read sentences like that again and again and again. You are engulfed by it when your student writes frankly that his goal for the year is to get in less fights and almost cries when you talk to him about it. This exhaustion blankets you at night as you toss and turn, wondering how you're going to teach so many students with so few resources. It nearly knocks you over when your students look at statistics on the number of Black students suspended versus the number of White students suspended and say "That sounds like us." It eats you alive when you look at your students and realize they need so much more than a geometry teacher can give.
Certainly, this is not the type of exhaustion that goes away with experience. After a few years a teacher may have stacks of lesson plans ready to go and may have figured out what shoes are actually comfortable and may have even adjusted to the 5:30 am wake-up calls, but time and experience does not dull the senses to the suffering of others. The ache in your heart for the things some of your students deal with will never really go away, so what keeps these veteran teachers going after 5 years, 10 years, 20 years, I wonder?
They must be strong, stronger than most. Maybe it's a touch of insanity. Surely veteran teachers must have an unparalleled sense of purpose to keep at this and keep believing that they are making a difference (they are making a difference, any student will say). Mostly it must be love. It must be the swell in your heart when your most difficult student tells you that you're his favorite teacher and the pride in your chest when the girl in you see something click in your student's eyes as you explain adding negative numbers for the fourth time in two minutes. It must be love.
They smile and nod sympathetically, but almost never try to assure me that it gets better, easier, less tiring. Maybe it doesn't get easier, I worry. Maybe I'll be this tired for the next two years. Maybe the veteran teachers don't tell me that one day I'll be less tired because they're just as tired after their tenth year as I am after my first week.
Maybe it will always be this exhausting because this isn't just the exhaustion that comes from waking up at 5:30 every day and staying at school until 5:30 every night or from being on your feet for 8 straight hours in shoes that just aren't that comfortable or from spending nights and weekends lesson planning. No, this is something more.
This exhaustion is spiritual. It's physical. It's emotional. And, above all, it's real and visceral and consuming. It hits you when you read a student's response to the prompt "Pick an important number in your life and explain" and written in front of you is the sentence "I picked the number 7 because that is the age I was when my mom died" and then you read sentences like that again and again and again. You are engulfed by it when your student writes frankly that his goal for the year is to get in less fights and almost cries when you talk to him about it. This exhaustion blankets you at night as you toss and turn, wondering how you're going to teach so many students with so few resources. It nearly knocks you over when your students look at statistics on the number of Black students suspended versus the number of White students suspended and say "That sounds like us." It eats you alive when you look at your students and realize they need so much more than a geometry teacher can give.
Certainly, this is not the type of exhaustion that goes away with experience. After a few years a teacher may have stacks of lesson plans ready to go and may have figured out what shoes are actually comfortable and may have even adjusted to the 5:30 am wake-up calls, but time and experience does not dull the senses to the suffering of others. The ache in your heart for the things some of your students deal with will never really go away, so what keeps these veteran teachers going after 5 years, 10 years, 20 years, I wonder?
They must be strong, stronger than most. Maybe it's a touch of insanity. Surely veteran teachers must have an unparalleled sense of purpose to keep at this and keep believing that they are making a difference (they are making a difference, any student will say). Mostly it must be love. It must be the swell in your heart when your most difficult student tells you that you're his favorite teacher and the pride in your chest when the girl in you see something click in your student's eyes as you explain adding negative numbers for the fourth time in two minutes. It must be love.
Wednesday, July 22, 2015
A Letter to My Former Teachers
Dear Former Teachers,
The thing is, until two months ago, I thought I understood. Until two months ago, I truly believed I knew just how hard teachers work. After all, my mom was a teacher through my high school years and I knew all about the late nights and working weekends because I had witnessed them in my living room. I knew about the days teachers stayed until 6 pm because sometimes I was right there with her, plugging away at my homework in her classroom while she plugged away at hers. I was there at the summer picnics with her students and their families and I remember every single IEP season and the accompanying piles of paperwork like they just ended yesterday. So I reasoned, if there was anyone who knew how hard teachers work, it was me.
Then, I had my first impassioned debate on whether a particular procedure should be done "silently" or "quietly" and my long held belief that I got it came crashing down. I may have picked up on the amount of time put in to teaching, but I never really picked up on the amount of thought put in. I may have witnessed the long hours teachers at my high school spent on everything, but I completely missed the intention they put into every single detail about their classes. It turns out that I knew how long teachers work; I didn't have a clue how hard they work.
Now, here I sit, agonizing over the procedure for entering my classroom, and all I feel is the overwhelming desire to say "thank you."
To my teachers, at every level, thank you. Thank you for all the time you spent on all the things we never noticed. Thank you for setting up the missed class station for absences and for lining up your posters so they were even and not crooked and posting the objective every day. Thank you for making us practice how to line up for lunch and for buying a special stamp to approve our papers with and for devising a bathroom pass system. Thank you for every check or warning or consequence administered and for every carefully lettered popsicle stick used to cold call us and for every binder checked for organization and completeness.
There is a quote that I keep running into here in Mississippi, something Mother Teresa is supposed to have said: "Do small things with great love." To some extent, it has become my teacher motto and I have it hanging in a frame at home. As I sat with my roommates last night and discussed procedures for taking roll, I realized that maybe these are the small things teachers are meant to do with great love. I didn't see it when I was in school, but now it's hard to miss the love that went into every thoughtfully written classroom procedure and every carefully lettered classroom poster.
So, to my teachers, I must say again "thank you". Thank you for all of the small things and, above all, thank you for all the great love.
Sincerely,
An Old Student and New Teacher
The thing is, until two months ago, I thought I understood. Until two months ago, I truly believed I knew just how hard teachers work. After all, my mom was a teacher through my high school years and I knew all about the late nights and working weekends because I had witnessed them in my living room. I knew about the days teachers stayed until 6 pm because sometimes I was right there with her, plugging away at my homework in her classroom while she plugged away at hers. I was there at the summer picnics with her students and their families and I remember every single IEP season and the accompanying piles of paperwork like they just ended yesterday. So I reasoned, if there was anyone who knew how hard teachers work, it was me.
Then, I had my first impassioned debate on whether a particular procedure should be done "silently" or "quietly" and my long held belief that I got it came crashing down. I may have picked up on the amount of time put in to teaching, but I never really picked up on the amount of thought put in. I may have witnessed the long hours teachers at my high school spent on everything, but I completely missed the intention they put into every single detail about their classes. It turns out that I knew how long teachers work; I didn't have a clue how hard they work.
Now, here I sit, agonizing over the procedure for entering my classroom, and all I feel is the overwhelming desire to say "thank you."
To my teachers, at every level, thank you. Thank you for all the time you spent on all the things we never noticed. Thank you for setting up the missed class station for absences and for lining up your posters so they were even and not crooked and posting the objective every day. Thank you for making us practice how to line up for lunch and for buying a special stamp to approve our papers with and for devising a bathroom pass system. Thank you for every check or warning or consequence administered and for every carefully lettered popsicle stick used to cold call us and for every binder checked for organization and completeness.
There is a quote that I keep running into here in Mississippi, something Mother Teresa is supposed to have said: "Do small things with great love." To some extent, it has become my teacher motto and I have it hanging in a frame at home. As I sat with my roommates last night and discussed procedures for taking roll, I realized that maybe these are the small things teachers are meant to do with great love. I didn't see it when I was in school, but now it's hard to miss the love that went into every thoughtfully written classroom procedure and every carefully lettered classroom poster.
So, to my teachers, I must say again "thank you". Thank you for all of the small things and, above all, thank you for all the great love.
Sincerely,
An Old Student and New Teacher
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