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."

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.

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 of education 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?

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.

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.

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.

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.