The events of the prior week weighed heavily on me, so I started this week in a weird, for lack of a better term, place.
Monday morning, the chair of all the ELA (English Language Arts) teachers for our charter organization delivered copies of The Bluest Eye. Not the actual books, but copies she made for me, so that put me at ease. One more thing I can cross off my worry list is always a plus. As she was leaving, she said she wanted to meet with me later in the week. We set up a date which I promptly forgot, because when I saw her in my room during my planning period the other day, I said, "Hey, that's right, we're meeting!"
We sat down and discussed the midterms the kids are taking on Friday. When I showed her the midterms I stayed up until 12:30 am writing the night before, I felt like I was standing naked before her. Perhaps that sounds like an odd comparison, but teaching is a profession where emotions and lives are on the line, and all of us, each and everyday, are vulnerable at a certain point. As she read though my questions, I heard, "These are too hard; you're asking questions you can answer, not them; this doesn't make sense; the wording is off; there are too many recall questions." I felt like maybe I don't know what I'm doing, and while I needed to hear this, I still wanted to flee the scene and hide.
"It's garbage, huh?" Self-deprecation is my coping mechanism when that nakedness, that vulnerability become too much.
"No," she responded, "it's not garbage, and I didn't drive across town to tell you that. We're going to work on this together and fix it. Writing exams is really hard and it takes practice." Suddenly she was the teacher and I the student, and I felt for my kids who were turning in essays this week and probably thinking the same thing.
By the time my ELA chair left, I had a better handle on writing exams, but my lesson plan was literally a wash. The review PowerPoint I made was no longer relevant, and my 9th graders were walking in the room. In a matter of five minutes, I created a lesson in my head--the kids would work in groups to write questions they think I should ask on the exam, and if their question gets picked, they get extra credit. As the kids worked together--and worked together well--I surprised myself. How did I do that? How did I think that up in just a few minutes? I talked to the groups about how test questions work. I told them the same thing my ELA chair told me--it's hard, but doing this will help you get better at tests.
Later that day, I found myself echoing the same message, except this time about writing. I had five kids that evening stay after to work on their essays--one until 5:45pm. For those of you who are not teachers, that's a rare thing when kids choose you over their personal time, and particularly when I've had the 9th graders for only 3 1/2 weeks. That moment took me aback, because I feel like I spend so much time yelling and talking at kids that I rarely get to connect to them and talk to them. And in that moment, there was connection and learning and intrinsic motivation and personal pride, and it was a feeling I've not felt with a group of students in a really, really long time.
And my 11th graders? Well, there's been a shift since my one student shared her history of sexual abuse. We're a tighter group--almost family-like. That feeling is also something I've not felt with students in a really, really long time. In teacher lingo, you have students or you have kids. And their yours or not. When a teacher refers to their students as "the students," that indicates distance, but when a teacher refers to them as "my kids," that indicates a personal investment--their yours. My 11th graders are my kids. And the crazy thing is that what has allowed me to let my guard down and be vulnerable and have kids and not students is a student. When my student put herself out there like that, I realized I had to be the adult and do the same thing. I have to let go of all of my fears about losing my job again, I have to stop being angry about the schedule change and the toner, and I have to remember that I do know what I'm doing and I am a teacher. Something I did allowed her to be vulnerable, something I did encouraged five kids to stay after school, something I did gave way to kids writing exam questions.
I could go make coffee again and not take work home and not be ultra stressed, or I could stay in education and make a difference in the lives of young people. Next week I may have a different answer, but this week I am a teacher.
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