Vindication

While I've been a slacker in terms of posting over the last two weeks, what you are looking at above is one of the reasons I've been missing in action. My 9th graders have been the victim of a persuasive unit geared towards the oh-so-relevant topic of cuts in our state's education budget. I tortured them with articles from newspapers, and I even forced them to learn about their state senator. Then I had the gall to assign them one final writing assignment: writing their state senator, persuading him not to cut our education budget. Oh, did I mention they actually had to bring in a business-sized envelope and a stamp? 


Okay, not all of my 9th graders felt hostage to this situation. Some of them actually found this empowering, or, at the very least, somewhat interesting, but a handful literally became hostile at the mention of bringing a stamp. Yes, a stamp. Writing the letter didn't set them off, nor the business-sized envelope, but the stamp did. When I turned the outrage back on them, and asked them how would these letters get mailed without a stamp, they proposed I get the stamps. Me?! I literally screamed back, "I'm not your mother! Get it yourself! You will be paying bills in four years, and you will need a stamp. Figure it out yourself!"

I don't know if it's because next week is the end of the term and they are just as spent as I am, and just as done with me as I am with them, but there were some pretty heated moments in the past two weeks. Moments where I stopped teaching and sat at my desk to sip coffee and grade papers, moments where I ran out of referral slips because I sent enough students to the office, and moments where I lost my cool and screamed, "If you don't give a shit about this, than neither do I!" During these moments, I don't recognize myself as a teacher, and I feel like some alien has invaded my body. I feel like someone else is running the show, not me--the real me.

But, when the kids turned in their letters, they had their stamps and envelopes. I had a few students read their letters out loud, and I was moved in a way that I've not felt in the classroom in quite awhile. I'd met with all of them while they worked on their letters, and I knew what they were writing about, but to hear their own voices behind their profound words was poignant. In that moment, I knew that I, or this assignment, had broken through to several of them, and even if it didn't, they at least had a letter, an envelope, and a stamp. Driving home last night, I was exhausted, yet there's this other feeling peering beyond. Something like vindication.

I teach in an environment where I feel crazy all day until I talk to someone--a colleague or a loved one--and know that I'm not. The thinking (of some of the kids and some of the people running the place) is so contrary to what I know and believe. I'm unable to articulate it yet, but those letters, those stamps and those envelopes were like a winning point. Finally, a winning point.

The End of Innocence

While it seems like a lifetime ago, I remember what it was like to be a young, idealistic teacher.

Eight years ago, when I first entered the classroom as a TA, I was so passionate and determined. Determined and passionate, that is, to be right--that I really could make a difference. The more people disagreed with me, the more fuel I had to my fire. I marched into the principal's office one day--I was maybe 24 at the time--and demanded the new playground our school was building be handicapped accessible. One of my students could not access the current playground because she was in a wheelchair. I was respectful but blunt during my slide show (yes, pictures and all). While one of my bosses reprimanded me, I told her it was my job to speak up for my kids. Because I did, my student got exactly what she needed and was able to play on that playground. I loved my job, and I knew I made a difference. I felt it.

By the time I had my own classroom, I was even more determined and more convinced of my voice as a teacher. I was empowered. And I loved my kids. I mean, I really loved them. Perhaps to the point where it went a little overboard, because they were always on my mind. I talked to people about my kids constantly. It happened so naturally, because I saw them and I saw lessons in the people and places I experienced. We did the most amazing things--wrote letters to Congress, held presentations for the entire school, raised money for Darfur orphans, met Elie Wiesel and other Holocaust survivors, raised money for field trips, appeared in a documentary, held a mock presidential election . . . . And while it was so much work, and not always easy, we had so much fun. Then, quite the unexpected happened--my kids became my teachers and made a difference in my life.

And here I am now, years, lifetimes later, and sometimes I don't know how I got to where I am in my mind. Would you ever know I was that person I describe above? I miss that person; I don't know how to get her back. I'm angry, bitter, sad, hopeless, apathetic--all the qualities in teachers I at one time despised. They were those teachers, and now I am one of them.

I could go on and on in this blog about the pigeons in my ceiling, or their droppings running down my wall, or the lack of paper, books, toner, or whatever items we don't have at the moment. And while it's about those things, it's not about those things. What it's about, if I'm being honest with myself, is something far more personal. It's about my innocence dying. I no longer believe I can make a difference, because I can't. No one can in this situation. And to be angry about no toilet paper is easier than to say, "I can't make a difference."