With September looming ahead, I feel like this quote needs to be printed out and put in my classroom as a reminder. Last year, while drowning in the negativity that was clouding my vision like unwrapping cotton balls, I honestly tried to focus on reality for a minute and breathe, thinking, hey remember that Maya quote...I'm doing something right, right? That fleeting thought in my frazzled mind was too slippery to catch hold to. Maybe I need to have it tattooed on me somewhere...
Tonight, it came up again. My bff and I were having one of our late night convos (hey, 2 kids each be damned! we still stay up to talk. we may regret it in the morning, but whatever)and she said "I don't want to go all Maya Angelou on you" which made me chuckle "but remember, when you're in a situation like that, they are not really listening or remembering your words, what you said. They will remember how they felt. Did you make him feel safe? Did you connect with him? Then you didn't break him." (I know you are all bursting with anticipation of what this secret event was, but I'm not tellin ya!). That really resonated with me, as most of what she says does, but it pulled me from my awkward social situation that I was bitching about and into my school life and philosophy. Synchronicity!
My very first year as a classroom teacher was just absurd. To have let me go in and teach 5 and 6 year olds how to read and do math just because I was dual certified and technically a teacher- ha! I'll let you in on a secret: teachers don't learn SHIT while getting certified. Everything they do learn- policy, lesson planning, creating units- changes by the time they do their time in University, or is done in a completely different way in their particular school. (Or it could be that during my first Master's, I was tutoring a girl for the GED so it could be possible that it was just me not learning anything.)You learn at the job, you learn by doing.
I got into that classroom of 25 babies having no idea what to do with them. I asked a kid to read page 3; he said "I can't read." Well, I didn't know that! But you know what I did know? I loved those little guys. I still remember that class. I didn't cry on my first day, or my first week, not even my first year! Those kids got a first year teacher who was figuring out how to teach them via outdated text books and old teacher manuals, but who cared deeply about each and everyone of them. I made a lot of mistakes (like not knowing how to do bundles of 5 tally marks correctly IN FRONT OF AN ADMINISTRATOR), and while I had no hold overs, I definitely didn't prepare the low readers to go forth with a set of skills and strategies to fall back on, and they were eventually left back in the future. Looking back, at 1:20am on a summer night, I'm laughing because what the fuck could I possibly have taught them?? We had no curriculum really, no one checked up on you (very different from now where it is all planned out to the amount of time a child can pee). I would say those poor damn kids.
I won't though. Because I know I made a difference in their lives. I knew their worries, and their anxieties, and I respected them. I spoke to the parents about their own concerns. One little boy was undiagnosed Aspergers, and with my help, he got the attention he needed to be successful in the classroom. His mother cried, and told me I changed his life. I saw her in June, as her son was walking home from middle school. She said it to me again. I am a teacher, and I was meant to be a teacher, because I have the needed empathy to truly care about them as people. The students feel that, even the older, surly ones. I treat them with respect, I talk to them, I listen to how they feel.
I am lucky to have this gift of connecting with people, because I'm not perfect. I make mistakes, can be socially awkward, get hyperactive and pushy and controlling. But I have total confidence in how I let people know how much they mean to me. And that makes all the difference.
I mentioned this in a different post- I believe it was my "breakthrough" one- that while I might not have done a bang up job last year, at least I was respectful and empathetic to my colleagues. And that's how they will remember me. Not as the idiot who suggested a wacky schedule for ELA, but the advocate for more time updating data, the one who gave positive praise while in the room, the one who took teacher ideas to administration to show that we were all a team. And for that, I'm grateful.
I did my best at what I do best. And at that, I didn't fail.
