We Hold These Truths

I seriously had the outline for my “HOLY SHIT THERE IS A WOMAN IN THE OVAL OFFICE!!” blog formed in my head.  I watched the posts from the secret Facebook group and I liked, I loved, I sniffled at the beauty this country holds.  I looked at the pictures of long lines waiting to bestow homage at the grave of Susan B. Anthony and I openly cried.  I never, not once, thought that I would wake up to this world today.

But I have indeed woken up in this world.  I sat in disbelief, drinking coffee in the dark and crying, “The World Turned Upside Down” playing in my head.  How is this possible?  How can this be?  What even is this?

I dressed for work like I was dressing for a funeral.  I made lunches and put extra sweets in them because we need them today.  And when my daughter came down and asked who won, I broke her heart.  She burst into immediate, angry tears and asked “What the fuck?” with the same anger and disillusionment I had only recently tamped down in myself.  WTF indeed.

The ride to school was dark due to the rain and due to our thoughts and our hearts.  I told her that there are checks and balances; we elected a President, not a dictator.  I told her to watch the election for the House in two years; watch what rhetoric and mishandling would bring.  I told her it is okay to be angry, to be sad, and to feel adrift.  And then I watched kids shuffle into my first period class and I knew a good majority of them felt the same way she did.  How do you teach to this?  How do you say “yes, this sucks but let’s pick up where we left off on Chapter 3?”  What even is this?

So we journaled.  They wrote fast and furiously and the room was quiet.  And then some shared what they had written, and these kids are scared.  My black, brown, LGBTQ kids are scared and I get it.  I am forty-three years old and I am scared.  And they are angry.  When a Trump supporter shared his views, another kid walked up to him and I felt we were seconds away from a fist fight.  What I realized was that this tension is not just in my classroom; it is all of America.  America is scared and angry and volatile.  What do we do with that?

We react.  We walk between two arguing people and tell them they are both worth listening to.  We redirect and we listen.  We share.  We tell other kids the same things we tell our own kids.  We label what they are feeling as disillusionment, disenchantment and just plain old anger.  And we tell them that it is okay.  We ask the winners to be gracious, to feel good for themselves about the outcome but to remember their glee might be affronting to others.  We put our hand on someone else’s hand that is clenched and say “I know.  I understand.”  We recognize the good and bad that is America and we say we don’t always win.   Good doesn’t always win.  You don’t always get a goddamn medal or ribbon or certificate. Sometimes you get an empty hand and an angry heart. 

I asked some young men in my class if they thought the reason HRC didn’t win was simply because she was a woman and they all said yes.  I was so enamored with a woman being on the ballot I forgot there were people in this world, this country, this America, who think there shouldn’t be.  I saw the respect given to the women who fought our fights and won our wars and forgot those who stood, and stand, in their way.  I was reticent in thinking that all the work has been done, but I remember now how much more there is.

Thank you.

I am no shape to get that work done today or this week or maybe even this month.  I am going to mourn what was lost, what was not and what actually is.  And while I am doing that, I am going to remember that while we didn’t do it this time, we can do it.  And I am going to stand with her – whoever the her will be because I need to support women in this world and they need to support me.  I will listen to people who want to talk about how we make change, especially kids because they are going to be the ones with enough energy and enthusiasm to make these final changes.  Above all, I will remind myself, my kids, and my kids at school to be kind to one another, to respect one another and maybe that is where we can start making a real change.

Teaching is.....

In 1981, at the tender age of eight, I purchased my very first album.  I remember the cost being about $9, so I know I would have had to save allowances for weeks to accumulate that princely sum.  The album?  Smurfing Sing Song.  Ten songs sung in Smurf voices filled the need for a smurfing good time while anxiously awaiting Saturday morning and a new Smurf cartoon.  Along with such cult classics as “You’re a Pink Toothbrush, I’m a Blue Toothbrush”, this album contained a song that I have just now realized is acting as the anthem to my teaching career.  I am not sure the name of the song, but the lyrics went something like this “I’m spinning around, I am up and I am down.  I’m taking a ride on this merry-go-round”.  Come to think of it, the title may have been “Merry-Go-Round” or maybe "Smurfy-Go-Round".

Funny blue creatures or harbingers of insanity?

People have asked me “How’s teaching?” or “Is teaching all that you thought it would be?” and I find that I don’t really have a standard answer.  I find myself answering “Great!” or “All of it and so much more!” because I don’t think I should answer “Soul sucking”.  That sounds defeated and I am not defeated, but I am definitely confused.

Teaching is a teeter-totter of insanity on its very best day.  If my lesson plans rock and kids are engaged, then my grading is behind and it’s a weekend of bending over papers at the kitchen table.  If I am up on my personal and professional development, I am very behind on being open and available to kids who need more help.  If I am stellar at school, I feel like I am sliding downhill at home.  I love the kids, but they drive me crazy.  I laugh reading their journals and want to cry because they make me so frustrated.  I had a kid I taught for six weeks last year tell my daughter that I was his favorite teacher ever and the very same day, someone put a nasty, stepped-on, exploded cheese stick on my desk with a note that read “With Love.”  What is this life??

My days aren’t only going up and down, they are being spun in a circle way too fast.  Any time I feel like I am getting my footing, something will start spinning the whole thing around from the outside.  Solid week of lessons planned out?  Oh, here’s an email saying you are now signed up for mandatory, professional development so scrap those and make sub lessons instead.  Connected with a class that was resistant?  SPINNNNNNNNNN, observation taking place in your worst behaved class later on today.  Acronyms, important and unimportant things relegated to acronyms, are going to be the death of me.  They spin and spin and spin with no foreseeable end.  I no longer have my hands up in the air saying “Wheeeee!” because one is over my nauseated mouth and the other is against my pounding head.

Somedays I drive home and think “What the hell was this day?”  I have left feeling not only ineffective as a teacher, but as a human as well.  But I have also watched that lightbulb come on over a student’s head who was struggling with an idea and that is beautiful.  I have lectured where every pair of eyes was on me and not only did they listen, they got it, and for twenty minutes I feel invincible.  I have gone into classes completely prepared and watch the lessons I so carefully crafted crash and burn and I have also gone in winging it and watched them soar.  Again, I wonder, what is this life????

I guess after a few years of this that perhaps the highs won’t be so high and the lows won’t be so very low and while things won’t ever be centered, they might not be so jarring.  Until then, I am going to find shelter in the presence of my coworkers; these beautifully creative and cynical people who just get it.  They know.  They share their own stories to make me feel better or their lesson plans when I am adrift.  They keep me laughing, they tell me it is okay to cry and assure me I am not going insane.  I will take the nice words of students and use them to build a wall of defense around my heart to shield it from the mean kids who try to pierce it.  I’ll listen to the wise words of my husband who reminds me that I am not ineffective as a human and who remembers how hard I worked to get here.  Maybe I will repurchase the Smurfing Sing Song and see what other gems those wise blue creatures have to share with me.  And the next time someone asks me how teaching is, I will smile and assure them it is so much more than I ever smurfing thought it would be.