To Teach or Not to Teach

 This was not my best year teaching.  My heart was not in the job a lot of the year.  I was present and accounted for and did all the things I am supposed to do all while not enjoying much of it.  When I admitted and apologized to most of my classes towards the end of the year that I wasn't at my best,  I was surprised that they didn't readily agree with me. I said I was a B, B- teacher at best and one Senior responded that he would hate to see me on my A game.  

In January, I actually applied for another job outside of education because I felt like I just couldn't do this anymore. Coaching plus teaching is exhausting and I constantly felt as though I was running in butter and getting nowhere.   And the hours!  Soccer games mean the day starts at 8:30am and ends somewhere about 10pm.  Y'all. I am old and this is hard on the body.  I also spent much of September to January in this weird malaise where I just didn't feel like me.  Symptom of COVID or menopause or this career or all of these things?  Add to it both kids living away from home for the first time and moving.  It was a lot and it showed up where I work because I am human.

This meant that I really phoned in some lessons.  It meant that I couldn't keep my disdain for Steinbeck from leaking through as we read Steinbeck and made me avow to never read Steinbeck as a class again.  I didn't write comments on a lot of work that was turned in. Just checked and graded and entered and compiled.  I didn't always reach out to the kids I could see who were hurting because I had no emotional bandwidth to give them.  (I am not sure if I am allowed to admit this?). It meant that my coaching was sloppy.  It meant that I was half-heartedly going through all the motions and thinking it would be better and I would be better somewhere else.  And the pay would certainly be better.

I am not sure if it happened all at once like the Grinch and his growing heart or was more like a slow thaw, but somewhere in late February, I started to no longer hate my job.  I was still tired and annoyed with many things, but I didn't hate being here.  Even for ten hours a day.  There was joy and I was seeing it.  It was winning a hard soccer game and doing a stupid TikTok dance because I promised I would if we won.  It was watching the quiet kid laugh at something I said and then write with all of his heart.  It was listening to two baseball boys call each other terrible things while arguing over how to analyze poetry.  (This actually might be one of my favorite teaching moments ever.)  It was writing all of my seniors a note on their last day and watching them become quiet and thoughtful as they read them.  There is happiness most days and I was finally seeing it.  And even better, I could feel it.

I think teaching is a career where I will periodically wonder if I should teach or not teach.  If I am doing the right thing for me, for my future, or hahahaha, retirement.  There are a few things I know for sure though: anything with an acronym will serve to make my life a mess for one year and then be replaced with another acronym, I will always be exhausted, I could get a 20% pay raise and still be underpaid, and that I am total sucker for nice words written on the back of an exam or assignment.  And maybe I am a total sucker in general for not jumping out of education and into something more lucrative or less taxing on the soul. But then I would miss that quiet kid in the corner, or the way that the air is electric in a huddle before a game, or the next section of Women, Words, and Wisdom, and well, I am just not ready to give that up.

And, I do get to see some amazing sunsets.

It's the End of the Year....

In an all-time teaching low, I started off third period by saying “Everyone stop and stare at the pimple on my forehead.  Yes, it is a pimple.  Yes, you can get pimples when you are old.”  And they did.  They stopped and stared and the table that instigated it laughed until they died and I am sure my pimple-rage is on Snapchat and all I could think is that this school year needs to end now. 

This has been a very hard year.  In addition to the normal working with teenagers: break ups, bad home lives, hunger, cheating, apathy and anxiety, we had some really big stuff happen this year.  Let’s list it:

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●     Two suicide attempts, on campus

●     A racial incident off campus, but widely talked about on campus

●     A student was paralyzed in a drive-by shooting

●     Another student died from a drug overdose

●     One student was arrested after I reported him under the influence

●     One student came to me from jail and is now back on his way to jail because he just couldn’t acclimate.

●     A coworker resigned suddenly.

Exhausting stuff at work and some exhausting stuff at home too.  Bill has had two terrible melanomas removed and just recently underwent radiation for metastatic tumors in his chest.  I am incredibly relieved and grateful to say that the radiation worked and the tumors are gone, but cancer is some scary stuff.  We didn’t tell a lot of people because we wanted to wait and see what we were dealing with.  We also didn’t tell a lot of people because when you have cancer, you still have to do life and maybe you are going on about your life and for three minutes forget you have cancer and then someone will remind you by saying “Hey, how’s your cancer?”.

Based on all of the above, I think that I encased my heart in a petrified sort of shell and have been trudging through the past few months.  I found I was impatient with my kids at school and my kids at home.  I enjoyed teaching, but not as much.  I laughed, but not as loud.  I worried about everything until I got to where I worried about nothing.  This is not the best way to do life and I was worried I was never going to shake the fugue.

However, today I went to a cording ceremony for AVID students and I felt a shift start to take place. I am not going to say that my Grinch-like heart grew three sizes because in reality, I have a ridiculously big heart; it is just tired from caring so damn much about people.  What I will say, is that petrified shell I encased my heart in definitely began to crack and fissure.  AVID is a class for kids who will be first-generation college attendees.  They might even be first-generation high school graduates.  They work hard, they go through four years of high school together in their AVID class and they make up a little AVID family.  I watched kids I have in my class or have had in class walk across to get the cords they will wear to graduation next week and I smiled.  I watched the parents I didn’t know hoot and holler and I felt their excitement.  I could feel the pride in my chest for them. Then one speaker talked about his mom, how as an immigrant she worked terrible jobs so that he and his siblings could do better and that was beautiful.  But when he, sniff, asked her to, sniff, stand, sniff, and he applauded her?  TEARS!  Wet tears from my eyes!  I can emote!  I can feel!  I am ALIVE!!!!!!

I tell you all of these things because I have to believe that other people out there are overwhelmed with the world at large and their smaller worlds at home.  School shootings, collusion, volcanoes, tariffs, tornadoes, hateful this, hateful that.  And that maybe you have locked your heart up tightly too.  You will get no lecture from me.  What I do hope though, is that like me, you will be surprised with some sort of good in your world.. Some joy.  Some pride or beauty or pure emotion that catches your eye, your ear, your heart.  Let it in. It feels so good to be reminded that there is good in the world.  It makes you want to shake off that crispy crust around your heart and get back into doing the things you do well: caring about kids, encouraging friends, loving your people.     

I sometimes struggle wondering what it is I am doing with this life, but as I watched those kids yesterday, I knew that along the way various teachers had truly impacted those kids and helped them along in their lives.  I really hope that I am doing some of that too and that I can continue to break down that crunchy casing surrounding my heart. There is only about one week of school to go and I now feel confident that I can get to the end of it with a little bit of grace.  And,  at the very least, I know that third period will never doubt that adults can get pimples too.