I'm giving myself fifteen minutes here while I finish my coffee. I've been intending to write here all month, but intentions never make writing happen. Maybe it's okay not to pound out a long, thoughtful entry on a Friday or Saturday night sometimes. Today, I'm just pounding out a few thoughts before we head out into our glorious three-day weekend.
Another semester is in the books. Yesterday morning my boss asked me about my high point for the year so far, and words tumbled out of my mouth: professionally, the workshop I attended in Portland with our DP coordinator was fantastic; it left me energized, excited, ready to try different things in my classroom, and hoping we can get these presenters at our school. As far as my own classes go, well, even during rough years it's not difficult for me to recall highs, because working with teenagers is exhilarating. I have a lot of highs. To be fair, I also have a lot of lows. I am a teacher who invests emotionally in her job, perhaps too much at times. I take things more personally than I strictly should. And perhaps unsurprisingly, sometimes--often?--the same classes and the same kids elicit my strongest highs and my lowest lows. So I talked about that class, and my boss laughed, remembering how two weeks ago I stormed into her office and demanded that she fire me. In that moment, I wasn't even sure I didn't mean it. She said no, though. And later that evening I received an e-mail from one of my kids in that class that basically said, "It's not you, it's us, and I'm so sorry! I'm going to try harder!" And for the next two days, kids kept finding me outside of class--some to give me a hug, some to slip me little notes. In the moment I could barely even appreciate it. I mean, I did, because I don't hate these kids. They're not bad to me; they seem to feel bad for me. I guess that's the frustrating part, that they've been stuck firmly in this place of "We suck and we can't do anything about it, but we're sorry about it." Where are we supposed to go from there?
I wound up giving a defeated "I can't cheerlead anymore" speech. Because I really couldn't. I didn't know what to do, honestly, and not having a clue about what to do is a scary thing to feel when I'm not new at this job. However, I never want to be someone who feels like she's been teaching too long to learn from her students, or to listen to suggestions, to try new ideas. I think it's a dangerous place for a teacher to be--to feel like he or she is so experienced that if things just aren't working then it's the kids, obviously it's the kids, and what else is there to do except survive until the end of the year, or until the next fall when we hope to get a "better" class?
So I was back to cheerleading, because dammit, that is part of the job, too, and I'm still me, stupidly and furiously optimistic. I can't do it all the time, and I felt it was okay to be honest with the kids about how frustrated I was, but what I told my boss was that in the desperate one-on-one conversations I was trying to have with my kids, I think (I hope) they get that I care about them, and also that they don't need to be so worried about disappointing me because their identities and their value to me, yes, their teacher, actually has nothing to do with how well they can write a commentary. Anyway, something worked, for a few days. I tried something different for the last week of the semester, made a few tweaks to something I was trying to get the kids to do, and made it feel, I think, a little safer. Because ultimately I think these kids just don't trust themselves yet, but they might be just starting to trust me, because more kids tried the thing I've been trying to get them to do than I've experienced all year to this point. Maybe it's just the last-minute end-of-semester desperation. Some of their attempts were awkward, and some of them have a long way to go before they're where we think they "should" be by now, but I kind of don't care about that. I care that they did it. I care about showing up. That was my high, for sure, even though most of my lows for the year have been firmly rooted in the same place.
And then because teaching is ridiculous, my low for the week came from a class I expected to be amazing. They were not amazing. However, I could see them see that they were not actually amazing either, could see the disappointment written across their own faces. So we didn't end the semester all that well, but a new one starts on Monday, and we'll carry on. I also have two classes in which everything seems to work all the time, and I'm grateful for that, too. It is a huge joy to be able to push a class, to take some teaching risks with them or to give them something I think is a bit more than they can handle, and to watch them make it work. It's exciting! It's everything that I dreamed teaching would be when I was eighteen years old and thinking I might want to teaching English! So I love those classes, and sometimes I wish I could only teach those classes, but also, those aren't the classes that are necessarily pushing me to be my best, either.
This is a messy, ridiculous job. This is my fifteenth year, and sometimes I still feel really clumsy and inadequate, if you want to know the truth. But I'm also stubborn, and I also happen love it. Not all the time, but enough.
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