One Year Down

Tonight I sat on a panel of first-year teachers before a class of preservice teachers. It felt good to return to Dr. Cramer's class and to reflect aloud on (to use the cheesiest, most overused metaphor) my journey this school year. Seeing my former professor in the education building at my former university reminded me that this blog, which I started for her class, has been collecting dust since last summer. And so I decided that I should put down in writing some of the (to use a word that I continuously caution my students against) things that I didn't get to or forgot to say to my new peers in the field of teaching.

Firstly, I finished student teaching and graduated college as an anxious, neurotic, and insufferable perfectionist. I spent last summer tirelessly preparing - for hours a day - for my first teaching job. I read and reread every text that I anticipated teaching, annotating each page with a preposterous color coding system. I emailed back and forth with my theory and practice in composition professor about highfalutin theories that I believed I could apply to my writing instruction. I found and consumed podcasts and books about teaching at a ridiculous rate. And through it all, I was not reassuring myself, but somehow making myself panic more. With every early morning or late evening that I spread myself over these materials, I exponentially increased the pressure on myself to make a flawless entrance to my new profession. This anxiety was so palpable that I had entirely resigned myself to not having any sort of personal life whatsoever for the next ten months.

As it turns out, this school year coincided with an unprecedented number of significant personal events for me. This school year, I became pregnant (my first), two very close family friends died, my brother died, my grandmother died, and to top it all off, Donald flipping Trump was elected president. If somebody had told me this last summer that any ONE of these things was going to happen during my first year of teaching, I probably would have had to be committed. I would not have been able to fathom that I was going to remain responsible for over 120 students while dealing with literally anything else. The truth is, as it turns out, teaching helped me get through it all.

Relationships with classes and with students are just that: relationships. I made a point in my introduction at the beginning of the school year to tell my students that I wanted to know them and that I wanted them to know me. I knew that I wanted my students to not only learn about English but also about human empathy and compassion. I then set about the work of making this come true. I decided that we would start every class with a brief and informal chat about what's going on with everyone (including me). It did not take long at all for lighthearted storylines to flourish (Jake continuously updating us on his sugar gliders, Kelli filling us in on the latest from the bowling team, etc). Also, students eventually became comfortable sharing more intimate or difficult details about their life, and in turn, more comfortable with maturely and sensitively receiving these bits of news.

With this rapport established, it was easy for me to also feel safe and comforted by these relationships. It was a joyful day when I announced that I was pregnant. My students celebrated with me, and in turn, were very sensitive to my needs as the pregnancy progressed. It was especially hard to return to school after my brother's death, but I quickly realized that I was returning to 120 people who care about me. Working with these bright young people was and continues to be the best therapy that the doctor could have possibly ordered.

All of this is to say that teaching has taught me, among many other lessons, that I will grow and adapt in any situation. Virtually none of my summer plans actually played out in my classroom this year, but in the midst of personal successes and tragedies, I was able to plan, to grade, and to build meaningful relationships. Bring on another year.