There Be Rough Waters Ahead

I have been at Hillcrest Middle for only three teacher workdays and I already feel like the end of a long year. And the students haven’t even arrived yet! I would liken this week to an induction teacher “boot camp” of sorts, where you truly find out if you’ve got what it takes to survive long-term in the break-neck environment of teaching or if you start sizing up the years until you want out. But for the first time, you are really “in the know” about everything; other than the administrators, no one else knows the school system as well as you.

There is a definite feeling of ascension to a lofty and privileged position, while at the same time the faintest of longings for the simpler life when all that I had to worry about was getting up in the morning for class. But now the class does not start without me. The students can not begin to learn without me present. So much more piles up on my plate, and my responsibilities have multiplied a hundred-fold. Welcome to the wonderful world of teaching, David. Hope you’ve got a barf bag because the safety harness just flew off.

I find that my brain can only take so much information in one sitting. In just three days, I have already learned more about lesson-planning, curriculum instruction, ELA standards, substitutes, scheduling, attendance records, disciplinary measures, parent communication, staff communication, safety procedures, professional demeanor, and how many items to keep on a floater’s cart than I probably ever wanted to know (let alone received in any of my college courses). I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t more than a little staggering initially. Eventually the multi-layered sponge that is my brain reaches its limit. It takes in so much information that the rest kind of trickles off to the side. That’s normally when it’s time to go home, eat a hefty dinner, go to sleep, and wake up in the wee morning hours to do it all over again (and hopefully do it better than the previous day).

I keep reminding myself that it’s only been three days (and they technically don’t count without the students) and I shouldn’t make any pre-conceived judgment calls about how I will perform based on just 24 total hours in the building. This week (and the one or two weeks immediately after) is about survival, learning what I can, and preparing myself to the best of my ability. I will not even meet some of my students and their parents until tomorrow afternoon (this Friday is Open House), so how can I sell myself short when the only people in the building are me and 70+ other adults (not counting administrators and support staff) that are just as weary as me?

I don’t yet know how I will get along with my students, but I’ll soon find that out. Even so, this is the one week in which I have to force myself to ignore my imagination because it’s all too busy conjuring up the worst possible scenarios that I could find myself in. And one thing I’ve learned is that real life is never as crushing or scary as I imagine it to be, but if I allow my imaginations to rule me rather than take a brace and just do the job as best I can, then likely I’ll turn out exactly as I fear I will. It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy (or self-defeating depending on how you interpret it).

Educating Esme features a young woman whom I had the pleasure of getting to know in my Education-11 class in freshman year. Truly, it was Providence that I got to read about her in the first place because I had another English class scheduled for that semester, but on the second day, I ended up changing classes and switching over to Education.

But I’m rambling - Esme Raji Codell is one of my inspirations for teaching (even though her primary goal was to be a librarian – but at least she was upfront about it from the start). Her methods were unconventional, for her time and ours, but her main goal was to love her students. Granted, she could be a “dragon lady” when they pushed her far enough, but that’s how they learned to follow her rules and not take her lightly. But even she had her tough days. There were still days that her methods didn’t work out, or she had materials stolen right out from under her, or she was questioned heatedly by parents, or she lost her temper in front of her kids and needed to ask their forgiveness. Heck, she faced situations that most teachers today would consider a thing of the past – bullet-riddled classrooms, a principal and assistant principal that disparaged her for her success. Esme helped to show me that the best teachers are not the perfect ones; there is no such standard in existence. The best teachers are models of consistency. They are the ones who keep getting out of bed every morning to go to work on the heels of rotten days past. They are the ones who continually enforce their classroom management plan, dishing out consequences every time a misbehavior occurs, until the students learn to respect it. They learn to roll with the punches, to forgive themselves at the end of each day and take heart in the fact that the following day is fresh and new, with no mistakes in it yet. They savor the little victories and learn from the defeats (which is why they’re some of the smartest people around).

Of course I’m nervous. I have my moments in which I feel inadequate, not up to the task. Any normal human being in my position, even with all the preparation that Furman, early experience, and student teaching combined gave me, would probably feel the same way. But all I can do is take those moments as they come, deal with them, and then get back in and do my job. I must remind myself that I hold the fates of 106 seventh and eighth grade children in the palm of my hand, and that they will suffer if I surrender to my imagination (not to mention they’ll have free reign of the classroom). I have to remember that it’s all right to make a dozen little mistakes over the course of a single day (and a few biggies as well).

My students don’t expect me to be perfect, and neither do my mentors, my buddy teachers, my supervisor, the Greenville County School District, or grad school professors. I will consider myself a success when I make it past the first day, and the day after that, then the first week, the first two weeks, the month of September, and so on and so forth. It’s much easier to set myself up for success by giving myself some sort of foundation to start from rather than keep tearing it down by worrying about every little thing that goes wrong. It feels better if, by day’s end, I can say something like, “hey, this lesson worked pretty well today. The students were reasonably engaged; I didn’t have many disciplinary issues to work out. I’ll stick a feather in this and see if I can’t use it for future lessons…” Or something like, “well, I feel like today was a total wash, but I never know, it’s not like all the students felt that way. It’s their classroom, too; maybe they got something out of it that I didn’t see…” It’s finding those little slivers of joy that will keep me coming back.

All I know is, I’m strapped in for the ride of my life. I’m jumping head first into the deep ocean of teaching when part of me wishes I was back safe in the shallow end. But I can’t back-paddle in this profession. It’s all upwind from here. And I’m hopeful the baby steps that I’m starting out with will eventually turn into long, confident strokes that I’ll be able to muster without a second thought. Maybe when I actually do arrive at the end of a long year, I’ll feel thoroughly exhausted but already anticipating the next ride.