Dear Teaching, It's Not You, It's Me. Well, Maybe It's A Little Bit You.
I knew I wanted to be a teacher sophomore
year of high school after I began my love affair with To Kill a Mockingbird. My honors teacher taught in such a way that
I found myself excited and inspired to go to class. I found meaning and purpose
in literature, and I wanted to give that back to students. I wanted them to
connect with each other and with me and to have those life-changing moments
because of Atticus Finch or Maya Angelou. In each class we would be a family,
and we would discuss and connect and share and be forever changed through the
power of reading and writing.
Fast forward nine years later, and I’ve
taught freshmen. I’ve taught sophomores. I’ve taught seniors. I’ve taught
intervention classes and I’ve taught honors classes. I’ve had a few of those
classes that will forever hold a special place in my heart where we truly did
become a family. I’ve had students who claim to hate school and everything
about it and then shyly show me their poetry notebooks with quiet pride. I have
letters from students about how I’ve made a difference in their lives, and I
have seen Atticus Finch work his magic and elicit the same reaction I had to
him all those years ago.
I’ve also had many, many days where I come
home crying. I’ve been sworn at and have had to make too many calls to CPS.
I’ve missed outings with friends and moments with my daughter because I had too
many papers to grade and I had to create three new units from scratch because I
was teaching new classes for the third year in a row. I’ve stayed awake at
night replaying the day over and over in my head wondering what I could do
differently to get that student to care. I have had my spirit crushed and I’ve
been an emotional punching bag for students who can’t process everything they
have going on in their own lives. I’ve battled phones and backtalk and apathy
and helicopter parents and parents who don’t care enough. I have spent hundreds
of dollars of my own money each school year for supplies and books that aren’t
offered in our library. My struggle isn’t new. It’s faced by many, many
teachers who are out there just trying to make a difference. As hard as it is
for me to admit this, I know my limits, and I reached them a while ago.
There are probably also those who might
say, “What did you expect? You work with teenagers!” You’re right - I went in
supremely naive and idealistic, and I would argue that’s not such a bad thing.
Who doesn’t want to help change the world and prepare for the best!?! I have felt
like the ultimate failure for giving up on teaching. I have tortured myself
over this decision, but ultimately, everyone has to find their place in the
world and this just isn’t mine.
What breaks my heart is that this is what I saw
for myself from the time I was fifteen. If you ask me what I stand for and what
causes resonate with me the most, education will always be top of the list. I
believe a good education is one of the fundamental rights every person deserves
and one of the keys to solving the world’s problems. I also believe that our
education system is deeply, deeply flawed and the greatest minds haven’t
figured out how to fix it. We are in a system that is underfunded and
undervalued. We are in a system that puts so much emphasis on test scores and
grades and on-time graduation rates that there is not enough focus on really,
really learning or making education meaningful to many of our students.
Unfortunately, too many of our students see education as a series of
meaningless and monotonous hoops they must jump through before they can move on
in life.
The other day, I told my students, my
honors class no less, that we were going to read a piece of writing simply
because it was beautiful and powerful. Immediately a hand shot up asking what
the assignment was going to be and how many points it was worth. I reiterated
that we were reading this just to open our minds and hear a new point of view
and there would be no assignment. The student replied, “So we don’t really have
to do it?” Try as I might, the joy of learning and curiosity has been beaten
out of them and it becomes all about the almighty grade.
There are days when I feel I can combat
student apathy and win them over with enthusiasm, but there are too many days
where I feel like I’m being set up to fail. An average class has around 30 kids
in the room. There are kids on IEPs and kids who don’t speak English as a first
language. There are students who are homeless and the fact that they have shown
up to school at all is a miracle in itself. There are students who are
cripplingly shy and students who are reading well below their grade level and
students with severe ADHD who are bouncing all over the place. There are some
students who just don’t feel like shutting up. Ever. And then there’s the kid
who asked to go to the bathroom and hasn’t come back for 15 minutes. And it’s
my job to help them all become better readers and writers in 52 minutes a day.
It’s my job to provide a nurturing environment, differentiate the lesson so
that it reaches and engages all kids, and provide enough instruction and
individual feedback to help them excel, all the while managing the classroom
and ensuring that everyone is on task and not disrupting others. On top of
that, can I also please foster their creativity and critical thinking skills
while preparing them for one of the 8 million standardized tests they have to
take during high school?
To anyone outside of education who thinks
this sounds easy or like teachers are raging about nothing, I invite you to try
it for a year. Scratch that - try it for a month and then let’s sit down and
talk about it over a beer. Make that a big beer, because you’re going to need
it. And for any educator who thinks this is a piece of cake, I worship you. And
loathe you a little bit.
The kids really are the best part of my
job. They can also be the most trying. There are very few students I’ve had
where I couldn’t find something to love. However, when you lump 30 of them
together in one room, it can be a different ball game. The need to show off in
front of peers takes over. The swagger, the pea-cocking, and their inner
comedians come out swinging. Someone gives someone else a dirty look from
across the room and all hell breaks loose. The occupational hazard of working
with teenagers is they often take their personal problems out on you. And you
know what? I can’t always blame them. I’d have a hard time functioning if my
boyfriend just dumped me and someone was insisting that I solve algebraic
equations. If I’m in the middle of a great conversation with a friend, I might
not be receptive to stopping mid-sentence so I could hash out the meaning of
Edgar Allen Poe. And sometimes these kids have more shit going on in their
personal lives than anyone at any age ever should and sometimes they have
hormones and teen angst that they just don’t know how to process. And
sometimes, kids are just asshats. Whatever the reason, the eye rolls and the
comments under the breath and the comments they don’t always bother to hide under
their breath take their toll.
In spite of all the challenges and the
obstacles and the broken system, I truly believe that teachers have one of the
most important jobs there is. I just can’t do it anymore. As much as I have
wrestled with this decision, it’s not just about me now. When the school bell
rings at the end of the day, I’m torn between wanting to take a nap, scream
into a pillow, or stress eat my way through an entire bag of Doritos. Instead,
I answer parent e-mails and submit attendance I forgot to take during 5th
period and decide which batch of papers I’m going to take with me to grade.
Then I go home to my second job of being a mom, but I’m kind of sucking at my
second job.
By the time I get home to my daughter, I have
nothing left. I’m bringing home all my frustrations and everything I’ve
internalized all day. My toddler decides she knows how to put her shoes on by
herself, and I find myself snapping and rushing her along because I’ve
exhausted all my patience. I park her in front of an episode of Curious George so I can grade a handful
of essays, and I am counting down the hours until bedtime so I can get a couple
of minutes to just be. And that’s not how I want to show up for my daughter.
That’s not the mom I want to be, and that’s not the person I want to be.
I know I can’t blame it all on teaching.
There are many teachers who balance lives with their families and handle it
just fine, but it turns out I’m not one of them. I have come to realize that
leaving doesn’t mean I can’t hack it or that I don’t care about kids, but it
means that teaching has come at a cost and the cost is just more than I can
afford to give. So here I am, doing my best to make sense of this decision, and
remind myself why I have decided to leave. Because I know myself, and come June
I will see the world through graduation-colored goggles, and I will hug
students and rewrite the history of the year in my mind, and tell myself it was
all worth it. And it will feel worth it. But come October, after the novelty of
the new school year has worn off, I will cry in too many stairwells and lose
faith in myself and the system all over again.
To all the teachers out there fighting the
good fight, you are important and you are admirable. What you do on a daily
basis is nothing less than amazing. But for me it’s time to move on and find a
new way to make a difference. What is that, exactly? Good question; I’ll have
to get back to you on that one. I’ve got a lot of soul searching to do.
Whatever it is, it’s one that will be helping people and hopefully giving me a
little more work/life balance. The keyword there is hopefully, but I remain
optimistic and probably the tiniest bit naive.