The Definition of Professional

Last October, a woman in my department was diagnosed with breast cancer. 

And I thought I had a bad semester. 

My colleague and I aren't very close, but she's one of the more friendly people in my department, which means she and I have had multiple pseudo-intimate conversations just in passing over the four years I've spent at Herbert High.  I've always found her willing to share a laugh or a lesson plan, both of which are essential in our school.  

Since her diagnosis, she's become one of the most inspirational people I know.  She keeps a hilarious, poignant blog about her experience, shaved her head before chemo took her hair, and (most impressively) still comes to school everyday.  That's right -- this woman has Stage II cancer, and yet she's still there every day, planning lessons and grading papers and generally going about being a great teacher.  

It's hard for me to convey just how much I admire her.  I'm pretty sure that, if I'd been diagnosed with cancer, I'd be sitting at home crying and/or generally feeling sorry for myself -- coming to school would be the last thing on my mind.  

I share all this so that my next story makes sense, because if I started this post by saying that I'd decided to shave my head, the average person might think I was crazy.  I know my dad had that reaction.  

Last week, Herbert High hosted an event called "Operation B.A.L.D. -- Be A Little Daring."  This operation was to raise money to support Quinn (Note: not her real name), who in turn choose to donate the money to St. Jude Children's Research Hospital.  Over the previous weeks, the school sought out volunteers to shave their heads.  Lots of people -- about ten total, close to 10% of the staff members in my building -- volunteered.  

I was not one of them.  

I'm a young, female teacher with short hair and tattoos -- I'm hesitant to do anything that draws extra attention to my appearance during any given school day.  I refuse to wear leggings to work, instead consistently wearing business slacks or skirts and button downs.  Basically, I'm careful about appearing professional at all times, and so shaving my head was not even on my radar.  

Until a close friend decided to do it.  She thought it was a great idea for me to join her, but I was hesitant. I asked opinions all around -- my students were split 50-50 on it being either an awesome or a horrible idea.  My dad (as mentioned above) sent me a text in ALL CAPS that said "DO NOT SHAVE YOUR HEAD LET THE OTHER KNUCKLEHEADS DO IT" and little else.  My husband, loving and supportive man that he is, said "Babe, that'd be HOT."  

None of this made things any easier.  

But one thing did: of all the people in my building who had volunteered, not one was a member of Quinn and I's department.  Many other departments were represented, but Language Arts was not.  

After that, the decision was easy.  Quinn didn't have a choice -- she's bald right now, totally bare, and she didn't have a say.  Here, I was being given a choice, an opportunity to support my colleague and show her just how much I admire her strength and grace in light of her situation.  

So last Friday, I got up on that stage during lunch, and I shaved most of my head.  

 

I admit: I chickened out of shaving my whole head.  I'm just not that brave, and I can admit that.  So I left the top of my head long, bangs still hanging in my face and overshadowing the shaved sides.  I think I'm pretty lucky -- it actually looks pretty good, even after my hairdresser got a hold of it and cut basically all of my bangs off (and after I tried to even it out, a foolish decision that left me with a little bald spot on one side.  Oops!).  

The support from my building has been incredible -- not one person has had anything negative to say, including my building administrators. My students love it, and my friends and colleagues have had nothing but positive things to say.  It's cool in a way -- I've always like Herbert, but this makes me feel so much closer to my community.  

My definition of what it means to be professional has changed with my hair.  I'm realizing all of a sudden that professional is less about physical appearance than I always thought -- sure, I should keep up my business casual attire in support of my profession, but that's not the whole story.  Professional is even more about my own attitude:  If I behave like a professional, then nothing else matters.  I can set positive examples for my students even if I've shaved my head.  

This is something I've long understood in theory -- I have over a dozen tattoos, for example, and I've never felt like they make me less of a professional -- but I also don't show off my ink at school. 

There's nothing I can do to hide my shaved head.  And it doesn't make me less of a professional either.   

New Semester, New Students, New Me

The semester started a few weeks ago, and I have yet to encounter the same sinking feelings of dread that so accompanied last semester.

Instead, this semester feels fresh and new, free of the issues I faced last semester.  I'm already enjoying my students more, feeling less overwhelmed by grading and planning, and overall I'm so much more positive than I ever remember feeling in the last six months.

It's a new semester, and so much is looking up.

I feel like ME again as I walk into my classroom each morning -- the strength I always prided myself on has returned full-force, and I know that, no matter the workload, everything will get done eventually.  There's no need for me to stress out -- I have the tools available to take care of myself and my students, and everything else falls into place as it should.

I am once again ready to face the inevitable challenges of my profession, and surprisingly, I'm looking forward to it.  It's a semester of excitement: holidays off, spring break and prom, my seniors' last semester, pep assemblies, and all the fun events of the end of the school year.

I'm excited about teaching again, and I have really, truly missed that feeling.  The rest of the year is bright and ready to go.

And the snow days don't hurt, either.  :)

The end.

The weeks since Thanksgiving have been some of the worst of my life.

In the first few days after Thanksgiving, I was starting to feel better about the semester.  There were only a few weeks left, and the overwhelming nature of grading was starting to wane as we finished things up.  My seniors were getting antsy, of course, but they were also starting to be concerned about their grades, which meant they were buckling down to finish strong.  I was feeling less stress and anxiety over everything, and instead far more at ease as I looked toward Winter Break and second semester.  

Then, on Wednesday night, I got a phone call that changed everything.

I almost didn't answer -- the number was not one I recognized, and I usually don't pick those up.  But it was about 7:50pm, and I'd come from meeting my counselor about two hours before.  At that session, we'd exchanged phone numbers just in case we needed to change our schedule, and so I picked up my phone that night expecting to confirm next week and move on.

But it wasn't him.

It was my building principal, a man I trust and respect but not an administrator I'm close with -- no reason against it, he's just not the one I interact with most often and so he maintains the distance of a boss instead of a coworker.

He was calling with bad news, he said.  There had been a car accident out on a windy road near Herbert High, a single car accident where a sophomore lost control of his vehicle and hit a tree.  He wasn't wearing his seat belt, and he had been ejected.

He was killed.

I listened to my principal, and it was like everything around me stopped.  I remember saying "oh my god" at one point, remember gasping in horror and nodding frantically as if he could see me and thanking him for calling me personally.  I heard him say that he wanted to call all of this student's teachers individually, that we'd have a staff meeting early the next morning, and that an email would go through later that night so the whole faculty would know.

His voice didn't shake, though I could hear his hesitations, the underlying control he was trying to maintain.  He probably had to make that phone call 30 times that night, and all were probably like mine: all as matter of fact as possible, all trying to being strong for the people he had to tell.

I started getting text messages a few hours later as I sat on my couch, arms around my knees.  My husband sat beside me;  I'd been crying on him for what felt like hours, and had finally cried myself out for the night, so we were watching TV.

The email had gone out -- my friends had received it, and they'd checked our online gradebook for this student's schedule.  Upon finding his name in my class, they'd reached out to me.

The next morning.  I'm... not sure I can write about the next morning, even though I'm sitting here typing almost a month later.

My sophomores were already a mess.  I gave more hugs than I knew possible, I broke down in sobs more times than I could count, and more people came to me to hug me and try to console me than at any other point in my life.  All of this was before 7:45am, when the staff meeting began.






I... don't know what else to write about here.  I want to write about that day,  I want to write about the funeral itself, but I ... can't.

This was the Wednesday after Thanksgiving, the first few days of December, and I'm still trying to process it.  I don't want to forget, but it still feels surreal, even now, when it's been almost a month since that phone call.

The weekend after he died, I tried to grade a large group of sophomore essays.  They were the last big grades for the semester, and my students needed them done before finals, which started the 15th.  I stared at them for hours that weekend, trying to read them.

I couldn't.

They just... didn't matter, anymore.  How could they?  How could a 16-year-old's interpretation of a sonnet matter when one of their classmates, one of my students, was dead?

Those essays sat ungraded for a long time.





In just a few hours, 2016 will start.  In a few days, the spring semester will start.

My student won't be back at school.  I spoke with him Wednesday during class, and on Thursday he was gone.  He will always be gone.
He will miss out on snow days and the spring dance, on summer break and class rings, on choosing a college and celebrating the start of his last semester of high school, on prom and Senior Skip Day and graduation, he will miss all of it.

He will miss every major event of a person's life.  His friends will feel his absence for years, possibly forever, and his family will never be the same.

And I, his teacher, and not a teacher he was particularly close to, still cannot say aloud that my student was killed in a car crash without crying.

How can one life so affect another? 

Please note: I may come back to this and try to finish what I've left blank.  It may be another post.  While I don't know what to write now, and while I'm struggling with typos given the tears I can't keep back, writing about him helps.  It helps me remember, and it helps me grieve, and so at some point, I will continue.

In keeping with the theme of the week...

I wanted to focus on the things I am thankful for about my job.  It's been a stressful semester, and the oncoming temptation of Winter Break never makes that stress any easier.  So, in order to help me keep my mind focused on the good and not the stress, here's my list:

I am grateful...

1. to have the education I do (Master's +) that enables me to do my job well and teach my students effectively
2. to work in a school district that I genuinely like and can generally support
3. that I have colleagues that make me feel supported and part of a team
1. in going along with this, I am grateful I have colleagues that have become true friends, as that makes my daily life as a teacher so much better
4. that my classroom and school, and district, all have resources available that so many of my fellow teachers around the country do not, like SmartBoards and individual computers for student use 
1. that my school and district place a high priority on continued teacher development so I can continue to grow and learn as a teacher 
5. when students come back to visit me, such when they are home from college for Thanksgiving
6. to have a husband who is supportive of my profession, including all the time I take at home to grade and plan 

There are always more things to be grateful for, but these are some of the biggest.  

Looking Up

I've spent the last two weeks trying to get control of everything from grading to my own mental health.

I've been somewhat successful:  I'm still about 250 essays in the hole, but I'm no longer grading work from early October.  Late October, definitely, but late October wasn't THAT long ago (or so I'm telling myself).  I'm still planning for the rest of the semester, but it's getting easier as Thanksgiving break approaches.  I've rescrambled my essay schedule for the writing class I teach so I can lower my own stress and be a better teacher.

In my classroom, at least, things are looking up.

I'm making progress on my own mental health as well.  I've started a counseling program with the specific goal of addressing my anxiety and helping me manage my time better.  It wasn't truly necessary until about two weeks ago, when I realized I was more willing to stay in the house than leave it, and it wasn't just social awkwardness motivating that choice.  And then last week, one of my teacher friends asked if I'd noticed anything about the mental health of a friend of ours, and I realized that I had entirely hidden my own struggles from my friends.

That's not healthy either.

It's tough to think about anxiety as a teacher, especially when I see so many of my students dealing with it.  I know that my coping skills are so much further developed than theirs! So it's hard to admit that I'm struggling too.  But I've crossed that line, and while I haven't done much yet, I'm feeling positive about it.

It's going to take time for me to get better.  I still have a long way to go to be caught up with my grading -- an article I read recently studied overtime work in the United States and found that teachers, on average, work more overtime hours than any other profession.  This surprised exactly zero teachers I imagine, but that sense of camaraderie does help me feel better about the long hours ahead of me to get caught up.

And it's going to take time for me to recover my mental health.  There's a stigma associated with mental health issues, and despite my education in the counseling field, I'm not immune to it.  I don't like admitting that I need help; I was hesitant to make the appointment, and I still haven't told anyone other than my husband that I'm going to talk with someone.  But as my intake counselor pointed out, being able to say "hey, I can't do this myself," is a strength -- I'm willing to accept help, which is a huge moment of growth for someone as independently-minded as me.

It's going to take time, but I'm going to be okay.

A Moment of Inspiration

I was scrolling through Facebook over the weekend, desperate to avoid anything even vaguely school-related.  It was self-care, I told myself -- my distracting myself for hours on end was serving to improve my mental health.

It was bullshit, and I knew it.  Every moment I put off my grading, my work, I built up my anxiety, gave myself more to do the next time I actually sat down to work.

It was bullshit, and apparently the universe knew it too, because this was the quote that I found floating around Facebook this weekend:

I froze.

I needed a lot of people when I was younger.  I needed a more understanding mom.  I needed a braver, more vocal dad.  I needed an older brother who wasn't stoned all the time.  I needed a boyfriend who wasn't an asshole.  I needed a counselor who knew what they were doing.  I needed a religion teacher who wasn't a nun. I needed a history teacher who was open to differing ideas.  I needed a school that was more than just its Catholic roots.

I needed teachers who wanted to understand my life.

I needed someone to talk to, and I needed someone who wouldn't judge.

And now, in this semester from hell, I've neglected to be so many of those things for my students.

I can't be a mom or a dad, and I'm (thankfully) not a nun, nor am I yet (unfortunately) a counselor.  But I can be understanding, and vocal, and open to new ideas, and nonjudgmental, and I can be someone to talk to, and someone to listen.

I've forgotten all this in light of everything else.  Around the grading, the teaching, the daily grind of public speaking and time management and stress, I'm a teacher -- I am one of the people who knows my students the best, because I see them the most.  I see what they're thinking about through their writing, and I hear about their lives by walking around my room.

Teaching isn't just lesson plans and grading; teaching is preparing students for the future, and that includes giving them the chance to make mistakes and talk about complicated topics and grow and feel safe.

I know, to paraphrase Neil DeGrasse Tyson, that the universe doesn't care about me, that it's not following me around trying to point me in the right direction.  Nor do I subscribe to the belief that everything happens for a reason and I was meant to see this quote.

Through a happy coincidence, my stoner cousin from California posted something on Facebook, and I just happened to click the link to my one social media account in time to see it.

Through happier coincidence, I found something I desperately needed to remember.

I also ran across this:

It is so easy to see my struggles this semester as a failure.  It's so easy to see this moment of epiphany, where I realized what I've neglected for my students, as a failure.

But down that path lies madness.

I can't change that this semester has sucked, and I can't change that I let myself descend into a trap of self-pity and depression over what I can't or haven't accomplished.

But I can reframe this semester, and I choose to reframe it like this:  I know what doesn't work.  My 4th year might not be the best one, but it's not the one that will make me leave the profession either.  Instead, my 4th year is about learning what doesn't work, and learning how to avoid that to make my job, my life, better.

I have seven weeks left to change my semester, and I'm going to do it, if only I stop destroying myself over my failures.

I can be the person, the teacher, I needed when I was younger, and I will be.

October is the Worst Month of the Year

My year has not eased up.

I'm not expecting it to, frankly.  It's late-October by now, halfway through first semester.  The tone of the year is pretty set.

But I remain worried about it.

I started this blog by saying that I like my job, and that wasn't a lie.  I do like my job; I just don't like it this year.  And that's new for me -- I'm not used to being in a position that I don't enjoy, I'm not used to feeling so overwhelmed that I have trouble functioning, and I'm not used to walking into my classroom feeling like an outsider.

I figured out a big part of the reason why a few days ago.  There are a few things creating the 'perfect storm' of stress:  my class sizes are HUGE (30 kids in every hour), my kids are writing more than ever which means I have more to grade, and I've dedicated my 4th year to actively being a better teacher than my previous years.  Those are all big things in and of themselves, but they are the reason why this year is so miserable.

That reason, and I feel incredibly guilty even thinking it, let along putting it out there, is this: This year, for the first time, I don't like my students.

That's an awful thing for a teacher to say, and trust me, I'm struggling with it.

Don't get me wrong: I understand, logically, that I don't have to like my students to teach them.  I understand that they don't have to like me to learn from me.  That's all well and good, but none of it deals with the reality of being in the classroom, where it's been proven that positive relationships create better learning environments all around.

I want to like my students -- I did not come into this year determined to dislike my students, nor have I ever.  I actually like the first days of school: I like the opportunity to meet new students, and I like getting to know them.  In that way, this year has been a little heartbreaking because as I'm getting to know my students, I'm finding that this semester, I generally don't like them.

I really, really want to, but I don't.  I feel so guilty over this, and I spend a lot of time every day trying to overcome this struggle.  I'm pretty good about not acting on it -- if you walked into my classroom, you'd never know.  I laugh with my students just as often as I ever have; I tell jokes, I ask about their lives and interests, I engage them in conversations.  The struggle is entirely internal because I don't want it to affect their learning.

But that internal struggle is easily the biggest part of why my 2015-2016 school year has gone to shit so quickly, and by late-October I'm feeling like giving up.