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.

Snapshots

I'm standing at the door of my classroom, dress and heels impeccable, waiting to meet my students' parents.

They flutter in and out.  Most conversations are positive -- students are doing well, few concerns, good grades.  

Some parents take longer.  

"Can I bring my son in every single morning before school?"  

"What else can she be doing to bring her grade up?" 

Other parents are angry.  

"Why does my child have a bad grade?"  

"What aren't you doing so my child is failing?"   

Still others come by just to give me a hug or say thank you.  

"My daughter loved you last year!"  

"You made my son love Language Arts, thank you!" 

There is always something to talk about at parent-teacher conferences.  

Pep Assemblies, Powderpuff, and Parades

So.  It's fall.  

With fall comes a lot of fun things: colorful leaves, cozy boots, snuggly leggings, long sleeves, hats and scarves, new release video games, awesome movies, Halloween and Thanksgiving, and tons more.  

However, fall in high school also comes with a lot of bullshit, and that was driven home this past week. 

Homecoming at Herbert High.  What fun! *heavy sarcasm* 

Homecoming Week always starts with a positive, upbeat-sounding email from my building principal.  "Hello, and welcome to Homecoming 2015!" it reads.  "Please don't give any tests or assignments this week!"  

This may not be what the email actually says, but it is clearly the subtext.  We are encouraged to lower our kids' workloads this week so they can "participate in HC activities," which judging from the conversations I overhear from my students involve extensive amounts of TPing, staying out really late, and drinking heavily.  

Awesome.  

The other fun thing about Homecoming week is that this year, I'm the junior class adviser.

Last year, as the sophomore class adviser, I didn't do a lot during Homecoming.  One day, I was there late for Hall Decs (where the students decorate their lockers according to an assigned theme).  That was about it.  

Not this year.  This year, I did Hall Decs, coached Powderpuff football, organized student workers and volunteers, walked in a parade, and coordinated a minutia of little things around all that. Oh, and taught full time.  Can't forget that little detail.  

Hall Decs weren't that bad -- my principal and I kick our kids out at 8:00pm, whether they are finished decorating or not, so they keep themselves motivated.  

Powderpuff is a different story.  

First: Powderpuff Football is when the girls of a school play flag football.  It's well-organized chaos -- the girls order shirts, decorate their lockers, clothes, and more, they run the halls the morning off, and they face off at the game with the best of the NFL.  

Second: Powderpuff at Herbert is a BIG deal.  I teach mostly seniors, but I'm the junior class adviser, so I was wearing a hot-pink juniors T-shirt in support -- I spent the whole day defending myself against surprisingly angry teenage girls who saw my shirt as a betrayal. (Seriously.) 

When I got the gym that evening to help organize everything, I was given a job.  My principal had set up their teams, another teacher gave them some actual coaching (considering my experience with that is absolutely zero), and I... I got to walk around and smell the girls for alcohol.  

Yes, you read that right.  

My principal made a speech to the girls asking them to leave if they had been drinking, citing LHS policy that this was an alcohol-free event.  No one (that I noticed, at least) left.  

So I got to walk around and smell them.  

With that finished, we herded them outside to the field.  

And stood around for the next 2 hours, watching girls play football (which, sadly, does nothing to break out of the stereotypes of girls playing football.  I wish it did, I really do.) 

The next day was the all-important parade and football game.  That's all well and good, but to start us off, let's talk about the end of the school day:  The Pep Assembly.  

The last 50 minutes of the Friday of Homecoming Week is the Pep Assembly.  The seniors tend to skip this; they've been through enough of them to find them boring.  Everyone else attends to celebrate and get pumped up for fall sports and events.  

I actually like Pep Assemblies -- I get to see so much more of what my kids do!  They dance, they play sports, they are musicians, they're on Homecoming Court, they MC, etc.  I think it's really cool; my students generally do not unless they are participating.  So they fake doctors' appointments and ditch.  

So, fun or not, by then it was Friday afternoon and I was already exhausted.  

And then I had to walk in a parade.  

Like the Pep Assembly, I actually kind of enjoy the parade.  The route is nice, and this year the weather was good, so the walk was cool and peaceful.  I like the kids I work with in advisory, so talking to them as we 'marched' was rather fun too.  They throw candy to neighborhood kids as we go, like an early Halloween celebration.  

I did run into one of my former students along the parade route, which was really fun.  She shrieked when she saw me and swamped me in a hug.  

There are always bright spots being a teacher.  

By the time the parade ended, I'd been at Herbert for close to 12 hours for the third time that week.  

I didn't stay for the Homecoming football game.  I went home, and (if I'm being honest), I lay on the couch for the rest of the night.  

Overall, I almost enjoy Homecoming Week.  On an individual level, I like most of the events -- decorating the halls with paper seems wasteful and smelling kids for alcohol is frankly disgusting, but otherwise, hanging out with my students is never that bad.  They're funny and smart (for the most part), and those kids that tend to be part of advisory are those that get along well with adults.  

The sheer time commitment is what makes Homecoming Week miserable.  I'm at Herbert High for hours longer than I normally would be, and I'm still teaching full time.  My students know that that email goes out to teachers and they take advantage of it; try to schedule a test and they'll throw a hissy fit, suggest that they actually *work* during class time and they'll whine, "But it's Homecoming!" 

It's a trying experience, for sure.  

And I'm generally glad to be part of it, but if you're reading this full blog, then you can understand why, perhaps, Homecoming 2015 was not my favorite Herbert High event ever.  

PS: I know I missed a week, and I'm sorry about that.  You can tell from what I've chronicled here that it was quite the week and I'm still getting caught up.  

Overwhelmed.

I've been struggling a lot lately.

I'm overwhelmed with work: I promised myself at the start of this year that I was going to devote myself to being a better teacher this year.  It's working, but it's taking a toll on me.  I have so much less time than I ever did before.

At home, I'm tired. All the time.  No discrimination.  I got over 10 hours of sleep last Saturday night, woke up at 9 on Sunday having gone to bed around 10pm the night before, and still felt exhausted.  After a point, that's no longer just sleep-deprivation.

I'm losing a sense of relaxation from my hobbies.  I love to read, I play video games, I write -- but I'm finding that, when I engage in those activities, I'm feeling like I'm just wasting my time.  My brain pesters this like a canker sore: why aren't I using my time to do something more productive, using the time to accomplish more?

And when I face that idea head on, that maybe I should be grading or planning or reading whatever book about teaching I'm supposed to be reading, the thought makes me want to burst into tears.

I'm in a counseling program as a student, and my research thus far has focused on depression and suicidal tendencies in students.  I'm not blind; I see in myself some potential symptoms of depression.  That scares me. I don't want to be written into that box -- I've watched students deal with it and see the horrific results when that battle is lost.  I've read the stories, talked to the parents, worked to help students who sink into that dark hole, and I don't want that for myself.

What I want doesn't seem to matter though. This is where I am, and that's what I have to deal with.

But it's hard for me to know where to start.

There are plenty of fundamental things about being a teacher that most programs don't tell you.  I won't waste your time walking through all of those understandings, but one of the most relevant is this: Teaching is a thankless job.

Now: I'm not complaining about this.  It's a fact about my profession, and I know that.  But that doesn't change that it's a little depressing.  I don't experience a sense of accomplishment on a daily basis, nor do I gain a sense of closure through teaching.  Even when I might -- say, when students finish a paper -- the next stage is always right around the corner. As soon as students finish writing, I stop teaching that paper, sure, but I immediately start grading it.  That looming task, which consumes hundreds of hours per semester, pretty much eliminates any possibility for feeling awesome that we finished writing something.

The learning process is never over, and being over is necessary for closure.

Accomplishments are more common, but they are so often small that, when my day is broken up into 49 minute segments, I can easily overlook them.  It's easy to forget that the kid who'd been struggling in 1st hour got her essay finished when a student in 5th hour can't seem to get his started after weeks of work time.  Accomplishments dance off into the wind throughout the day, leaving me feeling like nothing much got done.  I understand, logically, that this isn't true, but the feeling that I'm not making a difference doesn't come from a place of logic.

I know that, logically, my work matters.  Students learn to write in my classroom.  They produce solid work.  They leave better prepared for college than if they'd never been in my room.  I know all that.

But knowing it and feeling it aren't the same, and this year, I haven't been feeling it.
I don't feel like I'm doing much that's worth my time; I don't feel like we're accomplishing anything major in my room.  I know that's not true, but it doesn't change the sense of defeat, of failure, that is pervading the off hours of my life.

The psychology of emotional wellness tells us that people need recognition.  Last week I attended a Professional Development session about mental health that suggested that recognition is rated are more desired, more valued, than even a raise.

I have to say I agree: I would much rather have someone come in and tell me that today was great, that a lesson I was worried about was successful, that my students are LEARNING, than have someone write me a check.  A check is great, but it won't make me feel better next week when something goes badly and I'm feeling like I'm wasting my time again.

I wonder if this is all part of the 4th year, of the transition from the survival stage of teaching to the true master stage.  I don't remember feeling like this when I was too busy to think about it; I'm thinking about it now, when I've settled into a rough idea of what I'm teaching on any given day and my focus is more on tweaking things to make them better, not building them from scratch.

The 4th year is a different animal, and clearly I haven't tamed it yet.

(NOTE: I am sorry for the delay.  I've been writing these Monday evenings before class, and this week I did not get to it.  Then, between meetings and grading, I haven't had time to proofread and submit.  I appreciate the patience though.)

Pushing the Envelope, Part 2

Well.  We didn't even make it ten days, let alone until October.

Let's face it: I knew this was coming with this kid (the one I wrote about last week).  When you have a student in your classroom who spends a significant portion of each year suspended, that student is bound to cause trouble in your room.

I was really hoping it wouldn't be inevitable though.  I was hoping we could have a functional relationship, and he wouldn't add me to the list of teachers in Herbert High that he doesn't trust.

Unfortunately, I think that's what is about to happen.

On Friday afternoon, this student turned in an assignment asking him to assess the risks he had taken in high school.  He made a choice, and wrote about the risks he takes when he speeds to work with a large amount of marijuana in the front seat of his car.

That puts me in a very difficult position.

By law, I am a mandatory reporter, which means that I am required to report when I learn that students engage in dangerous behavior or are put into dangerous situations.

By definition, driving over 100 mph (as he described) on a back road near my school is a dangerous activity, as is smoking marijuana.  That means I have to tell someone or risk my position, and as a teacher-friend put it, "I am willing to sacrifice my life for my students, but not my job."

So I have to tell someone -- I have to send him to a counselor, to a principal, to someone better equipped to help him deal with all this than I am.

I just know that this is going to mess up whatever rapport this student and I are developing, potentially even destroy it.

This paragraph, despite being rife with dangerous situations for this student, is quite well done.  The kid can code-switch; his entire paragraph is written in a voice more suited to text-messaging, despite his speaking abilities being quite possibly higher-level than most of his classmates.  He also spends some time discussing how this moment offered an epiphany for him -- he realized he was, as he put it, "a total loser" in that moment due to his commission of several felonies.  He recognizes what's happening here.

This all tells me that he has the ability to be a capable student, he's just choosing not to.

He's choosing to push the boundaries and see what happens.  And while I can respect this, it also means he's a manipulative little snot.

I don't know what I would do, if I wasn't required by law to turn him in.

I'd want to talk to him about this epiphany -- this moment where he realized he fit his own definition of a loser.  What was that like?  What did it mean for him? Is it changing anything about him?

That could segue easily into a conversation about his future: where is he going? What is his plan, and how does this kind of thing factor in?  What does he see changing with realizations like this?

But no matter how that plays out to me, it would have to include a conversation about why all these activities aren't good for his life, aren't safe, aren't the answer he's looking for.

This student needs boundaries, but the other way he can get them is if he pushes against whatever wall he finds.  That's the only thing that tells him if it's truly a wall or just a piece of paper he can tear right through, weak and meaningless.

I want to give him boundaries, but I also want to give him someone he can trust.
And I'm not sure how to deal with that clash of purpose.

Pushing the Envelope

The American education system has failed, at least on some level, when a student approaches me and asks if writing about getting your genitals caught in a zipper is a school-appropriate topic.

You would think that I'm kidding, but sadly, I am not.

I have a student this year who will do whatever it takes to push the envelope.  He started the year with four days of carry-over ISS (In-School Suspension) from last year, and while he was there, he did very little of the work he was missing in class.  I caught him when he got back, and a few days later I got an overjoyed email from his mom telling me that he really liked me and thought I "got him" and how he needed to function in my class.

I won't lie -- I was ecstatic.  This kid has issues -- he once hacked the main website of Asimov School District and attempted to extort the administrators in exchange for the password.  He's a troublemaker, but he also needs a fresh start.

So I spent the week before last seeking out information on him: how teachers normally handled him, who he liked, how he was doing in his other classes.  I quickly learned that he gets along great with one of my close teacher friends, and so she and I together decided to do whatever we could to make sure this kid has a decent year.

He's not making it easy on us.

On Tuesday, we used computers to get Google Classroom set up for our Composition class.  Some students decided to comment on the assignment, mostly to say hello to their fellow classmates since everyone can see it.
This student?  He wrote "penis."  And when I caught it (because the whole class started laughing), added "oops! Make room when the bell rings so I can run out!"

When we had a chance to chat at the end of the hour, I sat down and looked him right in the eye.  "What are you doing?"  I asked.  "You know not to do that."

I don't think this is the kind of response he usually gets.  We talked for a few minutes about how he arrived at this stellar decision before I asked him: What usually happens in these types of situations?

He was honest, and it was a little painful:  "Usually the teacher says it's fine and then writes me up behind my back."

Behind my back.  That was all I needed to hear -- this poor kid, troublemaker he might be, could not trust the people in his school he most needed to be able to trust.  So, in what I consider a great moment of growth for me as a teacher, I made him a deal.

I told him I would offer him two things: 1) I would never write him up without telling him I was doing so, and 2) I would give him a second chance provided he worked to create a classroom of respect from there on.

He agreed.

When I talked to my friend that he trusts, she said it sounded like a good way to handle it, and then told the kid that he should take advantage of the clean slate I was providing.

On Friday, he once again did something silly, but this time there was some growth -- he asked me privately, instead of in front of the whole class, if using the example of getting your genitals caught in your zipper was a good example of failure.

My answer, of course, was no.

I think another teacher would have kicked him out just for suggesting it.

This is not a kid who is actively malevolent or mean.  He's not trying to be gross or manipulative.  He's just trying to see where his boundaries are, where my buttons are.  If I get mad, he wins -- but I don't think he's going to.

I understand what he's doing, but I really do think he deserves a second chance to be a good kid.  He's working through his boundaries, and he's clearly smart -- when I asked why he thought this scenario was a good example of failure, he had a list of fairly accurate reasons, even if it's not the most school-appropriate topic.
He wants to know where he stands with me, and most importantly, he wants to know if he can trust me.
If he walks into school tomorrow to find that I've turned him in, that will tell him something important about me, but instead he's going to find that I was telling the truth -- I won't write him up without discussing it.  I can be an ally if he'll let me.

I believe I made the right call thus far -- it remains to be seen if that's true.  I'm hopeful that I won't be writing about all the havoc he's causing come October.  

A New Degree of Learning

When I'm sitting in a college classroom at the end of a long day, lamenting the loss of my free time and the fact that, once again, I've only had time to either grade or do my homework, never both, I have to remind myself that I am voluntarily chasing another degree.  

I love to learn.  I always have -- my husband tells me that he can't even fathom how my brain works, that I seem to be thinking about so much all the time, that I read so many different things all the time, and it totally amazes him.  I don't see it that way -- I'm just curious about a lot of things, so I read about them when I have time.  It's that simple. 

With that in mind, I've never really left school.  

I earned my Master's in English Education in 2012, and spent my first year in the classroom in 2012-2013.  During the summer of 2013, I took a class in Banned Young Adult Literature and Criticism, where I read 16 books in 8 weeks and learned a lot of awesome new stuff to build my classroom.  

The next year, I decided that, someday, I might want to be an administrator, so I started taking classes in Educational Administration.  That was Spring and Summer 2014.  After about 9 credit hours, I realized that this was just not for me -- I didn't like how removed from students it seemed, and I wasn't willing to give that up.  

But I wanted to keep learning.  I spent a lot of time thinking about what my future might hold -- did I want to stay a classroom teacher and get another degree in just English? After all, a wider knowledge base of literature and writing could be a fabulous way to enrich my classroom.  Then I wondered: Did I want to get certified in another field? Maybe history, or art?  But those jobs are hard to get, and then I was still in the classroom but my knowledge base wouldn't be as strong.  

Before long, I realized that I don't want to be in the classroom for the rest of my life.  I love teaching, and I'm lucky to do a job I like, but I get bored easily.  This year, for example, I'm teaching a new class, and I'm super excited because otherwise I've been teaching the same classes for 3+ years running.  The chances of my changing classes every few years is low, and I have enough credit hours where I need them to teach senior-level, college credit classes, which means that's where I'm stuck, a little.  

And I hate grading :) There's a lot of that as a Language Arts teacher.  

I started thinking about Counseling in the spring of 2014, when a student in my school killed herself.  There was an enormous fall-out -- several students were hospitalized for suicidal thoughts, and there was an outpouring of support and grief.  But all that faded by the time school let out for the summer -- barely a month later.  

I knew in my heart that, while students may have stopped talking about their struggles so publicly, there was no question that those struggles were continuing.  

And come fall, suddenly I had those students in my classroom, and I found myself as a confidante for a variety of students who needed someone to trust, someone to talk to.  

And I realized that perhaps I could do a lot of good as a counselor.  

I hesitated -- my mother in law was a high school counselor for over 30 years, and while she's a wonderful person, I don't want to be her. 

I quickly realized that if THAT was my only hesitation, it wasn't a very good reason to say no to something I think could be really helpful and fulfilling.  

In Fall 2014, I applied to one of the top counseling programs in the country, and I'm now working toward becoming a Secondary School Counselor.  

I'm learning constantly, and I'm changing constantly.  New ideas produce new reactions.  The way I'm teaching has adjusted to make room for those changes.  I'm loving the experience of becoming a better person, of being challenged all the time in how I think and how I handle situations.  

But on nights like tonight, where I'm just barely into my school year, I'm already behind on my grading, I had 120+ pages to read for homework and only got through about 85 of it before I fell asleep, on nights like this I have to remind myself that this is a choice.  

If I wanted to, I could walk out tonight and never go back.  Never write another paper, never read another textbook, never give another presentation, never build another research bibliography, unless I wanted to.  

But I want to learn.  

I'm making a choice to better myself, to invest in my future and in the future of my students.  

It'll be about 5 more years before this degree is done, and by that time I'll have been in my classroom for close to ten years.  I'm not sure yet what I'll do with it yet -- I may stay in the classroom and use my counseling skills to help students as I teach, and I may start applying for jobs where I would leave the classroom and be a full-time counselor. 

I don't know yet, but I have time.  For now, all I have to do is keep learning.  

Now, if I could only add another hour or two to my day so I could get my homework AND my grading done... 

A Teacher's Worst Nightmare

[Please Note: This post is about Active Shooter training for teachers, which my school went through this past week.  It is an honest post: what training was like as well as my own extremely emotional reaction to it.  There is discussion of guns and shooters, some language, and my struggles to reconcile this training with my own fears.  If this is something you don't want to read, please skip it, and rejoin next week for what will hopefully be a much more positive post.]

I'm still reeling from this week. 

Correction: I'm still reeling from Friday -- the rest of the week was fine. 

Friday afternoon, however, my school went through something called 4E Training -- also known as Active Intruder training. 

It was terrifying. 

All the teachers knew going in that it was going to be rough.  Asimov is one of the last school districts in our city to go through it, so we'd heard stories from teachers in other districts about what it was like.  Almost all used the word "intense" to describe it.  We'd also heard from parents of kids whose districts have done it already;  one of my close friends described a classroom where they keep canned goods as potential weapons to throw at an intruder. 

So when Friday afternoon rolled around, after a week of dreading it, I had a lot of expectations about what this was going to be like, none of them good.  Unfortunately, the reality was actually worse. 

Like a lot of other teachers out there, I'm scared of school shooters.  It's that simple.  The potential for an active intruder is terrifying.  I've read a lot on the subject, including Columbine by David Cullen, which dispels a lot of the misconceptions about what actually happened that day, and while I feel better informed, I never feel comfortable. I actually wrote about that book on a blog I run of book reviews, so you can find it here if you're interested.  One friend read it and pointed out, correctly, that it sounds like I don't quite feel safe.   I don't.   I agree with my building principal that we have a safe building and it's extremely unlikely to happen, but I also know that there are too many possibilities that we can't possibly account for all of them. 

A school shooter is my worst nightmare. 

The first thing we did on Friday afternoon, after getting settled and the police officers introducing themselves, was watch a video about active shooters in schools and public places around the country.  And that video started with Columbine, and I almost burst into tears. 

I scrunched myself all the way down in my seat after that to watch the rest of the presentation.  My hands were over my face, my feet were up -- anyone could look at me and tell that I was uncomfortable, protecting myself.  I knew it too. 

I think of myself as tough, so I wasn't happy with this reaction, but I didn't quite care. 

We walked through the 4E's, which are Educate (which we did first), Evade, Escape, and Engage. As you can imagine, "Engage" is the scariest. 

From there, we broke up into groups and headed off into the role-playing sessions, where we'd have to behave as if we were actually in an active killer scenario.  (FYI: I keep saying active shooter because that's what I've been conditioned to think about.  In reality, the officers who trained us called it Active Killer because there have be instances of attacks with not only guns, but everything from knives to chainsaws.  Thus, Active Killer.)

There were 4 exercises, designed to help us process the 4E's, and they got progressively worse. 

The first was just to barricade the door.  The officers emphasized that any time an intruder spends trying to get at people is time he's not shooting, so the harder the classroom is to get into, the better.  We piled desks, threaded chair legs through door handles, tied up the mechanism that holds doors open, anything we could to keep that door closed and the classroom inaccessible. 

It went pretty well. 

The second gave us the option of either evading (barricade the door) or escaping.  The group in my classroom was pretty set on escaping -- makes sense to get the hell away from a shooter if you can.  That is, until the exercise started and the cop playing the shooter yanked the door open before we'd had much a chance to move and shot a cap gun into the room. 

Now, this is a cap gun, but it's a hardcore one, not like those little ones kids sometimes play with.  It's loud, and frankly, it sounds like a real fucking gun went off.  I screamed when he fired it into our room, and I was not alone.  The whole room suddenly smelled like gunpowder and there was actual smoke near the door. 

We barricaded that door so fast and so well that when the officers came back and said the safe word so we knew the exercise was over, it took a good five minutes to pull everything down and put the room back in order. 

Suddenly, this was a lot more real.  Gunshots, even fake ones, will do that to you. 

Then came exercise 3, and this one was the worst because this was the one where we practiced "Engaging" an active shooter. 

The officers walked in with a giant plastic bag of tennis balls and started handing them out, explaining as he did that in reality, you would use anything you could find as a potential weapon against a shooter: books, staplers, markers, chairs, etc., anything you could find and pick up.  As he was explaining all this, the other officer drifted into the back of the room, which a friend of mine noticed (I did not). 

Just as the office said that the exercise could start at any time now that we all had our tennis balls, my friend piped up. "It makes me really uncomfortable that he's (the cop) back here sitting down."  The other officer reassured us, which drew our attention back to the front of the room -- at which point the other office pulled out his cap gun and started firing. 

I'm shaking so badly I can barely type as I relive this moment, and truthfully, I'm very close to tears. 

When the first 'shot' went off, I screamed and ducked under the desk I was sitting in.  A volley of tennis balls flew over my head, desks went flying, and that gun kept going off. 

He got off three, maybe four 'shots' before someone tackled him, but by that point I, along with about 6 other people from our group of about 15, was already sprinting down the hallway away from the room.  

When it was over, we sat together with the two officers to debrief.  Many of us, like me, had screamed and ducked first thing before the Flight or Fight response kicked in.  When several teachers admitted that they simply froze, the officers explained that really, the reaction isn't colloquially called Flight or Fight anymore -- it's Flight, Fight, or Freeze because that's such a common reaction. 

After a few minutes of discussion, a point came up: We were all reacting like we were individuals.  None of us were reacting like we were teachers, responsible for 25-30 students in our classrooms, 25-30 kids who would have no idea what to do and who would have that same flight, fight, or freeze response. 

What did we do when we had students to care for?

I was the one who brought this up, and it led to a very uncomfortable conversation with the officers in the room.  They exchanged looks when I asked and both then said: "I don't think I could live with myself if I ran out on a room full of kids." 

This wasn't enough, so I explained that I didn't think any of us could do that -- we're teachers, we know our responsibilities, and that's why I ask.  So what did we do?

And again, they both said: "I don't think I could live with myself." 

They hedged.  They hedged both times, and while I don't like it, I fully understand why they did. 

Throughout this training, which took about 3 hours, we heard the following statement multiple times: You can keep going even if you get shot.  Over and over, probably more than a dozen times. You can keep going even if you get shot.  You can keep fighting.  You can keep engaging.  Getting shot does not mean you are dead. 

And then later: I don't think I could live with myself if I ran out on my students. 

These officers are trying to tell us what they, and everyone else, cannot legally say: As the teacher, you are expected to give your life for your students.

No one can say this to us.  The officers cannot say that I'm expected to throw myself at the shooter if it happens in my classroom; all they can do is say that they couldn't live with the guilt and let me do the emotional math. 

They know as well as we do that the societal expectation is that teachers will give their lives for their students, or be shamed forever for it.  And live with the guilt forever for it. 

It happens time and again -- it happened in Columbine, in Sandy Hook, and in I'm sure many other school shootings that just aren't as well known.  Teachers sacrifice themselves, and they are held up as heroes. 

This is the part about this training that my husband hates.  He struggles so much with this idea that I could be placed in this situation, that I could have to make decisions like this, and I understand why.  I struggle with it too. 

The back of the room looks different now, especially when I'm standing in the front and teaching. 

After the trauma of the third scenario, we were given a little time to recuperate.  In teacher terms, that means the officers said "Relax for a few minutes until we're ready to do that last one" and the teachers all responded by reviewing every little moment of the last exercise and deconstructing our reactions, what would be different, and how we'd handle it if it were real. 

Not a lot of relaxation took place before the 4th scenario. 

The last practice was meant to put us in a whole-school situation.  We were told we could use any of the 4E's and we had to make it past the 5-6 minute response time for police to arrive at an active shooter scene. 

At this point, I was so thankful that I was in a friend's classroom.  I spend a fair amount of time there, working and grading, so it's a place at Herbert High where I feel safe.  I quickly found that that meant a lot to me. 

The announcement came over the radio (which we were using like a PA system) that there was an active shooter in the commons/cafeteria.  A long moment of scrambling ensued where we figured out where that was and about half of my group decided that it was far enough away to escape.  The other half, myself included, decided to barricade and wait it out. 

The group that escaped made it about 20 yards before spotting the cop roleplaying as the shooter and sprinting back into the room, where we promptly upended my poor friend's couch to barricade the door.  We piled up a mountain of desks, chairs, and anything else, and I crawled under everything to turn out the lights. 

And we waited.  The room was pitch black -- no windows to let in any ambient light.  I couldn't even see my own hands in front of my face, which was probably good because I could feel my whole body shaking with adrenaline and fear. 

Updates continued to come over the radio, including one that said the 'shooter' was now upstairs from us.  A debate sparked: Should we run for it?  But we quickly realized that this classroom was right next to the stairs, so the 'shooter' could quickly return.  We were safer waiting. 

Not long after, a knock came at our door, and even in the dark, I could feel everyone collectively freeze.  What did we do?? 

The knock came again, and there was still no safe word.  So we stayed where we were -- didn't open the door, didn't respond, nothing.  I felt guilt washing over me: that knock could have been the shooter, but if this were real, couldn't it also have been a student needing a place to be safe? A kid who ran to her locker or to the bathroom and who was now locked out and in danger? 

The all clear and safe word came a minute later, and I found out that I was not alone in my wondering -- everyone in the room was struggling with the same guilt over that little knock. 

When we debriefed afterward, this was our focus: What do you do when a student has left the room? 

And the officer came back with a true but horrifying thought: How do you know that that kid isn't the shooter? 

That rocked me back, and I could feel the whole training really sink into my chest at that moment.  We, as teachers, want to believe the best from our students.  We want to believe that they're good kids at heart, that they would never do something like this, that they just want into the room because they're scared. 

But this officer knows the reality.  He knows that opening that door endangers everyone, and he knows that students (or former students) are most often the ones to perpetrate shootings in schools.  It's his job to help us understand that while we want to believe positive things about our students, the reality is much more ambiguous. 

This became another thing they cannot, under any circumstances, say, but it's true nonetheless: Do not open that door, because one kid dying because they picked the wrong moment to use the bathroom is better than an entire classroom full of students being killed. 

They walked us through some other door-knocking scenarios to try to soften that blow, including that we aren't even expected to open the door to the police. After all, how do we know it's really them?  A shooter could easily claim to be a cop to get that door open. Instead, he explained that the police have safe ways of getting into a classroom, so they fully expect to be told to take a hike in the interest of keeping students safe.  He explained that if a kid is out of the room when something happens, you tell them to go hide in the bathroom, or to find an open classroom, or even just to get the hell out of the building.  There are options. 

That doesn't change just how horrible it would be to keep a kid out and find out that he or she was shot because of your decision. 

This whole day was a lot to deal with.  I've spent the weekend trying to process it; my husband has noticed that I'll seem fine and then sink into myself, totally silent and blank-faced, as my mind drifts back to it. 

I think this was one of the worst experiences of my life. 

But I can't deny that the reality of it happening would be far worse.  I would rather be terrified now but prepared than have no idea how to protect my students and myself if it happened. 

Yes, it was one of the worst experiences of my life, but it was also one of the most useful.  This is a situation that I desperately hope I am never in, but if I am, I want to be able to do something about it.    

It's a horrific thing that we have to train for this -- that by being a teacher, I am in this position. That by going to school, my students are put in this position.

I've kept my little red wristband on since Friday, and I don't know when I'll be ready to take it off.  "Red" was our safeword, but that band is also reminding me that I have a responsibility in this situation.  It's reminding me not to forget what I learned, reminding me to be stronger than I thought I was so I don't freeze, or cry, or run, should the situation arise. 

I don't know how to share this experience with my students, nor do I know if I even should.  Parents don't want us talking about it, administrators don't want to scare kids, and as we talked about with the officers, if students know our game plan, that game plan becomes null and void should one of those students decide to walk into school with a gun. 

But now I know that I'm better prepared, at least, and as terrified and shaky as I am still, that thought gives me some hope. 

The Fourth Year Crisis

At the beginning of last year, two of my friends asked me with concern if this was my fourth year teaching.  I chuckled and reassured them that it was only my third, but curiosity forced me to ask why that was significant.

They exchanged a look.

"Everyone has a crisis during their fourth year," one said.
"That's the year you wonder if you're actually doing anything good," added the other.  "That's when you hit the wall."

I forgot about that conversation until this week, the first full week of my fourth year of teaching, because this was the week I hit that wall.

It didn't take much -- we've only been back in school for two weeks counting teacher work time, and that's just not enough time for much to go wrong.

But the start of this year has been rough.  I spent 10 days out of the country this summer, which ate up a lot of my time.  My grandmother passed away and we traveled to her memorial.  And of course about a million things in my house broke or went wrong, which required time and energy to fix.
Most summers, by about halfway through July, I'm getting bored with being off and I'm ready to go back.

That never happened this summer; I never recuperated from last year sufficiently to get sick of time off.
Then, starting on the very first day, the politics started right back up.
We didn't even get a break; one of my friends got thrown into some ridiculous meeting with her department on the afternoon of our first day (following a 3 hour meeting in the morning).  Two weeks later, I'm still hearing about it.
The politics in my department started off with a bang too, and even though I do everything I can to stay out of things, the people around me seem to be drowning in it already.  All my free time at school is spent hearing about it and being asked my opinion.  A neutral, "I'm not really sure..." or "I won't want to get involved..." is neither acceptable nor enough.
And finally, as I wrote about last week, the first two weeks are rough because I don't know my kids yet.  When you can only talk to students about parts of speech or definitions of literary devices, things get boring and you wear out fast.

Everything added up quickly, and when we got an email from our curriculum director that we had to read a book outside of school, on our own time, everything seemed to crash down around me.

(Let me clarify: I don't mind reading a book for my job, and in fact I'm looking forward to this book, which is In The Best Interests of Students by Kelly Gallagher.  It's the timing of that email that sent me into a tailspin.)

As I drove home that afternoon, a thought struck me: I really need a job that doesn't consume my entire life.

It was terrifying.

Most of the time, I really like my job.  Talking to students is a cool way to expand my perspective on the world, and I learn things from them every single day.  It's fulfilling to help them learn, and on most days, I feel like my time is well spent in building the future.  (My thoughts aren't always so pointed; some days, I'm collapsing at the end going "At least these little bastards understand characterization now!" and the thought of their bright futures never enters into my mind. But you get the idea.)

Suddenly, that seemed to change.  The prospect of doing a job that I hate disgusts me.  Why do something that makes me miserable?  But suddenly I was worried that I was miserable.  That what I was teaching wasn't enough.  That the education system would always want more until every waking moment was consumed by it.  That I wouldn't be able to do anything else, learn anything else, enjoy anything else.

It was awful.
Luckily, in that awful moment, I remembered that conversation from last year, that everyone has a crisis of faith their fourth year, and I was just caught up in it.

And even more luckily, those feelings of helplessness and total consumption by the system started to go away.

By today, writing this, I'm feeling better.

I know my students a little better this weekend than I did last weekend, and I'm not so worried that I'm going to hate them or vice versa.  I've set up plans and schedules for reading that don't destroy my life with commitment to my job.  I'm doing my best to truly step out of the politics and support my friends from the sidelines.  I'm trying to focus just on my students, on whether I'm helping them and doing my job to the best of my abilities, and I'm not worrying about everything else.

I'm hoping this was it for my fourth year crisis.  The recognition that I was spiraling actually helped me snap out of it, and I no longer feel like I have nothing to give nor take away from my job as a teacher.
I don't doubt that, at some point this year, I'll do this again.  But I feel prepared this time, whatever that means.  I can do it.

The First Day of School

The first day of school is always terrifying.

It doesn't matter how long I've been doing this -- hell, I've been going to the first day of school since I was about four, though I probably didn't start being a little nervous about it until I got closer to 6th or 7th grade.  That nervousness abruptly vanished upon entering college, only to return with a vengeance when I started student teaching.

I was 23 the semester I student taught -- a baby, by most professional standards.  I was terrified.

That wasn't my worst first day; that came the next year, when my stress levels were so sky-high upon starting my first year actually teaching that I put myself in the ER with abdominal pain and nausea the night before.

Since then, things have gotten a little better; this year, I actually slept some the night before school started, which was a new development.

The first day of school is stressful just because all of a sudden, there are kids in your classroom.  I never find the actual day to be all the difficult: the kids tend to behave, the lessons tend to be fairly straightforward, and with the sudden shock of the bell schedule again, the day goes pretty quickly.

Far worse than the first day are the first two weeks.

These weeks are rough, and I've always found that to be true.  They just are -- I'm never quite sure where my students are, ability-wise, and the kids are so anxious or perhaps apathetic that they don't want to talk or volunteer in class.  I don't know any of them yet, so I have to be tough all around; I'm not sure yet who will quiet when I give them a look or stand next to them compared to who will only settle if I kick them out to the principal's office or give a detention.  Sometimes jokes fall totally flat because I don't know the personalities in the room yet.  They're nervous to talk to me because, despite the ten minutes I take to tell them about myself, they don't know me yet either.

Everyone is uncomfortable those first two weeks, and it makes them hell.

For now, I'm feeling good about things: I have sophomore for the first time, which is a little weird because I've never taught the curriculum, but I'm liking the kids more than I expected.  The seniors are feeling haughty because they are seniors; hopefully, they'll chill in about a week and I can have some actual conversations with them.  Right now, it's a lot of muttered comments under their breath and little interpersonal interaction.  That usually gets better; my fingers are crossed it holds true.

Monday starts the first full week back, and unfortunately, it also starts pre-assessments and poetry for Senior Composition and 10th grade, respectively.  Always fun to give a test Monday morning to seniors! But that rigor helps them understand what I'll expect of them later, and the poetry will let my 10th graders know that we're here to learn too.

As nervous as I still am, the butterflies of the first days are settling into the bland, uncomfortable territory of the first weeks.  By Labor Day, everything will be great -- I'll know my students, conversations will have gone from awkward, 'what do you like to do' styles to more immediate and relevant topics, and school will have settled back into a familiar routine of work and learning.

It's my fourth year, and I'm finally feeling like I have the hang of the first month of school.  Here goes nothing!

Teach Anyway

Like many teachers, I spent a ridiculous number of hours decorating my classroom.  If I'm going to spend 50+ hours a week in it for most of the year, I want it to be nice.

I'm pretty lucky -- my classroom is big, so I have space for a nice desk chair, plenty of bookshelves, a huge desk, and a green couch. I also have a ridiculous amount of wall space to decorate, so much so that after I put up all the helpful stuff like posters about literary devices, guides to being a better reader/writer, and all the necessary info about my school, I have tons of space left over for true decorations.

Posters from the local Shakespeare in the Park productions decorate one corner, while another is devoted to my nerdy loves like Lord of the Rings and Firefly.  Since I've taught British Literature before, I have a Sherlock poster as well as  Harry Potter one.  I even made one last year with "Don't Panic" written on it in large, friendly letters.

But one of my favorite posters is small and unobtrusive.  Some of my students may never even notice it, but I look at it on a near-daily basis.  Check it out:

I love this quote.  It's attributed to Mother Teresa, which I know isn't accurate.  In fact, the Paradoxical Commandments, as they are known, were written by Dr. Kent M. Keith, a speaker and author, back when he was only 19 years old.  In a biography of Mother Teresa, the author reported seeing these posted on the walls of her Calcutta's children's home, which is probably how the confusion of attribution came about.  From what I've read, a few of the commandments Keith wrote are missing from this poster, and some of the words have been wiggled around a bit.

None of that changes the power these words carry.

I love this quote.  I try to read the poster, conveniently situated directly in line with my desk, every single day.  The requests it makes are hard -- be kind when people are suspicious or mean, be happy even when others are jealous, do your best even when it might not be enough.  None of these things are easy, but all of them can help you live a full life.

I'm not a particularly religious person, but I don't think you have to be to appreciate these ideas.  I'm trying to live the best life I can, and for me, that includes creativity and happiness and helping other people.  Those things are not passive pursuits; they require effort.  But no matter what, I am accountable only to myself for my happiness or success or anything else.

It's a sentiment I want my students to understand, and so I keep this in my room as a reminder both to myself and to them.

It is also, at times, the perfect pick-me-up for my job.
As you can imagine, students are not always nice.  They cause trouble, say cruel things to me or to peers, waste time, screw around, don't try, and many other things that can, at the end of the day, leave me feeling exhausted and disheartened.

But I can read this quote, and even though I know it won't make me feel better every time, it helps.
The title of my blog is an allusion to this quote because it's something I remind myself every day: Teach Anyway.

Students are often mean, cranky, or lazy.
Teach them anyway.

When things go wrong, parents are often demanding and willing to lay blame.
Reach out to them anyway.

When you offer to help, students may respond with refusal or laziness.
Offer anyway.

When you build lesson plans, you may be unsure and nervous that something won't work.
Plan them anyway.

When you re-teach something, you might be tired and sick of the topic.
Re-teach it anyway.

In meetings, colleagues may refuse to offer support or accept your help.
Support them anyway.

Administrators may never notice the amazing things you do in the classroom.
Do them anyway.

You will go to bed exhausted from too much grading and need too much coffee in the mornings.
Get up anyway.

Teaching is not just a profession; it's a calling.  Some days, that calling is stressful and unfulfilling.
Teach Anyway.

Teach for the days that are amazing, that are worthwhile.  Teach for the students whose faces light up, who push themselves to be better, who will go on to change the world.
Think of that at the ends of long days, and get up the next morning renewed.

Teachers can and do change the world.  So even when everything goes horribly wrong, teach anyway.

Those who CAN, Teach

I have always hated the saying "Those who can, do. Those who can't, teach."

I am a teacher. And as a teacher, I do an incredible number of jobs on a near-daily basis.

On an average day, I am a dictator and a diplomat, a counselor and a grammarian, a censor and a disciplinarian, a fact checker, a hostage negotiator, a janitor, and an editor, a book critic and a police officer, a prom coordinator and a librarian, a financial adviser and an ACLU representative, a cook and a fashion consultant, an IT service provider, a therapist, and -- of course -- a teacher.

I've acquired these jobs in just the last three years as a high school English teacher -- someone who's been teaching a lot longer probably has a truly incredible list of jobs they've done.

Really, the saying should be, "Those who CAN, teach. Those who want the challenge of their lives, teach high school."