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."