It is summer time. Everyone at every public place I go to is pregnant and beautiful. A-line dresses and belted tops abound and I start to get the fever.
Baby fever.
Admittedly, I have had the fever for a while and this post comes out something like a confession. I know that babies (and God) laugh at our human-y life plans, but that does not stop us from making them. My husband and I had a plan. It was create baby two in the spring/summer of 2014. "But wait, Ms. Fartsonparade", you may be asking yourself, "are you up the spout now?"
"No", is the answer to that question.
I have a handful of dreams and aspirations in my life. Chiefly among them, are to grow our family and to grow in my education/knowledge. And wouldn't you know it-the two are pitted against each other.
The plan to expand our brood in spring of 2014, was made so our kids would be nicely spaced apart, I would get a year off from using my body to feed or house another human, and it is such a freaking miracle to carry a child and deliver them into the world and we felt ready to do that again.
In the same month that it was okay to let this baby become a possibility, I got an offer. The most generous and needed offer I have ever been given-a chance to get a FREE master's degree from a leading university that would help me specifically with teaching urban students. (If you are wondering why I need help with this, see Reflections on My First Year of Teaching in an Urban School)
I panicked. Here were two things I had laid awake at night dreaming about. Hoping for. And both possibilities were open to me, and I had no idea what to do.
Initially, I decided to decline the offer to keep with our family plan, citing that family is more important than work, but decided I should complete the application process anyway, thinking that if my application was not chosen, then I wouldn't really have to make a decision.
In order to apply for the program, I needed take the GRE. I spent 30-90 minutes each night studying and taking practice tests. Stretching my brain and learning something new, felt refreshing and welcome. And when I finally took the exam and passed, the delight I felt should have indicated my true desire.
But still I felt torn and confused.
Then I talked to my husband, for real. We had talked about all of it a million times before, but it felt unresolved, so I started to hash it all out again. What I thought would be a long and painful process turned out to be a brief and cherished moment of our marriage. Tearfully and honestly, I told him I wanted to pursue the program. To invest in myself, but I admitted that I felt guilty for doing this for me and sad about missing out on bringing a new baby home in the next year-ish. But what he said next mended my heart and gives me motivation to start this program in two weeks. He said, "We are not losing a baby now. Whatever baby is born later? That one will be ours, and that will be the baby we love."
Cheers, blogosphere. This mama is starting graduate school.
Friday was the last day of the school year. After lots of hugs and high-fives, I stood in front of my school with all my fellow teachers and waved and cheered our students out into the world for summer. After sending them on their way we celebrated with a faculty cookout and toasted our veterans who decided to move on to their next adventure. Then all the teachers headed up to their rooms to begin the checklist of tasks that are required before a teacher's school year is over. I, however, went outside and sat in my car. In total silence. For 30 minutes. Just stunned at what a year it has been.
This was my first year in an urban school. Having attended a variety of rural schools as a student, including one of the top five smallest schools in the great commonwealth of Pennsylvania, I was unaware of what to expect. It was nothing like the experience of Michelle Pfeiffer or Hillary Swank in their happy ending movies. This year was a bit more Stand and Deliver, but without the intense math instruction and the ensuring of the better livelihood for 50 eighteen-year-olds in Los Angeles. It was something all it's own.
I asked for this urban teaching job. I taught for three years in a suburban school, that was challenging for it's own reasons, but I always felt a pull to support my community and teach in my neighborhood school. My motivation for working in an urban school comes from the heart and with good intentions. Believing so strongly in the ideal, "I want to be a positive, stable adult in their lives," that I probably declared it in my job interview.
And when the kids rolled in on that first day, I said it again to myself, "I want to be a positive, stable adult in their lives." I tried to keep reminding myself of that as my classroom management fell to pieces over the coming weeks, and as I filled out office referral after office referral. I chanted it again as I looked over the failing grades on the benchmark assessment. I muttered it when winter break seemed like it would never come and my students were as cold and unwelcoming as the weather.
I tried everything I could think of to reach my students, both on a human level and an educational one. I designed creative activities and planned field trips, but my class discussions became opportunities to show out and put others down. My "fun ideas" became belabored tasks. But I soldiered on.
Believing that all children should see some part of themselves reflected in their education, I had what I thought was a brilliant idea. Instead of using boring sentences like, "Sally jumped up.", I decided to use quotes from many famous people as a way to teach how to use quotation marks. Monday, Tuesday ,Wednesday, were a breeze, but then came Thursday. When my students read a respectable quote about not judging people by Lil Wayne, the intellectual discussion about how it is important to know a person before making a judgment about them, did not occur. What did happen is about fifteen kids began rapping loudly and off rhythm about "smokin' weed". (hashtag:outtatouch) And so instead of teaching the correct punctuation, I spent fifteen minutes trying get my class settled down.
Shortly there after I sought out advice from my administrator about respect. What respect looked like when I was on the other side of the desk was much different that what I was receiving as the instructor. I carefully expressed concern about how students often huffed and puffed and stomped their feet when given directions or asked to do something. She said, "That is how they see adults fight for power and they feel powerless in their lives." I took that to heart and repeated, "I want to be a positive, stable adult in their lives."
This creed got its greatest challenge in February. After constantly correcting a child for their behavior, the child spouted, "You are a racist." And before I could put on my brave teacher face, my non-teacher-just-human-eyes welled with tears and my cheeks flushed, but again, "positive, stable adult" came back to me. I explained what that word truly means and stated plainly that that was not who I was. I cried the whole way home and a few mornings after that, but for the next 85 days, I smiled at this child and kept teaching.
I tried so many strategies and hot ideas that I felt emotionally exhausted. I could not come up with a way to reach these children as people.
The ending of this story is not that we all got along fantastically and I was actually Miss Honey from Matilda and I adopted the smartest child in my class, but the ending is one that fills me with hope.
As I had reached an emotional pit of despair, I gave up all fancy strategies and hot ideas from internet searches. I began talking with my students as they were waiting in line for the restroom. At most there would be about ten of them there. As a small group, we managed to have casual discourse about weekend happenings and sibling rivalries while using our inside voices. It happened so inconsequentially that I truly thought nothing of it until a week later, when I noticed one particular kid not acting quite as particularly challenging.
In college, each want-to-be-teacher is made acutely aware of the line between teacher and friend. Fear of lawsuits and false claims instilled a wall of me and you. Eliminating the idea of an us- a family word, a friend word, a two or more people together word. Fear of crossing some imaginary line is still very real for me, but I could not go on like before. I would not have been able to survive trying so hard to be separate from them if something didn't give.
We spent the last month of the year on a poetry book project. I decided to make one, too. I wrote an example poem for each new topic and shared little pieces of my heart with them: the love of my family, the intrigue of nature, and how music has played an important role in my life. As the unit continued my students shared more with me about their hearts.
When the state test scores came in, I didn't gripe through clenched teeth, "I want to be a positive, stable adult in their lives." I felt no mantra. I looked at the scores and then stopped looking at them. I went on to do something else. The scores were not good, but the scores were not my students. They were playing basketball, and obsessing over minecraft and watching Disney Channel XD. They were origami, skating, and Takis. They were small and scared and brave and learning.
And I almost didn't see it.
The year nearly slipped by without me really seeing my students and without them really seeing me. What a tragedy to have gone unseen for months! I sat there in my car thinking all these things and feeling the pressure of how to do a better job next year when it hit me. Defining myself by two criteria: positive and stable, kept me from other, necessary things. My good intentions (you know what they say about them) had not been sufficient. As I put the car in reverse, I settled into a new mantra. I drove out of the parking lot, over 500 index cards that a child let fly out of a bus window, looked back at the school in the rear view and thought, next year, "I want to be me."
