The papers are on the couch, neatly stacked, waiting to be graded, needing a red or blue or purple pen to deface the pristine pages of hopeful students. They wait, though, with the only attention received the reshuffling and organizing of said assignments, yet nary a pen in sight to begin the process into checking student progress.
The papers are staring at me, and they are angry.
Or perhaps it will be my students tomorrow who bare the furrowed brows. These students that fill my classroom with baited breath and often frightened stares sit on edge when they find themselves in my classroom. ”She’s your teacher? Ha! Your life’s over!” They say it in front of me, the word also spreading like a California wildfire around the school. I’m tough, I assign work, and I expect the best. Rarely do kids say they hate me because I’m mean, just because I’m tough.
But this year, I don’t feel so tough.
I started teaching in January, 2001, three weeks before my mother passed away. My first job was atrocious–taking over classes mid-year is tough enough, but I also had to teach out of subject, too! It was a rough year, but certainly one that molded me into the strong instructor I am now. I wanted to quit that year, though, and I was close to the wire with the choice, but I met a few amazing teachers who inspired me to stay.
And I’ve never regretted it.
So I find myself here, the last day of August, finishing the first week of my tenth year of teaching at the same school, questioning why I do it, why I torture myself with the stack of essays currently staring me down, asking me to meet at the flagpole outside school tomorrow at 3 unless I finish them tonight.
Today, my creative writing class studied sculpture and how marble can be chiseled, by hand, into smooth lines and passionate embraces. Then we made our own statues with Play-Doh.
Today, my AP Literature and Composition students shivered in their seats at the discussion of their recent quiz, a few fleeing the room from my high expectations to go into honors classes instead. But then the discussions begin and the ideas and love for literature swirls around the room, dispelling my frustration with the class, with my apparent reputation driving students from challenging themselves.
Today, World Literature Honors sat, tested, listened to all their expectations. I know I will make them excellent writers, but the process for me is making me old before my time. Simultaneously, it’s how the kids are that make me young: the sticky note left behind by a favorite student that says “Mz Mor dun teached me to reed gud” boldly rests on my wall. A signed card thanking me for teaching pinned above it. A mix CD left for me by a student aide.
Today, I might fight with the stack beside me, time ticking away so quickly I barely have a moment to eat, to shower, to read for myself, when I should be grading, grading, grading. One hour before bed. I am selfishly writing this blog when I “should” be reading the AP essay about women in ancient literature, or the World Lit Honors essay about plagiarism, or a mess of other minor assignments that are just as daunting to put pen to. Today I realized that teaching English is a lifestyle, not a career. It absorbs any free time you think you might have, only traces and threads of personal life left in the bottom of your sweater pocket only to be lifted by a breeze and it’s gone. Today, I realized that I am burnt out on this beautiful job, that I need some time to just come home, and not come home to grade a small city’s worth of paper stacks. I’m King Kong gripping the edges of the towering piles, screaming with snarled teeth at the deadlines flying past my head.
But today I also reminded myself that what I do isn’t about me. It’s not about selling or cleaning or numbers or laws or some rote job that gives less purpose in my life than more. Today I reminded myself that though I fight through rivers of bureaucratic crap, individual students who want to be the sun I revolve around, parents who have nothing better to do than vent their personal frustrations on me in the form of “you suck as a teacher and I’m watching and critiquing every move you make” emails, and other teachers (yes, other teachers!) who want nothing more than to show, show!, each one of his or her peers why he or she is the better teacher…and after all that, I know that I will get through to just one kid, at least, but more I’m sure, and they will learn about reading and literature and become at least less terrified of writing and become more excited about LIFE. That’s enough right there to make me pick up the stack beside me.
Ten years was my promise to myself. I chiseled in the air a decade of teaching. This might just be my final year, at least for now, and more adventures to follow. This will be the blog that follows my choice. My deadline? May of 2010. Wish me luck!
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