I'll never forget that moment. She was up on stage speaking slowly and purposefully and articulating her lines with carefully crafted annunciation. Her performance was going well, although her eyes seemed to be scanning the crowd unnaturally. Finally, her eyes locked with mine- her face exploded with joy, she knew I was there. Maddy had been a 5th grade student of mine several years back, and, like most of her classmates, she had kept in touch with me over the years via e-mail, updating me on everything from who's dating who, to what books she's reading, to how draining homework has become. Naturally, when she, and several other of my former students were performing in the middle school play, I was invited. This put me in a slightly awkward position as I had not been hired by Maddy's district permanently- I had moved on to neither bigger nor better things, just different things. Third grade things. It would be weird to walk back through the doors of the school that I had loved so much. It would be strange to brush shoulders with former colleagues, and the principal who had promised me a job, but who was unable to produce one. Never-the-less, I showed up, and the look on Maddy's face made all of my silent debates and inner awkwardness worth it.
A year later, another student, Max, invited me to his play, Finian's Rainbow. Max was a student who was shy and quiet and oh-so-intelligent. I was elated he had taken the risk of trying out for the play, and was even more excited that he made it! The day of the play, my third grade teammates and I got some of the worst news we could have gotten right before standardized testing (SBAC) was about to begin. We were getting three new students, one for each of us, in our already "capped" classrooms. This would put two of us over our contracted student capacity, and this was a tough group. We all left school that day feeling defeated. Between the implementation of the Common Core, new curricula, a new co-teaching model that wasn't exactly going swimmingly, the looming start of SBAC, Teacher evaluation, and in my personal world, let's just throw in our state's new teacher program (TEAM), as well as my final semester of graduate school. Now you're giving me more kids? It felt like the straw that broke the camel's back. I was done. Defeated. You win.
But as I squeezed in with Max's parents in the small cafeteria audience, and the raspy voices of middle schoolers began to sing about leprechauns and rainbows and pots of gold, I forgot all about the load I was carrying. I watched some of my former students take the stage with ease and confidence. I chatted with parents about their successes, and I saw their smiles as they updated me on the ins and outs of middle school life. I remembered then that nothing else really matters. Common Core, reading levels, math scores, class size, SBAC, Teacher Evaluation, TEAM, research papers... Those things don't matter to my students. What matters to my students is that I care about them, that I support them, that I am always there to guide them. I realized that I was being tricked by data and paper work; people were making me think that quantitative data was what mattered. But let me tell you, there is something about a 7th grade boy leaping around the stage in tights, singing about getting back his "pot of gold"- that serves as a mighty reminder that in the end, none of the things we're worried about, matter. Kids go on, they grow up, they persevere, and they become leprechauns. It's our job to keep swimming, to keep our heads above water, and to hold on to the wreckage floating around us and not to abandon it for some seemingly "save-all" lifesaver float thrown hastily our way. We're teachers. We're improvisers. We're trailblazers. And even if we're not Olympic swimmers, we'll doggy paddle, and we'll do just fine.
A year later, another student, Max, invited me to his play, Finian's Rainbow. Max was a student who was shy and quiet and oh-so-intelligent. I was elated he had taken the risk of trying out for the play, and was even more excited that he made it! The day of the play, my third grade teammates and I got some of the worst news we could have gotten right before standardized testing (SBAC) was about to begin. We were getting three new students, one for each of us, in our already "capped" classrooms. This would put two of us over our contracted student capacity, and this was a tough group. We all left school that day feeling defeated. Between the implementation of the Common Core, new curricula, a new co-teaching model that wasn't exactly going swimmingly, the looming start of SBAC, Teacher evaluation, and in my personal world, let's just throw in our state's new teacher program (TEAM), as well as my final semester of graduate school. Now you're giving me more kids? It felt like the straw that broke the camel's back. I was done. Defeated. You win.
But as I squeezed in with Max's parents in the small cafeteria audience, and the raspy voices of middle schoolers began to sing about leprechauns and rainbows and pots of gold, I forgot all about the load I was carrying. I watched some of my former students take the stage with ease and confidence. I chatted with parents about their successes, and I saw their smiles as they updated me on the ins and outs of middle school life. I remembered then that nothing else really matters. Common Core, reading levels, math scores, class size, SBAC, Teacher Evaluation, TEAM, research papers... Those things don't matter to my students. What matters to my students is that I care about them, that I support them, that I am always there to guide them. I realized that I was being tricked by data and paper work; people were making me think that quantitative data was what mattered. But let me tell you, there is something about a 7th grade boy leaping around the stage in tights, singing about getting back his "pot of gold"- that serves as a mighty reminder that in the end, none of the things we're worried about, matter. Kids go on, they grow up, they persevere, and they become leprechauns. It's our job to keep swimming, to keep our heads above water, and to hold on to the wreckage floating around us and not to abandon it for some seemingly "save-all" lifesaver float thrown hastily our way. We're teachers. We're improvisers. We're trailblazers. And even if we're not Olympic swimmers, we'll doggy paddle, and we'll do just fine.
Amen Christal! This is exactly the type of post that keeps me going as I wait around for another round of parent teacher conferences to begin. As teachers, it is our job to bear the weight of all the (insert expletive here) that we have to put up with on a daily basis, that has no impact on our kids. Our kids cannot see the stress, because they depend on us to be composed and their advocates. And, they see us as just that. They see us as their friends, their pseudo-moms, their nurses, their playmates, and probably least of all, as a disseminator of Common Core standard based academics. This is the way it should always be.
ReplyDeleteSo true! Sometimes we need those moments to remind us that all we do it worth it and that it will all work out exactly how it is supposed to. It's funny that you wrote about going to see your previous students in their school plays, we just finished the Wizard of Oz at our school. All the stress of organizing the play while still teaching and dealing with all the extra work went away as I watched my students put on a fantastic performance Friday and Saturday. I could not have been more proud!
ReplyDeleteChristal, nice post. I completely agree we need to occasionally talk a walk around the building, refocus on the larger picture and avoid getting sucked into the daily minutia. Our kids (the personal ones and the professional ones) have very complicated and stressful lives as well and we absolutely have the opportunity to model for them how to manage all of that. It's one of those life lessons that is as important as the content on the SmartBoard. Nice post. Scott
ReplyDelete