A Letter to Teachers Newer Than I - For the new school year

            Before I begin, let me say, that this is merely a letter. It claims to be neither words of advice nor wisdom. I am no master on the topic of teaching. I do not know if I will be in the profession for decades to come. Assuredly, I will not, any time soon, be making the pages of Fred Jones’ next book on America’s most innovative educators. But I am a person who struggled, a lot – much more than I expected – with beginning the profession of teaching. I know that others struggle too, though doubtless some who read this, those for whom teaching comes more naturally and quickly, might find my questionable mental state in this blog post alarming and disconcerting. There is some truth telling that will take place here. Consider this, above all, a letter from a colleague – if you are a teacher. And perhaps a letter from a colleague even if you are not a teacher, because we have, most of us, been new and awkward and overwhelmed by a job or some other important life experience at some point. We are friends now, for the experiences we share. Consider it a letter that is meant to be in part a platform for my own soul to vent, and in other part, one of sympathy and understanding for what you might be going through. All that I really want to say, after all, to both of us, is that things will get better
             I’ll never forget the emotional trauma that used to sweep over me any time someone started in on how much easier teaching gets after a few years. I remember my credential school year when I’d smile bravely and shrug off those types of comments, hoping to maintain my façade of self-assurance, as though it didn’t matter to me if my life got easier in one year or in twenty years. I’d be okay either way, my shrug said,  because my undying passion for the  profession, my selfless adoration of children, and my profound vestment in the future of our society could carry me through anything unscathed. None of it was even bothering me now, I suggested. My deep physical and emotional exhaustion, my perpetual awkwardness, my chronic confusion over acronyms and school procedures and politics and even my colleagues’ names, my feelings of inadequacy in the classroom, my certainty that I was, in fact, making my students dumber, my inability to feel confident even in the one area – academics – that I always had (I was getting my Master’s at the time), the shock of being treated horribly the first few times by an angst-ridden adolescent. None of these – I suggested – were making me at all doubtful of my chosen profession, none of them were burning me out, or making me want to run away to a farm in the countryside and forget children ever existed, none of them were having anything but a positive effect on me because, after all, I was sacrificing myself to the Future of America and happily fulfilling my Societal Duty to my Fellow Man.

But my heart sank every time. Behind my carefully manicured façade, my entire being cringed at the unwitting good intentions of the people who talked to me about teaching. Because unfortunately for their good intentions, they did not know that others had already been where they were going…and had delivered different messages. My first encounter with the impossible numbers game of how-long-do-you-have-to-suck-it-up-before-this-actually-becomes-managable came from a professor I had during my student teaching. Her comment actually did lift my spirits at the time. “It gets better after the first year,” she told me knowingly. And I felt a gentle wave of relief wash over my soul adrift. A year wasn’t forever. I could doggy paddle for a year.

It wasn’t until several weeks later, when one of my master teacher’s got ahold of me that I recognized this numbers game for what it was – a well meant – and completely unrealistic – gesture passed from one person who felt sympathy to another who looked like a drowning cat “After THREE years of teaching,” my master teacher assured me, “you’ll feel like you have finally gotten into a rhythm and you’ll be fine.” Three years?! At that point I didn’t actually care how long three years even was, I only knew that it was three times longer than the original quoted estimate of my sentence.

If only my principal had never tried to help. Now, I absolutely adored the principal at my first school. He was kind and communicative and supportive. His philosophy of teaching aligned – for the most part – with my own. He was easy to talk to and easily accessible. He was beloved by students and teachers and parents. He was warm and funny and likable. And, in a meeting I had with him at the beginning of my first year, he was trying to be helpful. He smiled at me from across the table, “How’s it going?” he asked brightly.

“Great,” I grinned back, though it wasn’t.

“Are you feeling overwhelmed,” he asked?

“Nope,” I lied.

“Are you feeling supported?”

“Very much so,” I reported with relief, because that, at least, was true. What we all know as new teachers is that we (as new teachers) are never going to feel perfect or underwhelmed or put together. But we don’t need to overshare this information every time anyone gives us an opportunity because it’s not a great way to keep friends. And what we also know is that having a good team to work with, though it cannot save us, is such a huge blessing – we’ve heard the horror stories! – and can go a long way in convincing us to convince ourselves to stick it out.

My principal, as if he knew what I was actually feeling (he’d been a new teacher once, too, I suppose), said, “My wife’s a teacher too. She says that after FIVE years you really get a handle on the job and love what you’re doing.”

Five years. It was almost too much. Where had my original 365 days gone? In five years, I’d be ready for my third midlife crisis, or I’d be pregnant, or I’d be whatever’s left of a human being after five years at a job that she doesn’t “have a handle on.” Five years his half a decade. Half a Decade. This is what I wanted to yell at him from across the table. But his face was so earnest – he really was trying to be helpful. And I refused to be the teacher who starts crying in the principal’s office. I refused,  I refused, I refused. So I didn’t stop smiling. I tucked the corners of my mouth up behind my ears and pulled tight to keep them from sliding downward. To stop smiling would be to cry. To stop smiling would be to fail.

“That’s good to hear,” I finally risked opening my mouth a crack to say.

            This year, my fourth year of teaching, just a few days ago, in fact, I sat down with my fellow 9^th grade team member to talk curriculum. She came into teaching late in her career and she is wonderful and I think we’re going to get along great. We spent some time bonding over the struggles of being an introvert in the teaching profession. She told me it took her ten years to be comfortable as a teacher. I thought to myself that I must lack stamina because there is almost nothing in the world that would keep me at a job for nine years without feeling comfortable or competent. But she didn’t scare me. It seems the fourth year, for me, is the golden year. Not that I’m trying to jump the gun. I’m just starting my fourth year and I’m at a new school in a new state, so there’s no doubt that I’m still in way over my head. But I also just spent two weeks at professional development, and a new teacher orientation, and welcoming my new students and I didn’t panic once. Not once. Not even when I realized that summer break is really and truly over. Not even when I realized that I’m in Kansas for goodness sake. Not even when I filled a binder on the first day with names of people and resources that I will never ever remember even if I study them for an hour every night. Not even when I learned I had to turn in lesson plans to my department chair on a weekly basis, or that I have two formal observations this year as a teacher new to the school. And I’m taking this as a good sign. Because last year, and certainly two years ago, I would have been in the fetal position in bed with tears streaming down my face. (Don’t laugh – it happens.)

            I cannot tell you when you will finally get comfortable at teaching. When you will love it. When it will feel like you’re in the right place. When you don’t wake up before the rooster crows kicking yourself for doing it, groping for a cup of extra strength coffee, last night’s late night lesson plans still bouncing painfully around in your brain like a hangover. What I can tell you is that each year gets better. Significantly better. Better enough that, even if it’s not great, you are so grateful that it’s not last year that you can get through it. And enough of those betters will eventually get you to a place where you love your job and where, on some days at least, you feel good at it. Wait, did you think this was going to be a pep talk? I said I was in my fourth year of teaching, not that I’m the Dalai Lama! Teaching is hard. But you can do it. I know this because nobody goes into teaching with their shoes tied on right. Some of us have left on right and right on left. Some have laces criss-crossed. Others one shoe tied to the other. Some haven’t even mastered the art of Velcro yet. Nobody just walks right in on the first day with perfect pumps and the confidence to wear them. We are all a mess. But there are still thousands of amazing teachers roaming around the country, all of whom must have been new at one time. That’s how I know we’re going to make it. If we want to, we’re even going to be amazing.

            And another thing: don’t believe that you have to have a bottomless personal pocketbook to be able to do creative stuff in your classroom. I don’t know if any other new teachers are as alarmed as I was by all that talk of teacher’s paying for their own supplies, but I have to admit, when I first started teaching, it really bothered me to hear how much other teachers spent on their classrooms and students. I felt like I was already giving every last bit of my exhausted self to my profession, to the point where I was having diminishing returns. The one small reward I was afforded was the money I made to pay my rent and buy a beer on Friday night – a beer which I had never even needed before. So it outraged me to hear people say things like, “Oh, I just buy all the stuff I need for my class,” or, “They don’t pay for that. You just have to buy it yourself.” (Which, by the way, is, in my experience, generally untrue. I know some schools are hurting for resources and some schools are pretending to hurt for resources, but, though I know it happens from time to time, I’ve never been unable to acquire the supplies I needed for a class if I had a clear plan and justification for my supply needs and I asked [and was kind to] the right people.)

            This year, I have spent a couple hundred dollars of my own money on my own profession in the first two weeks of work. It’s from my budget – I’m not going bankrupt over it or anything. But the spending doesn’t seem like such a burden to me now, or like so much salt in a wound. I think the more teaching becomes a part of you, the more fulfilling it becomes, the easier and more natural it is to invest back into it – whether that investment involves spending actual money or, probably more significantly, investing more time getting to know your students, or more effort in creativity. Don’t think that being a teacher in this climate means having to spend your pocket money on your kids. It doesn’t and I’m proof. You should only be giving as much of yourself to the job as you feel good about giving – and I’m not just talking about money. Don’t worry that it’s not enough. The more you grow into your role, the more of yourself you’ll be able to give.

            Speaking of investment, here’s the only piece of advice I actually will give you, because I really think it’s true. Invest, first and foremost, in yourself. New teaching is just like any new relationship: you have to work really hard to not lose yourself in the collective “us.” And, as irony will have it, you will likely tend to lose yourself in your efforts to be a better teacher to your students, but will inevitably find that you are unable to be a better teacher – or a better person – when you’re not nurturing the things that make you uniquely you. You cannot spend the entire weekend lesson planning and grading. You will need to. You will be stressed and overworked on Friday afternoon and you will think that you absolutely must finish up your work over the weekend or else Monday will be hell. Here’s the dirty secret: no matter how long the weekend is, you will never finish your work. It doesn’t happen. In the history of teaching, it has never happened. But you will lose yourself. Because, despite your students’ best convictions, there is more to you than lesson planning and grading. There is the athlete and the friend and the reader and the adventurer and the gambler and the movie watcher and the beach goer and the wine taster and the dog walker. And those parts of you need you too. And those parts of you are also never done.

            I’ve come to the disheartening conclusion that to be the best teacher in the world, you must be the most interesting person in the world. That’s, basically, in a nutshell, what the job demands of you. I know with certainty that I am, in fact, not the most interesting person in the world. But I must at least be interesting enough. And there’s nothing that turns a person into a Big Dull Dud faster than grading papers all weekend, every weekend. Trust me. I’ve been there. I have a shirt from that trip. You cannot simultaneously be a Big Dull Dud and an Invested Teacher. You will wear yourself thin until there is nothing left of you to give. Invest in yourself. Papers will wait. Word documents too. Student emails. Even angry parents will wait. And while they wait, your brain will have some time for the creativity that it couldn’t get in during the crowded week. The creativity that will make you breathe easier and do better, both as a person and a teacher. Interestingly, this is the quote that came up on my phone’s daily quote widget just before I posted this blog entry: “It is not enough for the teacher to love the child. She must first love and understand the universe. She must prepare herself, and truly work at it.” (Maria Montessori).

With my sincerest sympathy and sincerest congratulations that you have chosen this profession,

Roya

ETSB (English Teacher Scraping By)