When I first started teaching, back in 1976, I remember actually getting excited in the days prior to the opening of school. I got butterflies and had sleepless nights in nervous anticipation of that first day and what the school year would hold for me, probably a lot like what the kids were feeling. I don't remember that changing in the years that followed. It sounds corny, but I have to say that I always truly loved teaching. I enjoyed the creative freedom, the intellectual challenge, and I sincerely savored the regular interaction with the kids. The best part of teaching is that no two days are identical. So much of the classroom climate depends on so many different personalities, it was impossible to predict how any single day would go. Never a dull moment...never. I loved that about teaching. That's right. I said "loved"--past tense. I recently gave up the classroom and while I've quit before, I think this is the final time.
I know what you're probably thinking. Uh oh...here it comes...the rantings of a jaded, burned out teacher. I remember, clearly, in the early days of my career hearing just such tirades spewing out of the teacher's lounge. I recall thinking to myself that there was nothing worse than a teacher that no longer enjoyed their chosen profession. They had a bitterness and skewed perspective on life that was difficult to be around, which is why I stayed away from the teacher's lounge--well, along with wafts of cigarette smoke and the smell of half eaten 3-day old donuts. To a young teacher with an excited lower G.I. and sleepless nights anticipating what laid ahead, it just didn't compute. Anyway, this blog will not be filled with bitching and kvetching. I promise.
The impetus for me--a non-writer--to start my own blog came in the way of an experience at Office Max the other night. I found myself behind what looked to be 2 first-year teachers. It was impossible not to overhear the excited chatter of the two as they surveyed their baskets full of supplies of which most would find their way to their classroom bulletin board before the first day of school. I definitely picked up on their excitement and it transformed back in time as I reflected on those "butterfly days of olde." It was weird. I wanted badly to reach out to them and identify myself as one of them. But, I really wasn't part of their tribe anymore and what would I say, anyway? Because my most recent experience in the classroom led me to leave teaching, I struggled for something I could say that would be positive about what they were in for.
My compulsion to reach out got the best of me and after making a respectable entree into their conversation, I found out they were part of the organization Teach for America. A sudden dread came over me as I realized it would be harder and harder to find a few encouraging words. This wasn't because of anything related to the organization Teach for America, but because I knew that teachers in this organization not only would be facing the toughest year of their lives as first year teachers in inner city high schools, but at the same time, they would be going to graduate school to complete their teaching certification. Ludicrous. That's the only word for whoever thought this process up. Ludicrous. I know. I taught in a graduate school of education where most of my students in the evening classes were first year teachers doing the same thing. Any teacher out there already knows what first year teaching is like. Add to that research papers and reading assignments and class projects. It was like teaching a class full of zombies.
(Where I'm going with all of this in my next post...)
