What follows is a selfish evaluation of teaching from an overall perspective on life and happiness. I have been starting to think of teaching as it might fit into my life, and so the thoughts here are about happiness and lifestyle choice and how teaching fits, and not just on teaching, as it is.
(Ben, you do not have to read all this. Seriously.)


Usually my weekends are packed. For a while, we had tutoring for state tests on Saturday mornings. Sometimes we have class for teacher corps, sometimes I visit friends, and there's always lots of work, and I need some time, too, to be still. I don't usually have time to be bored, though, or lonely. It's funny, to escape the isolation and when I really want a break from work, I fill the time with sensory input, I fill my space with other people, and I leave little time to be what I am when nothing and no one else is around. What are we when we stop being distracted by everything else?

Anyway, this weekend I don't have plans except to stay here and get some work done. Last night was a little heavy, in a sense, with nothing very immediate to look forward to, but it created the space for me to stop looking around for happy distractions and find my own groundings again.

This morning my roommate let me give him a half-hug without looking at me funny (we have really different personalities. I like touching people as part of communication, especially when I am comfortable- though I am pretty careful about it- and he usually likes to have some space), and we had a conversation that got me thinking.

I was thinking, and have been for a few weeks, I think, that I might stay in teaching, or at least in education, and use it as a spring board, as a starting point for other projects and ideas that I have occasionally thought of trying, just to see how much I could do, how much of an impact I could have, to see if any of my crazy ideas would actually be useful for anything.

That's really only a small part of it. Part of it is that I can't see myself doing anything else. The thought of working for institutions for any large portion of my life makes me cringe, and there's something in my mind that always wants to bail out, to get away, to not allow anything to gets its chains on me. I don't like being confined, stuck, restricted. I have an overpowering distaste- to the point of shudders and violent mental protest- for rules, for strict straight lines, for following guidelines and requirements, for boundaries, conventions...etc. I think that a lot of us do.

And it feels like settling, like caving in, like compromising- just a little- to say that I will stay in education. Besides, I hate the idea of education. I don't like it in concept. I don't believe that everyone should have to know the same material for any reason whatsoever. I do love language, and I think that people deserve- if they want it- the opportunity to learn to read, write, find information, do mathematics. I think people should have the resources to pursue whatever they want to, including learning, and that means that teaching and education still have some role, somehow, in society as I believe in it as a concept.

The world is not perfect. Education is not set up in a way that I believe in, and it is certainly not fair. Often people do not grow up with the resources- emotional, physical, etc.- to really think about themselves, I think, and what they want for themselves. Or maybe I'm way off base here.

Still, I cannot "fix" (according to my ideas, I mean) the way everything is, the way the world runs, the way society is currently set up. Part of my brain says that nothing else would be OK, and that is the part of me that refuses to accept anything as the right job for me.

There's got to be a place to start. I still believe in lot of principles, ideas, concepts that are not expressed accurately or clearly through what I am doing right now. But there's got to be a starting point somewhere, right? There are many aspects of teaching that I think might make it, if not the right thing, at least a good thing, for me and the way I would ideally like to live.

1) Affecting people in an important, positive way. Something finally dawned on me this morning- probably as an outcome of many conversations with that same roommate, who has both confidence in himself and also real faith that we are useful, that we are doing something good, that we matter to these kids (it doesn't seem like that sometimes to listen to him, but he really, really does, and it comes out when we talk about future plans, ideas, about life). As part of his confidence, maybe, he really believes that the role of one person is important, that by our actions we influence the world, that we can influence the world positively, and that this is one of the most important things in life, and the thing you should do that will leave you with no regrets.
I guess it just became clear to me that our actions really do matter. (I mean, I thought so before, but I don't think I fully believed that we could change anything. For so many years, everyone kept telling me that I was foolish and idealistic and young and that I needed to grow up and stop thinking that I could change the world. They really got to me for a long time.) It became clear that we can have an impact, and that there are millions of options for how to do that. And teaching is one of them. It might not be absolutely the most powerful (I mean, compared to being a legislator or lobbyist or taking some other powerful role), but it is a starting point.

To summarize all that: I have often been turned off to service because of this feeling that there is so much wrong, and there is so much hurt, and there is no way that I could actually fix any of it. I think I realized that we actually can make a difference. We can choose to be a part of something we believe in, to contribute in a way that we believe will matter. And we can make a difference, and that confidence can lead to ideas and projects and eventually we realize that we can do anything. People do amazing things. Why not us?

2) I like the freedom for thought that teaching gives you, the openness. We are definitely very busy, but there are also a lot of stimuli, emotion, personal and professional growth. From the chaos, a certain freedom is born. Teaching is an experience the tangles you up, that makes you question, that offers perspective. Even if I am stressed out a lot of the time- and hopefully the stress will go down a bit with experience- I am awake, I am alive, I am thinking. I am coming up with new projects and thinking of possible ways to make things better. When you see something wrong, and it is something important and something you care about, it is certainly stressful, but it also creates unlimited possibility.

3) And then there are the summers for breathing. Honestly, I am not OK right now. I need a break. I don't feel like myself and I don't feel human anymore. But I can have it. I can get into my car and disappear from the face of the earth for a month and not tell anyone where I'm going if I don't want to and turn off my cell phone and go the woods or the mountains and the ocean and sit there and look around and not speak or listen to anyone speaking. I wonder if I could function in another kind of job where I would not have that. I know that this is selfish, and a selfish reason to like teaching, but wrong or not, it is self-preservation, and I am not going to sacrifice certain parts of myself if I don't have to. I am not going to sacrifice childhood if I can avoid a situation where I will not have the space to exist.

Also, summers can be used for a project or two, or to read, or keep learning, or pick up an instrument or a language or four.

4) Financially, I feel like I can live with the kind of lifestyle I want on pretty much what I make now. I don't want to have kids- I don't know why, and I can't explain, because I really love children and they are made of happiness and light- and I don't want to settle anywhere long enough to buy a house. I don't ever want to be still. I would rather continue seeing new cultures, seeing different lifestyles, how people in different places live and the choice they make or do not make. I don't have any desire for anything big and expensive. The only thing that I really want for myself is my freedom- really that is the most important thing that makes money necessary at all, and that is even questionable as some extremes. I want to travel, which is part of freedom. I am so, so tired of missing people. And I realize that there is no way to be everywhere. You will always miss someone someplace, and people will never stay where you leave them, and there is no one and nothing you can keep, and moments that were everything exist still only in your precious memory. People move on and have new lives and our childish hearts still cling. And that pain, the empty space that love creates, that magic leaves when it flies away, the beauty would be incomplete without that. Still, I want to travel. I don’t want to be stuck here. If nothing changes, it seems that I have enough financial freedom right now to save for a plane ticket to just about anywhere, if I wanted to. That’s actually a rather important freedom, for me.

5) Nothing I can imagine will keep you as caught up in your job, as concerned and as obviously doing something important as teaching can. You work for the kids. Your obligation is the kids. Of course what you do is important. Of course you are affecting someone, even if it doesn’t feel that way. I can think of few other jobs that are like that. Most jobs, I think, have you in some way or another contributing to the making of money for someone already rich and maybe providing some small service or product that does not require your special touch.

I don’t want anything to be wasted. Especially passion. It would be like dying.

Anyway, again, the biggest issue is being free and feeling free to come up with ideas, travel, try projects, see where your ideas and aspirations can lead. Maybe this will be OK. (If you have actually read all this- thoughts?)

I've said it before, but recently reading one of the blogs of the graduating second-years (again, at 4:00 am when I woke up to work) reminded me and now leads me to restate my case and add some thoughts.

He mentioned in his entry that what we do will hopefully be a chance, for some, at things beautiful and true that they would not otherwise have experienced, and therein is his cause for the work we try to do. He also mentioned that he is not sure he likes who has had to become to be effective in his classroom.

I could not agree more. Also, I started this partly to challenge my own notions, ideas and ideals. I believe in true things and beautiful things as pretty much the reason for living- at least, I think that's the best way I can describe it. Except everyone told me that the world is ugly and I am blinded and foolish and sheltered, and of course they were correct. I think that some part of my motivation for starting this was to test my boundaries on that, to see how my little sense of existence would hold up to a battering from a place where people never really had the opportunity to find their own sense of existence and happiness.

It has definitely been a battering so far. To even try to do a good job at my job, I had to abandon my usual approach to interaction in a way that I would not say I agree with. I don't really believe, in theory, that it is good for people to experience yelling, coercion to do what they don't want to through rewards and punishments, to maintain isolation from the actual human being behind their supposed role models. All of these things have proven to be important in the classroom. Intrinsic motivation is a fantastic idea, but if we are influenced by our environments right from the start, and they tend us toward turning off of education completely, shutting off chances to open up our minds, to get out of a bad situation, then is it really the person who has chosen? Or is it a survival response that has been programmed nearly since birth? What if a person has not been offered enough resources to see beyond the immediate influences and often inflicted restrictions of their experience to even decide what is real about them and what they truly want? Is it wrong or condescending to a culture to try to offer- and it seems like sometimes we even force- new ideas and alternatives?

As far as my faith in beauty, anyone who knows me knows that it has anything but dissolved. Honestly, I feel that as strong or stronger now than ever. Especially in contrast to dark realities- which can be overwhelming at times- beauty and spark and passion seem all the more sweet. There is some frustration and a lot of sadness, though, in not being able to share or give happiness to people who deserve and seem to cry for it, even though trying to share that or give that is probably crossing boundaries, getting too personal, trying to give ideas. That's actually been a struggle for me, too. I know that my job is to teach biology and chemistry, but I sometimes (usually only when prompted) will give my ideas about certain things, like being different and pursuing passion, and I can't help but feel like that matters more. I don't think I've crossed too many boundaries with it, even when I've talked with students at length, but that doesn't mean I haven't. I figure, if they didn't want to know, they would stop asking or they wouldn't listen. After all, they've had they're whole lives for other people to fill them with ideas, a few new ones can't hurt, right?

Regret, reflection, suggestion

I should be working. I should be organizing. I should at least be making a list. I'll get there, really. Tonight might be one of those rare nights I succeed in not sleeping. Maybe. At least, I feel good now. Anyway, let me get this out of my head first. It will be at least one thing actually done.

In the chaos that we call "school" right now, there is very little that feels under control. It's somehow soothing to look back and try to come up with ways I'm going to fix this next year.

Some ideas have been slowly coagulating from the fragmented soup of thoughts currently stewing where I can't turn them off....sooo...another bunch of regrets, reflection, suggestion

1) A little at time. When I started teaching, I picked up an after school activity for every day except Saturday, and only because we often had to be in class on Saturdays. It wasn't worth it. My kids didn't get as much out of me because I burned out on it after a few months, the kids started to loose interest, I didn't really feel like I knew what I was doing with any of the activities (ACT preparation, Creative Expression Group, Journalism). I do wish that I had coached. I think its better to get yourself organized, get on your feet first, set up a schedule for getting (at least most of your) work done, then try channeling your frustrations at all the broken things by choosing one program to start with that your kids might like, or one activity you could supervise, and go from there. At the same time, something like coaching can burn you out by itself from what I've heard, but be very worth it.

On a side note, I'd really like to teach AP Biology next year, but wonder if I am prepared to do it justice, even if I spend the whole summer planning. One quarter of the time is supposed to be in lab, and we don't have any of the necessary resources, except some microscpes (which is something), and right now it looks like I will also have two other preps. Two school-assigned preps is an improvement over this year, and I'm wondering if it's stupid to try a third, again. My classmates/roommates/support group say "your crazy, don't do it". We're all mentally exhausted right now, though. Also, I need a long and detailed syllabus explaining how I will meet the AP requirements, I need to petition the college board to get the class registered, I need to get kids to sign up and get the counselor to rearrange the schedule, which is supposedly in progress, at least, I need to find out where the money will come from for these materials, I should probably take a training course but I selfishly don't want to sacrifice a week of summer that will probably be full of planning anyway. (I'm hoping that they don't change my classes on me at the last minute, because I want the planning to do some good. I'm wondering if I should ask them to sign something saying that I will only teach what they have told me I will be teaching before I sign a contract, if they are going to offer me one one of these days)

2) All of those times that everyone said take a break at the beginning of the year, I really should have listened. It does not pay off to pretend your OK so you can pretend to be competent when you're actually falling apart at the seams. Being honest with yourself and taking a day or two to get your act together, even by disengaging from work for a while, in hindsight seems like a good idea.

3) Life is easier when you're organized, obviously. I didn't realize how fast organization can fall apart as a teacher if you don't come up with a very good system for maintaining it, and then maintain it. Stuff to keep track of includes: attendance, student behavior (for documentation purposes), interactions with administration (which I wish I had tracked so I had evidence of what they said about what and when, because it would have kept my stress level lower since I could point out, if ever pressed, that I was following instructions), items loaned to other teachers, money spent on school supplies for tax purposes, textbooks given out, phone numbers and parent contact, grades of course (gradekeeper is great and only $20 for as many computers as you have, and also available on the internet), student folders, lots of other stuff I'm forgetting.
I am going to spend some time setting up new systems for dealing with all of this next year. Hopefully before I even leave for July.

Which brings me to something else. A suggested topic was what to do with summer. Here's another list, but these are only my ideas and I will not pretend to know what the best use of anyone's time is- this is what I'm planning on doing (except a little bit focused toward first years; it just happened, since I think first years read more blogs).

1) Set up a system for organizing. Think about how to keep track of all that information. Buy gradekeeper, or some other program. Buy small boxes meant for organizing index cards or some other method to keep track of phone numbers. Buy manilla folders and maybe one or two file boxes in case there's no personal filing cabinet (or lockable classroom) at school. (Okay, this is for me, but whatever works for you.)
2) Steal materials from other people, especially second years. Maybe even ask someone to e-mail their lesson plans as they write them, if they write full lesson plans. I think lots of us will be doing more of that this summer, actually, since we should hopefully have more time to think things through and will know more of what to expect.
3) Lesson plan. Even though (first year) summer feels crammed and is full of adjusting, as much as I didn't feel like extra planning on top of everything else this summer,that was multiplied by about a thousand for the school year. Actually, if you know what classes you will teach, I think just mapping out concepts on a calendar so you know what you need to cover when and in what order is really helpful. If you don't know how to do it, taking someone's recommendation for a good textbook and using that to plan is helpful for me.
4) Friendships begun over the summer ended up being really important to a lot of us, I think. Having a support group behind you makes it so much easier.

Oh my. Grading. Test-writing. Lists.

"She 17, got dem 17 inch rims, driving down the high way goin' 17, got 17 dollars in my pocket, went to McDonald's and it was 17 (???)......2.65 yo...

To say that my seniors are distracted is an understatement. I shouldn't, but I love it. It's completely disarming to notice that your "tough-as-nails" kids- especially the seniors, who had more armor to begin with- have somehow slowly turned into goofy, grinning characters.