Your life on MTC

Exhausting awakening disheartening heartening heart-wrenching destructive productive intimidating infuriating enlightening disenchanting enchanting .............................................

It's difficult to describe how an experience has affected your life while you are still in the very thick of it...when in fact the experience has become one of the defining elements of the current period of your life. Still a worthwhile question. Here's what I've got so far....

Stating the Obvious

When you enter the program and complete the first summer, you become a teacher. Some time during the first year, you really become a teacher (forgive me, guys), unless of course you've taught before.

Escaping the Obvious

I left college interested in the subject I studied, but without the kind of passion for it that inspires productive and lifelong dedication to the furthering of that field. (I was also interested in philosophy, poetry, literature, sustainable agriculture, peace and conflict studies, human development, kites, kittens, tree houses, etc.) The passion I had was overwhelming and impractical, and I didn't want to give it up. The job that I do now is creative, dynamic, exciting, enveloping, productive, and lets me have summers free (or somewhat). My kids are every kind of inspiring. (Hopefully they learn something, too.)

I left college as a messy ball of non-specific passion. Or at least, un-directed passion. I did not want to destroy writing for myself by making it my job, and yet........
I didn’t want to sell out, give up on everything that put fire in my veins.

Teacher corps and teaching especially has been, I think, very, very good for me.

I didn’t sell out. I just found a little more direction. It is amazing. My kids are amazing.

Destruction and Development

The exhaustion of my mind and heart that happened after a couple of months in my own classroom was actually the foundation of my growth. It’s not easy to explain, actually, but the experience itself is worth something.

To keep it simple, I was missing some important perspective when I left college. My competence and confidence have both benefitted from my teaching experiences, as has my ability to identify with the grown-up world in a way that’s healthy and doesn’t offend my sense of childhood.

Relationships

With my heightened confidence has come, I think, heightened ability to make myself vulnerable to other people, in friendship and in love. That’s something.

Summary

Teaching and teacher corps together have given me something I really needed, something I don’t know think I could have found almost anywhere else, or at least not as quickly. Being torn down and then recovering is in and of itself a rather remarkable experience, and full of growth My students and their culture taught me something else all over again, especially when I let them sneak into my life as I did, letting myself slip a little into the community. Pouring yourself into something eventually causes others to open up, a little only, to you. Finally, from the people in teacher corps- a group of very good people who I have been able to trust and love- I have learned a bit about people and their hearts, about how we relate to each other, why everyone disappears, and why it’s so hard to really get close (questions I have had for a long time). Most of that learning, being able to learn from people, I think, comes down to trust, to being close with people, and I think that maybe for a lot of us it was easier to trust people in this particular group, based on commonality of experience. Anyway, I worry about losing this group, and value all of the time we spend together. June was gorgeous, especially since we’d already known each other for a year. At least one more year of this, all together, and may this next one be as meaningful and fulfilling as the last, with more success.

Preventing first year burn-out

There’s no easy answer for this, of course, but there are actually some answers that are more feasible than many of the other daunting tasks we attempt. I actually believe that a huge part of this is simply being less hard on ourselves. The emotional repercussions of watching our own failure can really be one of the greatest obstacles to success, and I beat myself into the ground during the first months of school. (I tried to make up for an inadequate classroom by taking on three extracurricular activities at once- ACT prep, creative expression, and journalism on Sundays- as though offering the kids more options would in some way make up for all the ways I was failing them in the classroom. I think I also thought I could really do some good with all those activities. I might have done some, but it was not a good idea.)

Besides being less hard on ourselves, the two best ideas I have on this are that it’s important to keep up and to take a break. By keep up, I mean the important stuff. Grading, lesson planning, phone calls. Staying on top of that stuff helps to avoid some of the guilt and the burden of knowing that our time is not ours. We end up having to prioritize either way, and usually run into trouble of some kind, but staying organized makes a huge difference, and my systems of organization will be one of the biggest changes I make next year. (Systems in place ahead of time to keep track of attendance, bathroom passes, consequences, parent phone calls and phone number changes, student work, behavior problems, missed work and make-up work, class notes and assignments and homework assignments, extra credit, etc.) Even staying organized on a personal left has immense benefits for mental health, I think.

It’s been said a thousand times (Ben is a big fan of this one) but actually doing it takes some guts. The first time a took a day off, I used a personal day so I didn’t have to pretend I was sick when I needed to get car insurance during business hours (as it turns out this was not necessary), and I came into school for an hour in the morning and a half hour at the end of the day to talk with the sub, supervise my biggest class, and collect work at the end. As it turns out, some of our subs are really great, have been in the community for ages, and are well-respected by the kids. (This is especially the case if the sub is someone’s mama or sister, and very especially the case if that someone is a star athlete of some kind.) The Delta is interesting that way. Letting go was really hard for me, but especially during the long months, breaks keep you sane, and I should have taken more of them.

Actually, one last thing. Our relationships prove to be important factors in staying sane. Relying on each other is not a bad thing, and roommates or close teacher corps friends to talk to can prove to be a saving grace.

We've been done with summer school, and this summer's component of MTC, since Friday. I'm still in Mississippi, despite the many silent vows I have made to escape this state (both types) as soon as possible. I'm by myself, in the house in the Delta where I lived this past year. The place is cavernous, with wood floors and antiquated flowered wall paper and windows that are sealed shut but let in the light or dark from outside.

The evening is an alone kind of quiet that is sweet for one night, especially when you are missing friends and want to be alone to miss them, but becomes suffocating if it persists.
I decided to spend some in-between hours here, in the same place where I squirmed for months with eagerness for anything else.

There's thunder and rain pounding massive living room windows.
"If dreams were thunder, lightning was desire, this old house would've burned down, a long time ago".

I'm leaving tomorrow, rain or shine, in early morning when I still feel like the day is mine.