For honesty's sake, here's this. God knows I'd rather not have it be known.

There are times and places when you look at your hands, at your heart, and at the work that you have done, and you realize, again, that you are not what you thought you were, or what you would like to be. Call it facing the brutal facts.

We begin believing that we are bright, that we are talented and strong, that we can change ocean tides if we try hard enough.
What shall we do when the ocean teaches us otherwise?

I see in spark and color, and live to find beauty, to get to the truth. Over and over again, I meet people who are professional and official and they are correct, and I stand corrected.

I don’t understand the interface between passion and discretion. I have been taught a lesson over and over that I have yet to learn, and maybe ought to start- people look down upon honesty, passion is ugly and pushes people away.

And then there is the teaching. I feel like tearing apart my classroom, taking it down, bit by bit. Take the posters off the wall, and the projects and models, and the vocabulary words in units on carefully placed pieces of colored construction paper, and the shoe bag full of sets of index cards, and the project graphs, and the desk with two lines of perfect paper stacks, one for each prep, and the baskets and lab books and marble jars and the curve of the desks and the boxes of tissue and the boxes of pencils sharpened after school to save time in class, and the blankets- blankets!- for creative use of space. I want to tear it all down, one piece at a time, and look at the shreds of it, and be satisfied at the honesty in the destruction, and then let someone else come in and do this the right way.

A very experienced woman who works for the state came in and watched as I taught my lesson in terror, and moved through my activities, trying to give the differentiated lesson they were said they were looking for (they ASKED for a show, in essentially those words). She informed me that I had moved on without them (they were answering the questions!- it’s 8:00 in the morning, what kind of response do you expect), and that they were not understanding me. Again, they ASKED for a show. Should I abandon my lesson plan right there in front of her?! They have never heard of transpiration before. Yes, it’s going to take some work. She didn’t like my index cards. She said I should have one set, only, of teacher-produced cards, maybe in the center of the room (WTF?) for them to come look at. She was four feet away from them. She couldn’t even see what my kids were writing on the cards. And she doesn’t even know my subject! Granted, she was probably right about the kids understanding, I was nervous as anything, and I don’t think I made a whole lot of sense. Also, I was teaching biogeochemcial cycles and I could not, for the life of me, figure out a particularly fun way to teach it. Neither could anyone else I asked. The ideas seemed fine, but didn’t sparkle much. I planned in my usual style, with short activities that are alternately student and teacher-centered. She said I should have had the kids present in groups, showing a human’s life cycle move through from a baby back to the ground, for the carbon cycle. How would that have been relevant? First of all, decomposition is only one part of the carbon cycle, and that would have taken the whole period, on one part of one cycle. There are four cycles I need to teach, and this is only one unit. Second of all, the life cycle bit would have been a waste of time, as far as I can see- again, it does not really have much relevance. I had already planned activities where they traced the path of one atom through the cycle in anyway they wanted, including being eaten by an animal (my kids chose big foot and godzilla) and eventually ending up back in the soil. We’d already done an example as a class. She never smiled for real, and it felt, from our first meeting, like she was looking for ways to tear me apart. Well, I did a great job of giving them to her. It was not a perfect lesson- again, I was terrified- but it felt like she ignored everything I did well.
For my structured interview, I came in with roughly 7 pages, single spaced, of answers to her pre-assigned questions (just in case I didn’t have enough other work to do to teach my classes, the portfolio the state demanded, etc.), as I was told I should, and documents to support my answers. As I tend to do, I got excited, and when she interrupted me to ask questions, I expanded, and talked about other lessons and ideas I had used, research I’d read, etc. I even ASKED if that was okay, or if, since I was graded on organization, I should stick to the questions I written, as written. She said it was fine. I left feeling good about the interview. In her evaluation, she said that I interrupted myself too much, and that I had not communicated effectively. If you want my scripted responses, tell me!!!
It seems like they saw none of the work I did, none of things I did right. Even those things they complimented did not really boost my score. It feels like they were looking for a way to mark me down, to humble me, in a sense. Or am I that far off track?
Enough excuses.
Again, I stand corrected.

We believe in the beginning that we are bright, and talented and strong.
What the hell am I doing here, if I can’t even do my job? Why has no one ever told me this before now? I have been evaluated a thousand times. Yes, I was nervous. They TOLD US that they wanted a show. Of course I was nervous.
I can barely breathe at home. It is too quiet, and there is no one to tell you that you are not as bad as you feel, and that you have some redeeming value, and you begin to realize that you are as bad as you feel. And then someone comes into your classroom and tell you that you are even worse that you thought you were.

If I am not doing this job well, then I am lying to everyone, especially those who had so much hope for us when we came here. People I hate to lie to.

The state has seen, in one terrified period (the other evaluator hardly commented, but I was nervous enough then, too), what they needed to see, and decided.

What do we do with the reality that we are not bright and strong and talented, with the reality that no one is interested in your passion, with the reality that your numbers on paper mean everything, that an hour, a moment means everything, that there are very few people who will ever return the love and the loyalty that you feel for them, that you are smaller than you believed, that the color and the spark are all in your head.

And if I can’t do this job well, then what? There is not a single thing that I have ever felt like I’ve done well, and now there is confirmation, and now I am supposed to drag myself and my kids across a finish line that they don’t even care to look for, without the support of an administration whose faith in me has no doubt been destroyed- I’ll be amazed if they even let me keep my Biology I classes.

I feel like I’ve been holding on so tightly, and I dropped everything anyway. I don’t want to see anyone, I don’t want to tell anyone, I don’t even feel like I deserve the support of my friends that is the only thing that gets me through my days and weeks and months- which were getting better, for a while. I was counting the relief of having the state out of my classroom. I was worried only about not scoring a 4.00. Now what?

Next morning notes:

Here’s what. I am going to plan a great next unit, and I am going to teach my classes, as long as they let me, and I’m going to have fun with it, and I am going to give my kids what they need from me- the kids that I have already begun to love-, for as long as I am allowed to, and I am going to ignore the men and woman in expensive suits walking in and out of my classroom. I’m sure they won’t like a single thing they see anyway, so I am going to teach my classes, my way. My kids tell me they’re learning, they tell me if they understood and if they didn’t, and my obligation here is to them, my kids. I do apologize for the bad mark on teacher corps, of which I am not proud. I have said before that I am honored to be part of this group, and I hate to be a weak link. I hate to have someone tell me that I am not even doing a good job at the job that is the only reason we are here to begin with.

I know that this is not such a terrible situation compared to all the possibilities out there, I know that life is not fair, I know that no more is expected of me than any other responsible adult, and I’m sorry for whining.

My administration is great so far this year, my assistant principal has supported me through every situation I’ve encountered, and it feels good to have that support. I respect him. My principal has really taken on a leadership role, listening to his staff and making corrections to the school. Last year, we had two massive gang fights/brawls/riots, resulting in many expulsions and some students jailed, and we had fights nearly every day, sometimes multiple fights per day. This year, we did not have a single fight the first nine weeks, and we have had only one since then. One fight. They’re doing something right.