Here I sit, at the conclusion of a much needed winter break in beautiful Akron, Ohio. I never really thought I'd miss the cold, snow and pains of a winter in Cleveland, but it's funny how half a year away from your home can do that to you. I had a two week break, and now sit at an airport ready to fly back and start off the second half of the school year tomorrow. I really do hope that things go better in the second half.
Going into teaching, everyone told me that the first year would be hard. I took this advice in stride, but told myself that I would be different. Looking back, I was so naive. I thought teaching would be busy, but not mentally exhausting in the way that it has been so far. The first half of my year in teaching has been so much more than I ever imagined it would be, and I am not even all the way into it yet.
Now that I have half of a year under my belt, I think that I'm ready to go. I have been a bit hardened up with the experience so far, but who wouldn't be? The challenge now will be to find the medium between being a controller and a nurturer, which is much easier said than done (trust me). However, I think I'm in a much better position to do that now than I was at the beginning of the year. With the way my program is set up, I won't have full control of my own classroom until next fall. So, ideally, I will be even more prepared when that comes around. People in my program like to complain a lot about things that could be going better, but I think we often fail to recognize how fortunate we are to be in a position where we can mess up a little bit and not feel the full repercussions. The idea is constant progress (oh hey, Pat Shurmur), and that's something I'm going to be working towards every day until the end of the year in late June.
With all that being said, I know that I wrote a lot of negative things in my last post about the situation that I'm in and how things aren't going well. While some of what I said was true, what's also true is that I need to stop bitching and buckle up. This was never going to be an easy experience in any way, and although things haven't played out like I've expected them to, there's no reason why I should stay unhappy out here.
For the next six months, in addition to becoming a better teacher, I also need to become a better person. That means taking advantage of all the opportunities that I have at my disposal out here in Washington. While I maintain that DC is overrated as a major city and it has not lived up to the lofty expectations I set for it, it is by no means a hell hole. On the contrary, the city has a lot of positives that I just haven't explored yet. One thing the city does offer as a major positive is the fact that it is huge. Although I don't know anyone else here right now, the fact that the city is so big makes it easy for me to join sports leagues or join other groups that share similar interests with me. With that in mind, I have signed up for two "social sports leagues" this winter -- football and basketball. Like any other city, DC is one that you just kind of have to make your own. While I haven't done that yet, my view of this city is much more clear with regard to what I'm getting into. I'm ready to jump into the deep end that is social life, in the water of complete strangers. Here we go.
In my last post I also complained a bit about my school. While I do wish that I had more things to do, I also need to be a bit more introspective and realize that a lack of control was one of the first things I consciously admitted I would probably be frustrated by...in June. As I move into January, I'm really excited to be taking over part of a "results" group and a pull-out math group. For non-education people, what this means is that I will have large control over lessons directed towards children who are really having a tough time. So, what I complained about less than a month ago was already solved. Related: I need to work on my patience. Anyway, working with these groups will allow me to have an incredible opportunity to make such a huge impact here, and I can't wait. Really, it's all I ever wanted all along.
It's also really important just to keep a sense of positivity even on the worst days. Working in a school, as a teacher, is a hard job. Naturally. However, what I need to do a much better job of is realizing how much worse it could be. That just doesn't apply to me, either -- pretty much everyone in my program and even my school needs to do better at this as well. Going off what I wrote in the past, it's kind of a natural tendency of humans to complain about things that aren't going well, as opposed to taking the same energy and breath to recognize what is. While I did vent and complain about things that I wanted to be different, what I have to realize is how much worse off I could have it. I am in an environment that supports its teachers, posts amazing test scores and gives children every opportunity to be successful and pursue their dreams, in a city where an idea like that holds as much life as Pat Shurmur's coaching career in Cleveland (OK, I'll stop). Meanwhile, in so many other schools across DC (which, by the way, has the lowest high school graduation rate in the country) teachers are not supported, there is no structure, and it's chaos. I could just have easily been placed in one of these schools, but instead I ended up at the #1 Public Charter school in the city. I am extremely fortunate to have gotten my winter break to be reflective and realize that, because I was admittedly getting very beaten down towards the end of the first half of the year.
Tl;dr -- This is not a worst-case scenario, by any means. I had a dreamy, blissful image of my time out in DC before I got here, and when it didn't play out like that, I got frustrated and whined. I am so excited for the second half of the year because I know exactly what I'm getting into now. There will definitely be bad days (who would have guessed?) and I'm ready for them. I have an opportunity to stop being a hermit, if I please (and I do) so that will alleviate many of the social/city problems I have here now. And I have an entire half of a year under my belt as a teacher. I made it to winter break. That's not something every first year teacher can say.
This job, and this experience, was and will continue to be very real. That's a statement that I might have uttered at the beginning of the year, but didn't really understand. I know now what this job entails, what I need to accomplish in school and what I need to do out of it in order to become the best person, role model and teacher that I can be. We start classes again tomorrow, and I am being given every opportunity to be successful and happy in the world I live in.
All I can do now is provide the same to these children.
-BD
