When I had my student teaching interview with my potential mentor teacher, I asked him if I could stop by the classroom a couple times during the semester. He seemed taken aback and then quickly agreed. This conversation happened on November 7th, a mere five hours before [insert euphemism for death here]. While I wasn’t able to visit his classroom as many times as I would have liked to and I didn’t have as much time this semester as I was expecting to, I decided to spend a whole day of my exam week hanging out with middle schoolers. My finals are pretty chill, and I wanted a dry run of what my life will be next semester.
I left my house at 6:50am and using the Grand Rapids public transit system (and my own two feet), I made to the school around 7:50. I was immediately enswirled in the chaos of middle school, a welcome relief from the rising panic that blossomed in my chest the moment I saw the middle school sign and wondered, “Can I really see students who are analogous to the ones Mom taught?” I surprised my teacher, who had forgotten I had planned on coming in, and got right into watching teacher–student interactions and tasting the school culture.
After he introduced me to homeroom and I spent the bible period listening from the back, I was talking nitty-gritty citation details and conferencing with students about the themes of dystopian novels. My mentor says he threw me into the class because I basically get paid to conference with college students (one student misunderstood what he said and exclaimed, “You get paid to go to college?!” My dude, I wish), but a part of me wonders if he would have done it anyway. It was definitely a learning curve going from college students who willingly come in for half an hour to eighth graders forced to care about a topic and talk to me, a stranger, for five minutes. I mostly realized this when I tried to help jumpstart a student thinking about her topic of control in The Hunger Games by saying, “Well, you can talk about how the control on Katniss makes her grow,” and she gave me a blank stare. I circled back around to her later, and it was clear that everything I had said went over her head. Looks like I still got a ways to go, even with the part of teaching that I am the most prepared to do.
I sat in on a team meeting, which was my first real time behind the teacher curtain fully. In teacher prep classes, it is all about you and what you want to do. In reality, you got a district, a principal, a grade-level team, and a specialty team plus you, all of whom have certain ideas about what is feasible with students and what isn’t. They came up with a plan to better support and push their students who aren’t getting their homework in on time and occasionally bantered with each other. It was clear they genuinely enjoyed each other’s company.
When I started down Burton at 3:35 pm, I was already exhausted. I had emails to reply to, people to message, rides to figure out, and a podcast to boot. The day felt so long, being in the same space for hours on end, but it also felt so packed. I had forgotten what it feels like to be a part of a whirling ecosystem—the slamming lockers and the blurred voices that all seem to ride on the same frequency. I also had forgotten what it means to see yourself acting in ways that clash with your own philosophies; at times, it felt like I was reliving my own middle school days where the jagged edges between who I acted like and who I felt I was inside screeched against each other all too often.
My dad has been unearthing some cards that she kept, and a couple were from me from middle and high school. In one written for my high school graduation, I said, “I think you may be the only person who truly knows who I am.” I don’t think that’s true anymore, but I do think she is the one who knows me the most (one day I’ll transition to past tense, but that doesn’t feel right currently. Maybe it never will.).
In some ways, I think I’ll be teaching in two shades this semester: my mentor’s and my mother’s. Obviously my mentor’s students respect the heck out of him and learn effectively from him, and I’m not about to (severely) rock the boat and disrupt routines. Despite my eighth grade year being eight or so years ago and the clear shift in what is emphasized in the classroom, I am sure I will find her teaching ideas undergirding and undercutting my own plans.
This next semester was already going to be far from easy, and life has only doubled down, but strangely I’m feeling more hopeful and grounded than ever before. It’s like I’m about to take that first step on a hike that I know is hilly and confusingly marked, but I’ve purposefully left my compass and map in the car. I know I’ll get lost in the plains of Deerfield, NH for a day or two or sixty, but I also know there are other maps in those plains, in the streets of Grand Rapids, in the skies of my dreams, just waiting to be charted. I can’t find my own path when I’m tethered to the footsteps of my mom, and maybe it’s time for me to accept that having my mom’s face and mannerisms and carrying her torch of hopes does not mean I have to match her career.
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