Phlox & Zinnia

I’ve been teaching full time-ish since March 5th, teaching the persuasive spoken word unit that I created and refined with my mentor’s help. And honestly? I’m so tired. I don't know how I’m going to do this day in day out next year.

I haven’t taught my whole unit completely on my own. My mentor taught the first lesson because I was away on a required Calvin conference, and then a week later I left again to go to the Cs. But it’s my baby which I’ve been nursing since early February when a student off-handedly said, “Do you do spoken word?” and I laid in bed later that night and thought, “No, but you all could.” My baby who has grown and morphed from a perfect planned square garden to a community patch that has grown over all the seed markers and turned into a beautiful and frightening jungle, and I the frazzled and harried coordinator who wishes she could schedule the sunshine and the rain.*


There have been so many positives. Students who haven’t liked me taking over have kept mostly to themselves about it, and I’ve gotten a few comments from students asking if I’ll teach at the school next year. I talked with a student at lunch about Marissa Meyer’s Renegades series (which I have a lot of thoughts about), and then the next day she picked up the conversation again as if a day hadn’t passed. I got to hear a couple student poems as they presented (voluntarily!) in front of their classmates, putting their words and their thoughts out there for all to see. The staff has been really inclusive with me, and my mentor teacher has been supportive when wanted and hands-off when needed. My observations with Calvin professors have been nothing but constructively positive. I’ve really started to feel like I can see myself as a teacher.

But the other half of my title, the “student” part, is giving me some trouble. Every week I feel like I’m situating myself more and more in the classroom, and then something will happen that makes everything seem to fall down around me. Missing three days and jumping back in with little idea of where the students are. Days where students blatantly decide that the work time I’m giving them is their own time to waste. Lessons that I can’t seem to go right. Students who are shut off from me and refuse my questions. Uncertainty in my status in the eyes of a parent or administrator. Classes where I feel simultaneously frustrated at being treated like a student and others acting like students and then not being able to answer the questions or ask the questions I want to ask.


Being a student is being self-centered, especially in college. I’ve been in that mindset and culture for the last three years, and I would argue I had that self-centeredness as far back as middle school. There is something to be said about a community of learners (which I did participate in and as a professional would like to strive towards), but in the capitalist ranking culture of the United States being a student means making choices that benefit your own learning first and foremost. But being a teacher? It requires a lot of selflessness to give every ounce of your energy and time (and I mean every ounce.) to students when in school and when at home too. I’ve realized that I’m constantly on to make decisions and look out for the interests of my students and the school culture rather than my own. If a teacher is selfish, that means they aren’t doing what’s best for the students because what’s best for the students requires a heck of a lot of work.


I’m in the hyphen of student-teacher—I’m bouncing between these poles of selfishness and selflessness. I spent all day serving students and talking to them and planning around them, but when I’m alone, I’m consumed with thoughts of how I can do better, can be better, can plan better, can communicate better. It’s been pointed out to me that even though I’m focusing on me, that focus is for the good of the students, but that doesn’t make me feel any less selfish when all I can think to talk about is “This lesson went really well! This student won’t stop talking. I have to grade 5 papers today or I’m going to be behind. I’ve got to go to bed or I won’t get my 8 hours in.” Maybe I’m being hard on myself or dramatic, but I’m struggling in owning my identity as a teacher when I’m just not one yet, no matter how desperately I want to be.

I know these decisions that exhaust me now will become easier. I’ll find the grooves for lesson planning and thinking on my feet and then will be able to focus more on tailoring ideas more specifically to students. I know I will learn how to teach; I just wish I wouldn’t have to dissect my heart before I can confidently give its pieces to someone else.

I have one recommendation for you (maybe I’ve learned how to conclude my thoughts and I don’t need this section anymore—huh): Zooniverse. It’s a website where you can do some simple(-ish) tasks and help real researchers complete their research. For me, it’s possibly the most dangerous thing on the Internet I’ve found because it allows me to complete tasks quickly, which makes me feel good, and I know it is actually helped someone get something done. I’m a fan of the “Decoding Punch Cards” (all about WWI YCMA volunteers—who knew??) and the “Etch a Cell” projects, but you should check out some more.

*My proofreading brain is screaming that this is a fragment, but I can’t bring myself to care.

I’m currently living in my nerdiest of fantasies where I’m a Ph.D. wielding professor at a small university who teaches composition, current education theory, and high schoolers on the side and who is unabashedly and unequivocally adored by my students. This small university is grateful enough for me to send me to the greatest of rhetorical composition conferences—the famed Conference on College Composition and Communication, or the 4Cs. I meet up with my professor friends, watching each other give presentations on research and theories that we are backing and oohing and ahhing over the celebrities in the field that we spot in the 15 minute passing periods. In my dream vision, the secondary education pedagogy dovetails with the rhetorical composition research to burst into a beautiful theory bird that threads its music throughout the sessions I attend.


In an attempt to normalize my life, late November last year I wrote up a proposal to present my research at a poster session at some conference I didn't know anything about. Now I’m at the 4 Cs with my blue lanyard, talking to other people who care about writing, introducing myself to scholars who I cited in my thesis, and walking around Pittsburgh like I own the place.

It’s probably the most explicitly social-justice-committed place I’ve ever been to, from signs on the bathrooms saying that everyone is welcome to beginning each session with a land acknowledgment (which means naming the indigenous people who live on the land where the conference is) and a no-punches-pulled keynote about how well-meaning white people perpetuate white supremacy even when they think they are giving students the right to their own language. My liberal heart is bursting, and the more mainstream part is a little taken aback by it all. It feels like a lot of performative gestures (Kristine, that one was for you) but as they say, ya gotta fake it til you make it.

———

After being in a Christian school and going to a Christian college, I was actually surprised when I didn’t hear, “Let’s open in a word of prayer” from the first speaker. I had forgotten that people usually just start going into their speeches and don’t offer that kind of acknowledgment. Obviously I’ve been to other places where not everyone is Christian, and I don’t expect everyone to pray before everything, but it jumped out to me a lot more than it hard before. I realized I missed it—that routine, that nod towards God—and started to see that I actually do find some value in opening prayers.

As my roommate (another undergrad poster presenter) and I walked past the Catholic church next to our hotel, she asked, “Are you super religious?” While I should have expected the question after telling her about giving social media up for Lent and going to a Christian college, I stammered around the question. I had a moment the day before where I walked outside of the convention center and looked over the river that it bordered, and all I could think was “I miss you God.” I couldn't really make sense of that. So am I super religious because I think about God and give things up for Lent? “I mean, maybe? I think I want to be, but I'm just not there yet,” I said, unsure if that hedging answer was enough to edge me out of the “religious fanatic” category in her mind.

I had an amazing time, weird religious interludes aside. I bonded with my thesis advisor Kristine on our drives between Grand Rapids and Pittsburgh, ate a lot of all-American (read: all-greasy) food, visited some classrooms themed after different nations in University of Pittsburgh’s Cathedral of Learning, took public transit in Pittsburgh (I swear I saw a bus on every street every time I was walking because the buses are so dang frequent), and reevaluated my stance on Andy Warhol so now I just think he’s a (pack rat) little overrated rather than completely overrated.

I loved being at 4 Cs because it prompted me to come up with all these new ideas of how I can leverage writing theory in the classroom (writing fellows! Incoming surveys about genre experiences! Making the purpose of the assignment clear!*), but more importantly, it furthered my growing sense of professionalism. Being surrounded by people who were teaching and relatively situated in their field and the little tendrils of student teaching that followed me to Pittsburgh—mostly in the form of frantic student emails and digital check-ins via Google Classroom—both make me feel like I’m being propelled closer and closer to a new era of life. Maybe that era will continue in more 4 Cs conferences; maybe not.