first year
life update
Teaching
It's Okay to Wish It Was Already Thanksgiving
On my twitter feed a few weeks ago, this article I had read last year, “Hey, New Teachers, It’s OK to Cry in Your Car” popped up. It focuses on this experienced teacher who sends motivational emails to teachers in order to “get new teachers to Thanksgiving Break.”
Getting to Thanksgiving Break has been the line that has gotten me through these last couple weeks.
One of the other new teachers at my school decided to leave at the beginning of November. After his decision was announced to the students, one of my middle school art students said to me, “Ms. Johnson, are you going to leave? Like Mr. __________ ?” It broke my heart as much as hearing another student tell me in the first week of middle school art that they “bully the new teachers.” I told them that no, I was not going to leave. Even after the class where I spent the entire time telling them to be quiet and ended with the school social worker stepping in and taking control of the class because they couldn’t get it together.
There have been decent days, for sure. Days where students have unexpectedly stepped up and helped me out, days where a student who has been flat-out ignoring every word I say actually does their work, and days where other teachers lift me up and tell me I’m getting there. Then there are the other days where students almost fight each other in my room because they don’t know how to process their feelings, days where there are crayons completely strewn over my floor, and days where I can’t even teach because I spend the whole class period waiting for students to stop talking and giving out warnings and calling parents.
While this job, being the long-term substitute art teacher with an advisory of 16 sixth graders who all currently hate me, has been tough due to its insubstantial nature, it’s also been a good area for growth. I’ve been telling people that it’s a nice way to learn classroom management because if we don’t get to the art, my heart isn’t super broken over it. It’s not like we missed out on reading a beautiful poem by Jacqueline Woodson or discussing the intricacies of the pantoum poetic structure exemplified by Sarah Gambito’s “Charlottesville Curriculum.” At the same time, I’m not motivated to get up in the morning by the subject material; often I have to tell myself that today is the day that my children will be the hardworking and thoughtful angels that I know they can be.
The biggest thing that I’m learning is that structure can be a powerful force for good. I’ve heard so much and learned so much about the broken structures in our society that perpetuate racism and inequalities—and I’m certain that I’m contributing to that broken structure in some way in the job I’m currently in—that I forgot that they could be leveraged for good. Last Friday, I sat down and made a schedule for my Saturday, detailing all the tasks I wanted to accomplish and the time I allotted for each. My seating charts actually took me two and a half hours rather than 45 minutes and I didn’t actually get around to planning my Sunday School lesson until Sunday morning, but just the act of committing myself to a plan motivated me enough to get a good amount done. Today I had the freedom to spend an extra two hours in the kitchen to make sourdough popovers just for the heck of it and to sit down and write this blog post that I’ve been meaning to write for the past two weeks. In conclusion, yay structure!
Lately I’ve been finding myself going back to some bad habits of using the internet to avoid thinking about my problems and/or doing my work (sorry Mrs. Elliott—I know you are rolling in your grave over that slash usage). I’ve been using sites like “What Color is It?”, “Liquid Particles, ” and “Do Nothing for 2 Minutes” to break me out of that self-destructive cycle, and it’s actually been pretty effective. I give myself a moment to breathe, reset, and figure out what I’m going to do. I’d highly recommend this: find a site that you can visit when you need to signal to yourself to take a break and bookmark it so you can find it easily.
Overall, I’m making it. Sure, I’m not actually teaching a lot, and there are a lot of kids who strongly dislike me at my school, and I feel like I’m still learning the practices that I should have gotten the hang of by the first week, but I’m going to make it to Thanksgiving Break. And maybe when I’m actually able to get the students to listen to me, I’ll be able to take a critical look at my school’s philosophy of discipline and my own method of teaching. Until then, I’m hanging on by the skin of my teeth and the little victories that pepper my days.
Recommendations:
I recently discovered that Shane Claiborne, Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove, and Enuma Okoro’s Common Prayer book that I try to read as a daily devotion is online, meaning I can worship without leaving the comfort of my bed. This probably isn’t as good for me as I think it will be, but it also means that you all can experience the wonder that is daily common prayer.
I’ve been cooking a heck of a lot and trying out new recipes, but the best by far was the house dinner that Shira and I made with Malai Kofta Potato Dumplings and vegan Palak ‘Paneer’. We probably used 75% of our kitchen’s dishes and spent two hours making it and a vegan carrot cake, but it was so worth it.
The Toll, The Starless Sea, and The Queen of Nothing are all coming out this month! And I have all of them on hold in the library and with my luck they’ll come in when I’m on Christmas break! But that’s okay because I’m so dang excited to read all of them!!!
Did I recommend you read Oculus by Sally Wen Mao? Because you should.
Buzzfeed had this amazing article about how social media algorithms and backlogs of TV shows has messed with our sense of time—just be prepared to hold up your hand to a really annoying gif on the side of the first third of the article.
I saw Lucy Dacus in concert—please listen to Fool’s Gold and Pillar of Truth—and Liza Ann, an artist who was in my huge playlist that I deposit people who I eventually want to listen to, played this great song “I Love You but I Need Another Year” that I cannot stop listening to.
Getting to Thanksgiving Break has been the line that has gotten me through these last couple weeks.
One of the other new teachers at my school decided to leave at the beginning of November. After his decision was announced to the students, one of my middle school art students said to me, “Ms. Johnson, are you going to leave? Like Mr. __________ ?” It broke my heart as much as hearing another student tell me in the first week of middle school art that they “bully the new teachers.” I told them that no, I was not going to leave. Even after the class where I spent the entire time telling them to be quiet and ended with the school social worker stepping in and taking control of the class because they couldn’t get it together.
There have been decent days, for sure. Days where students have unexpectedly stepped up and helped me out, days where a student who has been flat-out ignoring every word I say actually does their work, and days where other teachers lift me up and tell me I’m getting there. Then there are the other days where students almost fight each other in my room because they don’t know how to process their feelings, days where there are crayons completely strewn over my floor, and days where I can’t even teach because I spend the whole class period waiting for students to stop talking and giving out warnings and calling parents.
While this job, being the long-term substitute art teacher with an advisory of 16 sixth graders who all currently hate me, has been tough due to its insubstantial nature, it’s also been a good area for growth. I’ve been telling people that it’s a nice way to learn classroom management because if we don’t get to the art, my heart isn’t super broken over it. It’s not like we missed out on reading a beautiful poem by Jacqueline Woodson or discussing the intricacies of the pantoum poetic structure exemplified by Sarah Gambito’s “Charlottesville Curriculum.” At the same time, I’m not motivated to get up in the morning by the subject material; often I have to tell myself that today is the day that my children will be the hardworking and thoughtful angels that I know they can be.
The biggest thing that I’m learning is that structure can be a powerful force for good. I’ve heard so much and learned so much about the broken structures in our society that perpetuate racism and inequalities—and I’m certain that I’m contributing to that broken structure in some way in the job I’m currently in—that I forgot that they could be leveraged for good. Last Friday, I sat down and made a schedule for my Saturday, detailing all the tasks I wanted to accomplish and the time I allotted for each. My seating charts actually took me two and a half hours rather than 45 minutes and I didn’t actually get around to planning my Sunday School lesson until Sunday morning, but just the act of committing myself to a plan motivated me enough to get a good amount done. Today I had the freedom to spend an extra two hours in the kitchen to make sourdough popovers just for the heck of it and to sit down and write this blog post that I’ve been meaning to write for the past two weeks. In conclusion, yay structure!
Lately I’ve been finding myself going back to some bad habits of using the internet to avoid thinking about my problems and/or doing my work (sorry Mrs. Elliott—I know you are rolling in your grave over that slash usage). I’ve been using sites like “What Color is It?”, “Liquid Particles, ” and “Do Nothing for 2 Minutes” to break me out of that self-destructive cycle, and it’s actually been pretty effective. I give myself a moment to breathe, reset, and figure out what I’m going to do. I’d highly recommend this: find a site that you can visit when you need to signal to yourself to take a break and bookmark it so you can find it easily.
Overall, I’m making it. Sure, I’m not actually teaching a lot, and there are a lot of kids who strongly dislike me at my school, and I feel like I’m still learning the practices that I should have gotten the hang of by the first week, but I’m going to make it to Thanksgiving Break. And maybe when I’m actually able to get the students to listen to me, I’ll be able to take a critical look at my school’s philosophy of discipline and my own method of teaching. Until then, I’m hanging on by the skin of my teeth and the little victories that pepper my days.
Recommendations:
I recently discovered that Shane Claiborne, Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove, and Enuma Okoro’s Common Prayer book that I try to read as a daily devotion is online, meaning I can worship without leaving the comfort of my bed. This probably isn’t as good for me as I think it will be, but it also means that you all can experience the wonder that is daily common prayer.
I’ve been cooking a heck of a lot and trying out new recipes, but the best by far was the house dinner that Shira and I made with Malai Kofta Potato Dumplings and vegan Palak ‘Paneer’. We probably used 75% of our kitchen’s dishes and spent two hours making it and a vegan carrot cake, but it was so worth it.
The Toll, The Starless Sea, and The Queen of Nothing are all coming out this month! And I have all of them on hold in the library and with my luck they’ll come in when I’m on Christmas break! But that’s okay because I’m so dang excited to read all of them!!!
Did I recommend you read Oculus by Sally Wen Mao? Because you should.
Buzzfeed had this amazing article about how social media algorithms and backlogs of TV shows has messed with our sense of time—just be prepared to hold up your hand to a really annoying gif on the side of the first third of the article.
I saw Lucy Dacus in concert—please listen to Fool’s Gold and Pillar of Truth—and Liza Ann, an artist who was in my huge playlist that I deposit people who I eventually want to listen to, played this great song “I Love You but I Need Another Year” that I cannot stop listening to.
Blessings to you, Alex!
ReplyDeleteSue Van Stelle