Phlox & Zinnia

In your heart of hearts, who did you expect me to become?


Was I, acclaimed professor, nodding sagely as my students stressed in my office about credits and life? Was I the master high school teacher who was nominated for yearbook dedication every other year? Was I balancing babies on my hips and wearily glancing at the laundry piling up? Was I a novelist, scribbling phrases in the corners of notebooks as I taught women how to code their own revolutions?




Was I you?




Did you believe I’d fail? Did you expect to sand my pieces again when everything grated against each other? Did you resign yourself to picking me up by the scruff of my neck and depositing me to a man? Would you have been happy if I was just Ms.? How many oceans did your faith in me span?

Would you be proud of me? What would your face say when I bowed my head for my medallion? What would your heart cry when mine lit out for Michigan? Would I have valued your words as much as I hate their absence?

What would you have told me as I sobbed over the 13-year-olds who derailed my entire class? As I spend hours crafting feedback? As I tore myself apart over fuzzy futures? Who would you have told me to become?

Have you asked God yet why he asked for you so early? So

We’re having confession time here, because it’s always confession time on this blog: I’ve been avoiding this space.

The month of April has been a difficult one for me. Work-wise, it hasn’t been too bad. I’ve been working through the poems I collected from my eighth graders (now I have collected them a month ago and still haven’t finished them… whoops) and mostly chilling in the back while my mentor teaches Romeo and Juliet. I had another awful class where 4 students didn’t listen, disrupting learning for the other 22 in the room, and that was frustrating and brought on some self-doubts. I haven’t had a ton of extra evening or weekend commitments.

April should have been pretty good. But in the first week of April, I decided to reconsider a job in Massachusetts that I had previously passed up on. By the last week of April, I decided against that job again. Between those two times, I bounced back and forth between the uncertainty in Grand Rapids and the security in Massachusetts. I prayed, I talked to my housemates, I asked for prayer requests, and I tried to join Creston CRC, which was ultimately the thing that made my housemates and I say, “If I’m trying to join a church, shouldn’t I be trying to stay here?”

I should be secure and content, knowing that God will provide for me a job in Grand Rapids somewhere. But let me just tell you, I spent the last four minutes searching charter school jobs in Grand Rapids because that’s one of the only fields that I haven’t tapped into yet. There have been two times when I’ve been driving home from my Tuesday night seminars—tired after a full day of school, three hours of class, heading to another hour or so of devotions, and frustrated with my situation—and God has shown me that he’s got me through a beautiful sunset or a song that spoke to me. Yet whenever I’m around my fellow student teachers who are getting jobs and becoming more secure in what they are doing next year, my self-doubts start to creep in. What if I’m just good at school and I can’t translate that into being a teacher? How am I going about the job search wrong? I thought I was doing decently at this, but no one is giving me a call back. What do I do?

I’d like to give a neat and tidy answer to those questions, but I’m still in the weeds you all. I’m still struggling to let God take control of this part of my life that I want to control so badly and that I feel like I am controlling somewhat—I do have to send in the applications, right? This job search is showing me a lot about how I value myself, which I thought was dictated by my own standards but turns out is dictated by others’ affirmation of me, and how I deal with uncertainty and fear. Maybe God’s been preparing me for this through studying Jesus & Peter walking on water through John Ortberg’s book If You Want to Walk on Water, You Have to Get Out of the Boat; maybe he’s been preparing me through conversations that I’ve had with my housemates about the spiritual disciplines; maybe he’s been preparing me for this through Mom’s death. All I know is it feels unfair to have worked this hard and have felt so passionate about the work I’m doing in education only to be roadblocked by my lack of experience and job searching skills.


I know it’ll all work out. I just want to tell that to the Alex who is hanging off the cliff, feeling her fingers getting slick, unable to look down and see the outcropping ten feet below.

From my early days of roaming around the internet, using it to scroll through pictures that other people found funny on sites like iwastesomuchtime.com (it’s still alive ‘n [where’s the proper place for that apostrophe?] kicking, in case you are curious) and imgur, I remember this one image. It was an outline of an old-ish man sitting on a pile of books on a yellow background and said something like “That sad feeling when you finish a book and can’t bring yourself to move on quite yet.” I’ve seen many variations on that same theme—when you read a really great book that you don’t want to end, sometimes closing that back cover and setting the book back on the shelf leaves a hole inside you.

(#2 has the actual picture I’m thinking of; it has a little more on it than what I remember)


I’m feeling that same way right now, except it’s because I finished Kingdom Hearts 3 yesterday.


For the sake of time and all of your interest, let’s just say that thanks to my lovely “regular” cousins the Huizengas, I and my siblings all have one thing in common: that we love this video game series that mashes Disney films into an original storyline where the characters focus on hearts and the true power of friendship. It sounds like a trainwreck, but I love it so much that in my junior year of high school I forced my classmates to watch a clip of it and discuss it as a text in my AP Language and Comp class. Even as I’ve grown out of video games for the most part, I can’t seem to let this series go.

I can’t tell you exactly when I played Kingdom Hearts 1 and 2, only that I remember Kristin and Cami giving the first two games to us in 2007 or 2008, Lars opening 358/2 Days on Christmas Day 2009, and me being mad that we couldn’t play the upcoming game Birth By Sleep in 2010 since it was released on the PlayStation Portable. All of that to say, this series has been an investment for me, which came to the end of its first arc on January 29th, 2019 when Kingdom Hearts III released. I’m certain you heard me mention it—I even gave a shout-out in my introductory remarks to all my students who I met a week later. I had to wait until Lars finished the game (AND the secret boss), hold off while Anni played through the game over spring break, and grade the paragraphs I collected two weeks ago before I allowed myself to sit down on March 30th, 2019, and start my playthrough in earnest. By April 3rd, I had watched the end credits.

I could go on and on about the themes woven throughout the games, the cheesy dialogue that somehow still feels meaningful, and the wealth of characters who I’ve grown to love, but I’ll spare you. Point is, I finally know what I’ve been waiting 10-odd years to know, and I don’t know how to feel about it. I like having all the answers (kinda), but I feel this sadness that the journey’s over now. The plot points are wrapped up, the enemies are fought, and the dust has settled, but I feel less satisfied than I did when I was wondering about my favorite character’s fate. You could chalk this up to bad storytelling, but I don’t think that’s the case here. I think finishing this game is closing another chapter in my life.

I’m sad because this is the last connection to my gamer middle school self, who wanted to tell people that she was a gamer girl who loved Pokemon and RPGs because she believed that was what made her different and worth listening to. Completing this series severs me from the girl who watched clips of Kingdom Hearts set to music because they helped her process and connect with her own emotions. It’s also another strand threading back to Mom that’s slipping through my fingers—another reminder that I’m continuing to grow further from the person who she knew me as. And while a video game may not seem like that big a deal to who I am, it’s another part of me that she doesn’t get to see me fully synthesize into my adult life. The conclusion of this game reminds me that as time keeps running by, I’m leaving behind the Alex that Mom knew interest by interest, inch by inch, piece by piece. I know I need to grow and that I want to grow, but it would have been neat for her to see that growth too.

Finishing my favorite game series feels like yet another marker of my evolving sense of self, and it seems to have surfaced the sadness that comes with the recognition that I've changed. A part of me loathes to leave Kingdom-Hearts-loving Alex, but I am not defined by video games as I once was. I will always have a place in my heart for key-wielding anime-looking characters and their various journeys across the Disney worlds, but I feel this adolescent obsession fading as I mentally close the book of Kingdom Hearts. I’ve finally learned how to love and digest media without the need to own it all or know it all which ate at me as a middle and high schooler. Maybe that’s a recognition of my own human finiteness; maybe that’s just me growing up.

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.