Reflections at the End of the 9th Year Teaching

 I write a reflection every May so that I can commemorate the happenings of the school year and take my mental temperature. As I look back at the last several years of Teaching Reflections, it strikes me that I’m not very good at my job. I think a large part of any job is the ability to read people. I apparently suck at that. This has been confirmed by the fact that all the interviews I thought I knocked out of the ballpark resulted in form letters stating that I wasn’t the right fit, while all the interviews I RUINED resulted in keen interest and/or job offers. This means that while I do have a “gut instinct,” it is invariably wrong.

It occurred to me that maybe I could still harness my instincts to an effective purpose by just doing the opposite of whatever comes naturally! But that’s actually a lot harder than it sounds. For one thing, teachers make over 3,000 significant decisions every day. That’s a lot of instincts to monitor while you’re also trying to, you know, breathe and function like a normal human being. But for another thing, it’s hard to learn to trust your own instincts when you’re always telling yourself to do the opposite of what they say.

When my coworkers first met me, they were horrified by my inability to filter out the Things That Must Not Be Said. These included statements like, “Seneca, do black people get bitten by mosquitos? Someone told me they don’t” and “LaP, you really need to start wearing sunblock. You have new wrinkles all over your forehead.”

I know it seems like any grown woman should know instinctively to just NOT SAY ALL THE THINGS, but, for a variety of reasons, I do not.  And this highlights for you the chasm between that which is expected and that which I do.

You can’t afford to be like that in Education. Everyone’s child is a precious snowflake and there are too many other battles to fight to also be fighting internal ones because you’re afraid of always saying and doing the wrong thing. Here, I will recount my track record:

Year One: I call a kid “One-Eye” because he makes a big deal out of only having one eye! So. Inappropriate.

Year Two: Every day, I receive a call from the president of the school board, who wants to know why her gifted son has a C (because he’s lazy AF). After many days, I ask point-blank if she wants me to make the C an A. Oops. I didn’t realize you never ask those questions out loud.

Year Three: I co-teach in 6^th, 7^th and 8^th grades. The 7^th grade teacher asks me to leave after only a few weeks. I last in 8^th grade til the very end of the year, when the teacher insists that I never step foot inside his classroom again. I still don’t know what happened, though I’ve tried to apologize several times over the years.

Year Four: In a small group discussion, I ask a trainer, “What do you do when a kid calls you a f***ing bitch?” I later overhear the trainer explain to the union president that I have no business being a teacher.

Year Five: I get so annoyed with a student leaving her crap in my room every day that I throw it all in the recycling bin. She tells her mom. I have to spend half an hour inside the recycling bin digging through Kleenex and banana peels looking for a history workbook so I don’t get written up.

Year Six: Thinking I’m doing a lot of good in the world, I watch Freedom Writers and then urge my students to write their stories. After 5 of them admit to being molested and/or raped, I am written up because the whole district could be sued.

Year Seven: I tell my favorite student he looks like a monkey when he covers his whole face with his hands (he has extremely long arms and big hands). Horrified, the other teachers tell me to never refer to my students as monkeys unless I want to be written up as a racist bigot. I wonder how I could have been so stupid.

Year Eight: The counselor, school nurse, and assistant principal are requested to talk to a student about her overpowering body odor but none of them seem concerned. After having a visceral reaction, I panic. (I got sensory migraines and had a windowless room). I email the nurse saying, “This kid REEKS! Please tell me you can smell this and do something!” The principal prints off my email and writes me up. It is inappropriate to use such derogatory language.

Year Nine: I announce my disgust with a superintendent who refuses to let me miss one (useless) professional development day to fly back FROM PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT in another city. It turns out I announced my disgust to her protégé.

As you can see, I have a terrible track record in education. I might have some transferable skills, but unfortunately, my complete lack of awareness and propriety would follow me wherever I went. If the truth be told, I stay where I am because it’s a place that’s so f****d up already, I’m just one more plot point. No one has time to worry much about me when they’re busy with auto theft and gang rape and bomb threats.

Anywhere else, I’m afraid I’d be fired. And I guess that’s my takeaway from this year. Yes, I’m unhappy. But it’s an unhappy bed that I’ve made for myself and now I have to lie in it.