FOR ONCE I AM PREPARED. DESPITE A LOT OF GENERAL TUMBLR & TODDLER DISTRACTION AND PLUS I’VE BEEN WATCHING THE MATRIX AND HOT DAMN KEANU REEVES WAS QUITE FINE IN HIS TIME
I have to go back to work in a week! I guess I should start setting an alarm and get used to getting up again at 630am. Good thing the courses I’m teaching don’t require any new lessons as I re-imaged them last year.
It has been 6 months since I first decided that I would leave the classroom in pursuit of other growth and development opportunities. What a 6 months it has been. When I first left, I thought that I would be pursuing a career in politics. After one ill-fated interview for a position on the Obama campaign, I realized that was not where my heart was.
After hearing the brilliant Professor Pedro Noguera speak about building parternships and systems of support to transform communities and schools back in August, I felt that my time would be well-spent empowering parents and communities to transform students’ lives. I partnered with my former school to take some of my former students to the Annual Legislative Conference and begin that work. That project brought me so much joy. Still, I thought, let me branch out of the classroom and see what the non-education world has to offer me. That led me to move back to Detroit and work there. Beyond a sort of abstract interest in urban development, I didn’t know what I wanted to do. I applied for a few jobs with nonprofits and foundations, but nothing panned out. I had an opportunity presented to me to work at a school, but I felt I would be boarding a sinking ship.
I decided to make another critical shift. After an empowering and enlightening conversation with my good friend, Monique, I decided to move back to St. Louis in pursuit of my dream to start a “foundation” for young Black men. I was so hyped to get back to St. Louis because I have such strong ties and connections there. Along the way, I found a great-sounding job opportunity and got lost in the sauce. Though I had finally found clarity on what I wanted to do and where I wanted to be, I traded my clarity for the opportunity to wear business suits and heels and possibly make $60,000. Long story short, my true passion had gotten lost amid the shuffle.
When that job opportunity didn’t work out, I needed to take time to really reflect on what I wanted to do and where I wanted to be. I began to reflect on my time in the classroom. My first thought goes to my students, who I absolutely adore. In hindsight, I can think about all of the beautiful moments of connection, engagement and excitement in my classroom. But deeper thought and reflection reminds me of the super challenging moments when I felt drained, over-extended and emotionally abused. I wanted to give everything that I had in service of my students and seeing them to better there lives. Still, oftentimes, all I got in return was lack of appreciation, wasted time and a even stolen computer. My true feelings fall somewhere in the middle of the idealistic and the devastating. When I think about my interactions with my students, I cannot forget the deep, human connection that I was able to make with them. They are now an indelible part of my spirit.
If this journey was only about my students and my life was solely dependent upon my desire to see them grow and become brilliant and capable adults, I would have never left the classroom. But there was a lot more to the story, I had lost me. In the school space, I was a shell of my true, actualized self. Buried by bullshit and bureaucracy, I had developed a lot of self-destructive behaviors that I now recognize were ways of coping with the stress and sense of hopelessness that I derived from being in that environment. Dealing with undue pressure to teach to the test, perceived jealousy from my peers and a toxic work environment left me feeling drained on a daily basis. Despite the most earnest efforts of the most talented teachers, we continually came up short and our test scores were, at best, inconsistent.
I distinctly remember the last days of my second year. I had started the year with such joie de vivre, such enthusiasm and such a sense of possibility. By the time my final evaluation came around, all of that positivity had metamorphosed into pessimism and overwhelmedness…you know, if that’s a word. I can honestly say that I was giving 100% and getting about nothing in return. I distinctly remember a conversation with a Master Educator who, as she was giving me a piss poor evaluation on a lesson that I had spent at least 6 hours preparing, told me, “if it isn’t this, it’s something better.” I remember the bizarreness of that moment settling on me as I thought, “Lady, you’re supposed to support me and make sure that these kids have a teacher who cares for them and works hard for them. And you tell me that?” The absurdity of this woman tearing apart my instruction in a very non-constructive manner and then telling me that maybe teaching isn’t for me. What? I love my kids. My kids are my everything. I spend most of my waking hours trying to be the best teacher I can, but teaching isn’t for me. You’ve got to be kidding me!
Not 2 weeks later, did my final evaluation of the year come from my principal. I left that conversation feeling the same perplexity. Dear Principal - You have these expectations. I don’t really know what they are until I am in the midst of hearing the outcome of my evaluation. You do not support me in any way, shape or form to meet those expectations, but you will surely fire me if I fall short of those expectations. Yep, sounds about right.
The weekend after my final evaluation, I went through a semi- life and identity crisis in which I seriously contemplated leaving the classroom. After lots of reflection, prayer and a conversation with my parents, I decided that I had to give it another shot. I would just use my haters as my motivators. I would use my setbacks as setups. I would use my tests as testimonies.
So I gave it an honest effort. In an extremely out-of-character turn of events, I even signed up to teach summer school. I taught three different preps – a Talented and Gifted course and two different sections of boot camp. After promising that we would co-teach and co-plan the Talented and Gifted course, I saw my principal a grand total of one time during the summer… for planning purposes. He – nor any of the other administrators – never once came inside of my classroom to observe or to make sure that we weren’t just watching To Kill A Mockingbird instead of reading it.
The Talented and Gifted course was the supreme teaching experience for me. I had structured a rigorous, engaging and Socratic classroom where my students could thoughtfully grapple with the material and truly rise to the heights of intellectual stimulation and understanding. Well, in theory. Though the class was exciting and rigorous, very few of the students actually had the decoding tools or stamina to rise to the occasion. Though at the time I felt I was giving all I had to give to help my students be successful, I could not take the book home and read for them. Demanding so much from them in an otherwise undemanding summer was difficult, but both parties – my students and I – took a very valuable lesson away from the summer.
Moral of the story? Teaching excellence is extremely difficult to achieve, particularly when you feel like you’re attempting it in a silo without direct support. If we truly want to transform the quality of education, we have to transform entire institutions – not just entire schools, but entire school systems. Students can and will rise to the occasion, but entire systems have to be structured such that students are trained to be critical thinkers and diligent workers. They also need to understand the long term implications of being academically successful.
What exactly does that look like? I can’t say that I know for sure, but I know what it doesn’t look like:
We cannot put enormous amounts of pressure on teachers to implement x strategy and facilitate x test score without providing them with targeted support to meet those expectations.
We cannot create environments of unhealthy competition that pit teachers against one another in an effort to see who can get the highest test and evaluation scores and ultimately the biggest bonus
We cannot create environments in which people – both students and teachers – are expendable if they do not meet vague and/or lofty expectations without having first been given clear criterion and exemplars for how to meet said criterion
As an alternative, we need to:
Set both teachers and students up for success by not only providing teachers with strong training but with ongoing evaluation and support to help them meet students’ needs…on a holistic level
Create healthy environments of collaboration for both teachers and students in which best practices are shared and success is contingent upon our interconnectivity instead of our competition
Invest time, love and positive energy into communicating clear expectations for both teachers and students and make it clear that those expectations do not mean that “one size fits all.”
These solutions rely on the assumption that there needs to be space for difference and mistakes and effectively dealing with the human component of teaching and learning.
While some would say that my approach or insight is a bit too idealistic and lighthearted amid the urgent nature of improving students’ lives and educational outcomes, they’re wrong and I’ll tell them that…with love...L.O.V.E. Everyone wants to be an expert and everyone wants to solve the crisis – I include myself among those ranks. Still, there is too much at stake for us to take an approach that inherently views people as infallible robots. Teachers will make mistakes, so how do we turn those mistakes into growth opportunities instead of causes to be on the chopping block? Students will make mistakes – repeatedly – so how do we turn those mistakes into learning experiences while reminding them that they are still valuable and we are still going to invest in helping them become their best selves?
You can call me idealistic. You can call me naïve. I welcome those responses because I will use them as a motivation to bring about the reality that I envision. As much as I want and need our children to succeed and grow in classrooms, I want and need our teachers to have the tools and mindsets necessary to get them to that space. I will live my life in service of my vision to empower teachers, students and communities to revolutionize schools and create new educational paradigms. I invite you to join me on that journey…the journey to elevate.
I already relayed this to some of you guys, but yeah, let's share this here.
Apparently when I am greatly sleep deprived, as I have been for the past few days, instead of becoming a walking zombie, I become something akin to a drunk, or someone drugged with energy-boosting pills. (It probably helped that I had quite an amount of immensely sugared coffee in me).
ie - 100+kph on the spine road. That was terrible.
So today in class, I was running in this wonky state during lecture time, and one of my students, who's last name is Salazar, asked to go to the bathroom. And I said,
"Okay Slytherin, but don't stay too long in the Chamber of Secrets."
All the students stared blankly at me for a moment, before letting out a collective howl of laughter. My student who looks like Amber, trying to hold her laughter down, asked "Lol Miss, are you high?"
