Beautiful Chaos: Reflection from a First Year Teacher

This blog post was written by Dissident Daughter Kristen, but posted by Anne due to Kristen being on her way to Mexico!!!

Hey y’all! First off, I want to tell you that I’m currently writing this blog post in the Charlotte Airport because I am on my way to Riviera Maya, Mexico (woot woot). Second off, I want to tell you that it’s finally my summer vacation and the reason I’m headed to Mexico is because I finished my first year of teaching!!!

For those of you I may not talk to on a regular basis, after college (exactly a year ago), I moved down to Memphis, TN to teach high school Spanish in a low income, inner city community. Now to most of you that really means nothing. The words Memphis, low income, and inner city are just words that make up the English language and lack a wee bit of your perspective. For those of you that which this is the case, I’m not blaming you. I myself was blissfully ignorant to the situation I was getting myself into. I thought I would go and teach kids who were a little behind grade level, would sit there silently and engaged while I taught them, and most importantly, would have a burning passion to learn, achieve, and get out of the only world they’ve ever known one day.

For my teacher friends reading this, at this point you’re probably either shaking your head or laughing uncontrollably right about now. My preconceived notions of what this experience would be like is not even close on the accuracy spectrum.

When it comes to this past year of teaching, I honestly cannot remember as much I would like, probably because I tried to forget my entire first semester of teaching because I had no idea what I was doing yet, which to be fair, I still don’t know everything but I’ve learned a hell of a lot from the past year.

This past year has challenged me in more ways than one. One of my biggest challenges and realities I had to accept was that I wasn’t going to be liked by everyone (students and faculty included). This was a harsh reality for me to face because I have always been good at building relationships with various types of people. I’m in the army, did a wide array of activities throughout high school and college, studied abroad, worked multiple jobs, etc. and had never had a problem getting along or being respected by people. But when my students walked through my door the first few weeks of school and look at me like an alien, refused to shake my hand or make eye contact, I knew I was going to be given a run for my money.

Another challenge I’ve faced this past year of teaching is accepting that even though I am a teacher in contrast to being a salesperson, education is still a business and you cannot take anything personally. When it comes to teacher ratings, staff meetings or constructive criticism, you must remember than none of this is a knock at you as a person, it’s simply an evaluation of the world you do and how well you do it by certain standards. It has nothing to do with how valuable you are as a human being.

Finally, this year has challenged me to look at growth versus mastery. Coming from a competitive background and having the desire to be the best at everything I do, I constantly compare myself to others and strive for perfection. This year I had to throw everything dealing with that out the window. In order to stay sane and passionate in this work, you must accept that you will never achieve perfection. That, however, does not mean that you are not doing a good job and are not improving your teaching practices everyday. There were some days at the beginning of the first semester where I would be standing in the front of my classroom literally teaching to a wall. None of my kids were looking at me or listening to me. I tried to get their attention multiple times with “Teach Like a Champion” strategies, yet their voices and cell phones drowned me out. I felt like nothing. I felt like a failure. I felt worthless. I never gave up, though. I never gave up on myself as a teacher or human; and most importantly, I never gave up on my kids. If it was going to take me 175 days of getting drowned out by their 35 voices to get 5 days where I got through to them in some way, shape, or form-I was willing to conquer that. Toward the end of the first semester and beginning of second semester, I got my classes to take notes silently, listen o me when I gave instructions, and most importantly, stay seated for an entire class period. This didn’t happen every day, of course, but it did happen more often than not second master. That was growth, not mastery, but that does not lessen my accomplishment.

All in all, this year has been a year of struggle for me. I have never struggled so much before in my entire life. I have never felt so incompetent and invaluable. I have never laid on a cold tiled floor crying because of 35 young humans. I have never felt so defeated and driven at the same time. Some days, I don’t want to look or speak to my students. Some days, they infuriate me to the point where I lose my courage to keep speaking. And some days, I feel like I’m drowning and losing an uphill battle. Then, there are some days where I receive the warmest hugs from my students as they say “I love you, thank you for teaching me.” There are some days where my students get what I’m teaching and kick ass on their exit ticket. There are some days where I get to teach a bomb lesson because I’ve gotten 100 percent silence. There are some days where I get to see the little impact these kids have had on me and I’ve had on them. Those days are good days.

My kids are awesome human beings. They try me, but at the end of the day, we’ve developed this mutual feeling of respect which wasn’t there in the beginning. It is hard, oh so hard, but it is damn worth it. My kids are worth it. Memphis is worth it.

Funniest Teacher Moment of 2015-2016 school year:
Block three was paper macheing balloons to make piñatas. This was a project that required a lot of patient, resources, and detailed instruction for this to work. Block three was my most difficult block from day 1 until 185. There were a lot of playful kids in that block and even when we had developed a mutual feeling of respect, they still consistently tried me. Anyway, we were about to start distributing the materials for the piñatas and even after I explicitly stated that no students have permission to stand up during the activity because of the possibility of spills and destruction, one student refused to sit down. The student was actually running around the room in circles, poking every student he ran by and getting into another student’s face for no reason. After giving the student 3 opportunities to sit down, I finally raised my voice, marched him to his chair and said, “STUDENT NAME, IF YOU DON’T SIT DOWNRIGHT NOW I WILL GIVE YOU AN AUTOMATIC ZERIO FOR THE DAY (actually a lie). I was pretty close to the student and fairly loud. Now, most of you might expect a student to say “yes ma’am,” or “sorry” when a teacher gives them an angry command. This student, however, turns his head, shakes his hand in front of his nose and yells, “Bruh, you need a tic tac or sum!” I was so angry in that moment, but could not stop laughing on my way home from work that day. Lol.