Wednesday, June 12, 2019

Another Year Over . . .and what have I done?

I've just finished my 24th year in the classroom. If I had stayed in Alaska, I'd be eligible to retire. In a lot of other venues, I'd be contemplating the end of my career. But I live in North Carolina, and I bounced around between three states before that, so my retirement status is a mess. (Sigh) I guess figuring out that mess ought to be my summer project.

But right now seems like a good moment for a little reflection of a more interior nature.

I decided I would be a teacher almost as soon as I started attending school. My mom picked up some antique school desks (I still have two of them in my office at home now) and set me up a school in our basement when I was little, and I'd force my little sister and younger cousins to play school with me. I'd write on the board and read them stories, and make them practice their alphabet letters. Even then, it gave me a charge when I saw them "get it."

Teachers always talk about those light bulb moments, and there's definitely something powerful about being a part of someone's realization and growth moment. Even a really terrible teaching day has some epiphanies in it: academically, emotionally, socially. Teaching is my chance to try to make the world better by making sure the next generations coming up have the tools they need and that they become good people, with a heart to help.

I went to college to become an English teacher, because reading and writing are my passions. I studied Spanish only as an afterthought.

I had heard that English teachers needed a marketable minor to land teaching jobs because there were so many of us. One of my principals, after hiring me, told me that English teachers were "a dime a dozen" but that he was thrilled to have found a good Spanish teacher because they were like finding needles in haystacks.

For my early career, taught both. In small schools in Alaska, one teacher performs a range of duties.

My first full time teaching job in Kenny Lake, Alaska was a 7-12 position in which I taught 7th and 8th grade language arts, high school Spanish I and II, Computers, Drama, and Chorus. I produced the yearbook and newspaper with another teacher. I also was listed as a hockey coach, though I knew little of hockey and didn't coach it. It was just that the team was co-ed, and they needed a woman to travel with the team.

I only held that position a year (the principal and I didn't get along), but I traveled with the kids all around the interior of the state and learned to create good educational experiences even when I was way outside my comfort zone. Chorus? I've sung in a few, that's all.

After that I went home. Not back to Kentucky, but to the only place where I ever really felt like I
belonged: Nome, Alaska. I stayed there for the rest of my twenties and my first dip into thirty. I taught English II, English IV, Spanish I, Spanish II, and a variety of English related electives (Creative Writing, Yearbook, etc.). I grew the theater program and took a group of kids (some of whom had never left the state) to Spain, where one young Yup'ik boy freaked out because he got a sunburn and didn't know what was wrong with his skin.

It was in Nome that I first learned to set a few personal boundaries. That's kind of funny in a town so small that I bought my pregnancy test from one of my students at the grocery store.

But, I did learn that if I was going to do this long term, I had to stake out some time for something else, something not teaching: relaxing, reading, my own writing, exploring. Having my first child made that easier to do. People expect that you'll pull back a bit when you become a parent.

One of the best things about teaching in Alaska is that no one expected that I would stop being a person because I was a teacher. Sure, it might have still been shocking if I were publicly drunk or something (low risk of that from me: we used to joke that I was Nome's "town sober"), but no one found it strange that I bought groceries, chased my dog on the beach, acted in a play, or had the occasional drink at the Board of Trade. No one worried about my religious beliefs or what kind of shoes I wore to school. That kind of acceptance is something I've missed ever since.

Life pulled me from Alaska, and while I love where I am now, sometimes that still hurts.

I spent a couple of years in Kansas and Kentucky dealing with the fallout of personal life battles (marriage, health, etc.) and teaching. There was a lot to love in both places, but I was there too briefly and going through too much personal life issues to invest as deeply as I had in previous jobs.

Kentucky was where I first tried teaching only Spanish. I wanted to keep my teaching life in my school day and stop bringing a second job worth of work home in the shape of mountains of sophomore essays. I was working at a very large high school (which is how I learned that I hate that), and the administration was draconian, but I found out that especially if I taught beginning Spanish (which is where my strengths lie anyway), I could tame the paper tiger and protect my home life and my sanity. I could even find time for my own writing.



Then, we came to North Carolina. My first foray into teaching somewhere with no teacher's union. If I'd realized then what that would mean for the kinds of abuses I'd have to accept, I'd have encouraged my new husband to take the job in Seattle, even though I don't prefer city life. Still, I've found my way.

My North Carolina teaching career has been all Spanish, which now means that I've been a Spanish teacher longer than I was an English teacher.

Remember that light bulb moment? I get to see the academic version of it SO MUCH MORE OFTEN as a Spanish teacher. Kids come to me because they don't already know this language, unlike English classes, where largely they resent being asked to improve their skills in something they think they already know. They're open to learn in a different way, and they're just as thrilled as I am when their understanding expands.

Along the way, I still have plenty of opportunities to help them learn to be good people. There are still classmates to learn to work with after all, and you can't study a language without learning something of the peoples who speak it and the places they come from.

It's a shock to a goodly portion of my students to learn that not all Hispanic people are Mexican, and that those with brown skin probably inherited it from their Native American or enslaved ancestors not their Spanish ones, for example, or that if you call a person "Spanish" that means they are from Spain (which none of our students are).

Last year, I started teaching Spanish for Heritage Speakers courses, something my school is offering to support our students who want to work on their literacy in their first language and build confidence while earning high school credits. These have been a real stretch for me, and revitalized me with new energy when I'd had too many years of teaching exactly the same thing. Stagnation is dangerous and can make us complacent or leave us burnt out.

So at the end of year 24, I'm not where I expected to be in geography or in subject, but I'm in a good place and after a few weeks to recover from that tidal wave we called "seventh graders" that tried to flatten me this year, I'll pop up ready to do this again.