Who Am I? A reflection for my ESL add-on course

Because I'm a glutton for punishment, or maybe because I'm hoping for a magic feather I can use to help some of my ground-bound students fly, I'm working to add a new certification this year: ESL (English as a Second Language).

As part of that work, I'm taking some coursework through my school district, giving up a few Saturdays in hopes of insight. So, welcome to my homework!

I haven't actually decided yet whether I will add the certificate or only take the training. I don't actually want to become an ESL teacher as my primary role, and I've watched my school district move many teachers into unwanted positions if they hold the certificate.

In some cases, it definitely looked like a way to encourage "difficult" staff members to move on and seek work elsewhere. In some cases, it worked. Of the 90 people on my school's phone list, only 14 were here I started, twelve years ago. That's quite a turnover rate. 85% of the staff, dudes.

So finishing the process is handing the district the means to give me a job I don't want. So, we'll see.

In the course, we're beginning with some exploration of ourselves, in hopes that self-reflection will help us overcome biases or limitations in our thinking that get in the way of reaching our ELLs (English Language Learners). That strikes me as a very good place to start. As a group of teachers in a room, we can talk all day about the problems with the system, but we actually have very little power to affect any change at that level, so starting with ourselves, the only part actually in our control, seems quite reasonable to me.

So, ¿quién soy yo? Who am I?

Hi! I'm Samantha. I'm a teacher in a transitional moment of life that has my focus shifting from being a teacher who writes to being a writer who teaches. Outside of school, I am a novelist, an avid reader, a geek, a gamer, a mother, a wife, a rescue-dog's mom, a sister, a daughter, a supporter of the arts, a good baker and a poor housekeeper, among any number of other roles.

In my heart, I am an optimistic skeptic: I continue to hope and work for positive change in the world, but I'm not gullible. My buy-in (to anything) must be earned with evidence.

I've been a teacher for twenty-five years in a variety of contexts. That is one of my strengths as an educator. Experience has given me willingness to adapt to circumstances and learn what each situation has to teach me.

I went to college to be an English teacher because I have a love of literature, reading, and writing and I love the community surrounding books and literacy. I have a heart to help and a desire to make a difference, so teaching seemed a natural choice. It has been a good fit, though the financial realities have made other aspects of my life more difficult. Most of the time, I don't regret the choice.

Because English teachers are "a dime a dozen" and I needed to be employable, I also picked up a Spanish minor. I tried French for two semesters and still felt at a loss, and Spanish proved much easier for me to learn (or maybe the teachers were just better). I spent a summer studying in Spain as part of that degree program, which was my first significant exposure to a culture completely outside my own and my first time immersed in a language not my own. I credit that experience to my increase in empathy for the struggles of immigrant and ELL students.

Student teaching was in my home state of Kentucky, teaching high school English to kids only three years younger than myself in a medium-size standard public school, 90% white students from low to upper middle class background who had all attended school together since Kindergarten. Stable. It wasn't that dissimilar to my own high school experience, except that I would have been the "poor kid" in the crowd until about middle school, when my family's finances took an upswing thanks to the dogged hard work of my parents and some good fortune.

It might have been comfortable to stay in a school like that, where my experience matched my students, but I didn't do that. I longed for something challenging and different.

Right after college, I left for Alaska, which had been a life goal of mine ever since Mrs. Hyder showed her travel slides to my third grade class. My parents wouldn't move, so I had to graduate college before taking on my own Alaskan adventure.

I spent two years in Kodiak, a fishing village; then one in Kenny Lake, a homesteading community of 400 people--the smallest place I've yet to live; and finally to Nome, Alaska, which is the only place I've ever felt at home.

The student population in Nome was 75% Native Alaskan, inclusive of a few different groups, some of whom were at odds with each other. All these jobs included teaching a mixture of English and Spanish classes, alongside some oddities like chorus and computers. In small schools, we all stretch what we think we can do.

I remember laughingly explaining to a high school friend that in my position in Nome, I was a Jew teaching Christianity (via British literature) to Eskimos. An outsider among outsiders. Story of my life.

Nome was good for me. The people were kind and supportive and seemed genuinely happy to have me there. They corrected my misconceptions and missteps with empathy and a desire to see me succeed. I've never worked any place as good for my personal growth since. The landscape was alien and the history fascinating, though dark and troubled.

I had so many opportunities to talk about culture and learn from people whose experiences were vastly different than my own. I took kids who had never been to a city at all for their first escalator ride at a mall. I attended cultural celebrations that taught me new languages and dances and expanded my culinary palate. I came to love salmon candy and fireweed jelly.

I was shocked to learn about the very recent psychological, emotional, and cultural damage caused by missionary-run boarding schools and the cultural practices fighting for survival. Those weren't the experiences of centuries past, but the experiences of the parents and grandparents of the children I was teaching. 

It's an opportunity I wish more of our white middle-class educators had. The insight that comes from finding yourself the minority in the room is invaluable and hard to get in some parts of the country.

My time as an Alaskan teacher has impacted the rest of my career. Whenever I see a behavior I don't understand, my first action is to step back, observe, and ask questions. I no longer assume I know why a kid is doing something, because I've been wrong too many times. I wait for the picture to fill in and figure out what my role is along the way.

After Alaska, I went to Kansas, which felt like serious culture shock after the diversity of The Last Frontier. My students were nearly all white, sharing religious and community background, mostly farming. Very few of them had ever lived anywhere else, though there was some socio-economic diversity. As a Jewish person, I was such a novelty that I was asked to give a talk about Judaism to the social studies classes studying the Holocaust.

Along the way, my marriage ended, and I had two rough years of financial adjustment, geographic adjustment (I moved back to Kentucky to have familial support), and then health problems. I was fortunate in that I had a loving support network to fall back on and my parents' help was invaluable, especially when they took over care of my daughter (and of me!) while I spent nine weeks dealing with my medical crisis. I was fortunate, too, in that I had health insurance and access to the care I needed.

I bounced back quickly, all things considered, and I credit my good fortune in familial support for that.

Two years later, I was remarried and making a fresh start in North Carolina. I made the decision to apply only for Spanish jobs, as I had learned that there was a significant difference in the assessment workload and external scrutiny, as well as student interest and engagement. As a Spanish teacher, I am insulated from the worst abuses of the testing culture that descended on our schools in the past twenty years, eating us from within like a cancer.

I also wanted to build my other dream: a writing life, and if I was going to do that, I needed to find a way to protect segments of my time and energy. Teaching is a greedy octopus of a job that will lay claim to every second of your time and every iota of your energy if you don't learn to protect yourself. Because it's "for the kids" it can be easy to burn yourself out.

There's a lot of guilt thrown at educators who aren't willing to sacrifice everything for their students. Heaven forbid they might want time to recharge, indulge their passions, or raise their own children mindfully. When people tell me "it's a calling and not a job", I remind that my landlord doesn't provide my housing for free and I'm not a monk.

It makes me angry, and as I've gotten older, it's harder to hold my tongue when an employer tells me that their failure to support me in my work is my own fault, as if more dedication could add hours to the day or remove the financial stress of sending a child to college on a teacher's laughable salary.

North Carolina is the only "right to work" state I've worked in and if I were making the choice today, I wouldn't come here. I have learned the hard way that a lack of a teacher's union only makes the difficult more difficult, leaving vulnerable employees all the more exposed to abuse.

I'm in this for the long haul. I want to KEEP making a difference. So, I out-stubborn the system I'm in, and express my gratitude to my husband who has a more lucrative line of work that subsidizes my employment choice. My "nasty teaching habit" costs us dearly in terms of what we can provide our own daughters, but he supports my need to make a difference by positively influencing our nation's future as I can.

So, who am I now in 2020?

I'm a hardworking woman fighting the system so I can provide for my kids (both my biological and my classroom ones). I'm stubborn, skeptical, and strong-minded, but absolutely willing to listen to new ideas and learn from them.

Onward and upward.

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NOTE: current teaching context: 7 classes a day to students in three grades (6th, 7th, and 8th), with 90 non-supervisory minutes a day for prep, assessment, family contact, and all related work IF it is not co-opted by meetings.

Students demographics are roughly 50% Hispanic, 5% Black, and the rest white with the occasional Asian, Indian, or "other" kid. socio-economic-status varies tremendously from homeless to McMansion denizens and everything between. We have few violent incidents yearly.