March marks three years since I was last in a classroom. Like teachers everywhere, I finished out the 2019-2020 school year remotely, trying to figure out how to keep students learning and engaged through a computer screen. I recall both desperately missing the small moments that can make teaching such a joyful profession and marveling at the amount of free time I had all of a sudden without all the “extras” a teaching job mandates, but does not pay you for. Without hall monitoring, lunch duty, subbing during off periods, meeting with students before and after school, I could almost complete my work during the work day and have actual free time. Of course this was during lockdown so what I could do with that free time was limited, but I admit it was rather eye-opening to just how all-consuming physically working in a school can be.
I left my teaching job in the summer of 2020 when my school decided to implement a Covid plan (or non-plan) that did not make me feel safe. I occasionally feel pangs of nostalgia for my life as a teacher, but this month in particular had me reflecting a lot. Perhaps the three year marker got to me. But this reflection has also come from being inundated with ideas about teaching and education this month. There was this article about why no one wants to major in English, this piece about how English teachers make students hate books, another piece about how school is ruining reading for kids, this podcast about what books should be swapped out of the classroom, and all the news about frequent book banning. And, of course, there was the horrific school shooting in Nashville. These all too frequent atrocities always mentally put me right back into the classroom.
It is frustrating to work in a profession where nearly everyone feels entitled to tell you how to do your job better—especially when that profession requires extensive education, ongoing trainings, and the willingness to put life on the line for your kids. While (almost) all of us know schools from the perspective of being a student, it’s impossible to understand what it’s like to be a teacher unless you’ve done it. It’s a job that is all consuming—at once venerated and disparaged. It’s hard not to let teacher become more of an identity than a job title, not just because of the quantity of the workload, but because of the way this career molds your life into a specific rhythm. It is the rhythm of the teaching life that I find myself occasionally yearning for—the moments and patterns that make up the day-to-day experience of working in a school.
This month, as I continue to both grieve for and recover from my seven years at my last school, I wanted to share some of the things about teaching that still baffle, horrify, amuse, and delight me.
That list will live behind the paywall (as all of my In Summation do) because of its more personal nature. But before I get to that, I want to encourage you to pick up the book The Teachers: A Year Inside America's Most Vulnerable, Important Profession for even more about the realities of teaching in America as well as to urge you to uncover the local issues that pertain to schools in your community. From contacting your representatives about gun reform to making sure you vote in every school board election, the teachers and kids in your community need you ❤️
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