The Beginning of the Beginning

Restless. Manic. Lost. Tired.

Education as the Long-Haul

I knew completing my accelerated teaching credential + Masters in Education program would offer a bewildering assortment of emotions and ruminations about life. I even prepared to continue my every-other-daily consumption of off-brand pints of ice cream (as I began training for a long-awaited 5k, of course). I knew that I would sleep a lot but still be tired. I knew that eventually the new apartment would be organized, new and grown-up bills would be paid, and my new city would be explored. I knew I would watch so much television that I would question my own starchy insistence that book reading is far superior. I knew I would shed some tears and heave some sighs, missing my old students, and I knew I would vacillate between overweening maternality at the thought of my soon-to-be students and equally overweening terror and urges to flee the country.

But I did not anticipate simple, left-hook exhaustion. The kind that manifests as petulance, an unsatisfying and unsatisfied attitude toward the world that looks like lying at the floor eating chocolate caramel swirl while staring at the ceiling and reflecting on whether one will ever truly lose that sense of impending crisis-management that teaching involves.

Final exams had been completed.

Students had been wished best of luck with their continuing education.

Masters hoods had been worn (and Harry Potter jokes made).

Theses had been submitted.

And I had no earthly idea what to do with myself.

And yet just like I didn’t anticipate devolving to the emotional state of a four-year-old for the first two weeks back “in the real world,” I also did not anticipate that the time to reflect and think and feel again would yield a powerful motivation toward community and commitment to stay encouraged, supported, inspired.

As I was lying on the floor, inert to the idea that I would ever actually end up making a difference in the lives of my students (or being able to handle planning for, teaching, grading, and supporting a full-time schedule of junior highers), I was finally able to slow down enough to remember the bevy of earnest, hopeful conversations with other candidates I had had in the last few months in the program. Nearing the end of a dedicated and intense time of questioning what we thought about learning, students, and our roles as teachers, several of us gustily made plans about how we would stay connected with the teachers we already knew (including each other) and how we would forge new connections with our future colleagues.

One particular foggy morning at a downtown café close enough to the ocean to smell the salt, as a teacher friend and I indulged in breakfast food and ample mugs of coffee, we mulled over practical strategies for stepping into our roles as fully-fledged junior high/ high school instructors. My friend suggested that the educational technology blogs we had created at the beginning of the year would be the perfect bridge between established relationships and potential new ones. “Brilliant!” I agreed. 

We decided that through blogs we could keeps tabs on each others' trials and triumphs, endeavors in professional development and pedagogical readings, and perhaps most importantly of all, remember that we were not alone. Not in the joys and struggles of teaching, and not in the particular foibles of being new and eager teachers.

Our thinking looked something like this:

•      Rapport. I am incredibly grateful that professors and mentor teachers taught me the important of nurturing relationships outside the world of teaching. While it is cathartic and enlightening to “teacher talk,” sometimes late into the night, with fellow educators, it is also important to remember that the world is big beyond the quest to create learning environments for young people. At the same time, teaching is a rigorous, unique profession that offers many opportunities to question your sanity. And true, reflective, adult-to-adult conversations centered on ideas do not always naturally arise on campus surrounded by the demands and delights of the student population. Blogging and social mediaing (new word) ensure that we hear other teachers and that they hear us.
•      Support. I don’t remember a single lesson that I did not receive helpful feedback on during my credential program (for which I am incredible grateful and lucky). State induction program aside, I do not want that kind of collaboration to end. While I fully intend to compare notes and elicit feedback from in-the-flesh colleagues, I want to continue the wider exposure I received in a 75-plus person, feedback-heavy program. Relating plans, execution strategies, and post-lesson reflections (prepare for laughter and tears) to a diverse audience of fellow teachers is something I plan to feature often on this blog. Feedback, especially brave and good-humored feedback, will be gratefully consumed.
•       Community. Just imagine how lackluster our invigorating profession would be without all the added flair life adds. When my car breaks down, my dishwasher floods the kitchen, my body serves me a month-long cold, my family experiences a graduation/ wedding/ birth/ anniversary/ funeral in the middle of the school year, or my school decides not to replace a heretofore essential piece of technology mid-year, I want to know how you handle all of life, not just the teaching part, but the teaching-while-continuing to eat, breathe, sleep, and love part. Teachers don’t always have to talk about teaching. Just like I want my students to know how to cultivate a balanced and rewarding life, I want to know that too. Fellow newbies and revered old hands, tell me how you do it.

I am grateful for my students. I am grateful for my colleagues. I am so grateful for my family and my friends. I learn much from them. But I want to learn from you too, person across the country, person down the street, person with something to share. And I hope that at the very least, this blog will offer something in the way of encouragement to you. Even if it’s just something to browse as you lie on the floor eating ice cream after a long jog.

We're in this together, and we're in this for the long-haul.