This past Friday, pre-service ended with a distribution of paychecks and complimentary bagels. It wasn't really how I thought it would end - where were the performances? The inspirational speeches? The musically inclined youth performing on stage to a rapt and hopeful audience of future teachers? In the end, I don't think we needed pomp to fuel us for the weeks ahead. A free meal and the remainder of our stipend was sufficient, though anticlimactic.
It was symbolic of how I think the majority of us felt heading out of training when compared to how we felt heading into it. My Field Visitor (FV), whom the program assigns to observe fellows when they student teach, told me that the day her summer training ended she went home and sobbed. Not because she was sad it was over, but because she was finally able to release everything she'd felt. I didn't cry; I'd done enough of that during training. Instead, as I was at a bar Friday afternoon with my advisory group, someone asked me if I was tired. I was sitting back on a bench, my arms propped up on either side of me and I was lazily listening to conversations around me instead of participating in them. No, I told him, I'm just relaxed. It was a strange feeling, a gradual releasing of the tension and worry that had been tightening in my chest and shoulders for seven weeks. Relaxed? Others joked. What's that like?
I got up Saturday and cleaned my apartment from one end to the other. I cooked, payed my bills, watched a movie, and read music blogs. I researched museums in the city that I want to visit this week, and I called everyone I've missed for the past two months. Today is much the same. I'm trying not to worry about the fact that I still haven't secured a job; everyone from NYCTF and the DOE seems confident we'll all get hired, though of course I have the fear that I will be the one person who doesn't. Still, I'm making myself not stress about it this weekend. Tomorrow I'll pick back up where I left off mailing resumes and sending followup emails and in the next few weeks, when I finally secure a position, I'll begin the real work of planning for the upcoming school year.
In one of the last of about a dozen surveys I've completed for the Fellows this summer, I answered a question that asked how I felt about the program now that I'd completed the pre-service training. I said that looking back, I'm not sure I even remember what I expected heading into it. I knew it would be time-intensive, and I knew it would be difficult even if I didn't know exactly in what ways it would be difficult. I'm a good student, and I'm not afraid of hard work, so the prospect of something being vaguely "difficult" doesn't really faze me. What I didn't anticipate, didn't really consider when I sat in the Apollo back in June and tried to understand what, exactly, I'd gotten myself into, was how emotionally hard it was going to be. That was what my FV meant when she told me about her last day of training - you can't really be prepared for everything you're going to feel, and it can be overwhelming, and that's okay.
Pre-service training, I typed into my little box on the survey, was a little more difficult than I had anticipated, but ultimately I am thankful to be part of this program. While it hasn't been without flaws, my training has given me so many tools that I will be grateful for in the fall when I begin my first year of teaching. It has introduced me to so many people that I have learned to rely on for support, and will continue to rely on in the months and years ahead. The next question on the survey required a simple yes or no response: if you could go back, would you have still chosen to join NYCTF? My answer was, and always has been, yes.
On my last day of summer school at my field site, my class had a pizza party. And although technically they were supposed to wait until they got a confirmation letter in the mail the next week, some of my kids asked me if they'd passed the 8th grade. Taking a cue from a staff member in my room, I indulged and told them yes, they'd passed. They yelled and danced and gave each other high-fives. One of the kids was the boy I wrote about when I first started student teaching, the quiet and withdrawn one, whom I'll call Courtney. Four weeks later, Courtney was anything but withdrawn. For whatever reason, he'd become one of the most lively kids in the class, and had learned to ask for help whenever he needed it. A little selfishly, I was glad I was the person who got to tell him he was going on to high school next year. When it came time for the other Fellow in my class and I to leave, we thanked everyone for being our first class, and wished them luck in high school. "I'll remember you!" Courtney yelled at us as we left the room.
This has probably been the best and also the hardest summer of my life. When I first moved here, someone told me that the city would change me. It wasn't meant as a warning; it was stated as fact, just not necessarily a positive one. I've been here for a little over two months now and slowly, I'm changing, but I think I'm changing in a positive way. I feel like I've had some residual, proverbial wool pulled back from my eyes and I see a lot of things from a different perspective. I have a lot more to say about that, but perhaps that's for a different time and space. For now, I'll leave you with what I had to say, more or less, to my FV in our last meeting with all the Fellows at my field site:
For me, teaching my kids this summer has been the difference between hearing things that you're told are true, and seeing it for yourself. I was told all kids want to learn, and that the reasons they aren't learning run deeper than most people acknowledge. When I met my kids, so many things clicked for me. They want to work, they want to learn. They know they aren't getting some things they need to be getting. They haven't been given the tools they need to learn, and it isn't the parents, it isn't the kids, it isn't poverty or some intrinsic part of kids' nature that has changed over the years that's keeping them from succeeding, though all of these things play a part. These kids aren't stupid or unable to learn, and they certainly aren't unwilling. They're angry, disappointed, bored, and disillusioned, but they're not unwilling. They just can't do it alone--they need teachers who will understand all of this and who will help them. I've learned that some kids will do whatever you give them to do because they're so eager to do something right, and they so desperately need to hear that they're doing something right. Other kids have given up, and will push you and push you until they push you away, because they've already made up their minds that you're another adult who doesn't care. Those are the ones that need you the most.
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