an update from the trenches.

Once the school year got underway, I sort of dropped this blog and didn't look back. When I first started this months ago, I imagined it to be a place where I could make short, frequent updates, akin to Dave Roche's On Subbing. What ended up happening is that I have so much to say I rarely have time to write anything that even hits the surface of what I really want to convey.

Tomorrow marks one month of teaching, and I've learned so much in that time that it's kind of mind-blowing. With the school year being 1/9th finished, I can say that it's going okay. Not great, not as well as I'd like, but decently. I have terrible days and days that are so good by comparison that by the time I leave school I feel like a new person.

I've gotten close enough to several students that my room has become their hideout during breaks in the day, and every day I look forward to seeing those kids and getting to know them better. They're the kind of kids I would have been friends with when I was in high school - the ones who listen to japanese rock and talk about comic books. One student, Elijah, comes into my room 45 minutes early every morning and keeps me company as I organize papers and eat breakfast at my desk. In our morning chats I've learned about his elderly mother whom he takes care of, the multiple jobs he works in addition to school, his two hour commutes to and from his house in the Bronx, and how he failed out of his old school from sheer boredom. Yesterday we walked to the train together after school, and as I said goodbye he gave me a hug. It's been a really hard week for me, so a hug was exactly what I needed.

I have students who come to me when they're having bad days, too. One student dropped by my room earlier this week while Elijah and I were talking. She walked up to my desk with tears in her eyes and didn't say a word. I asked her what was wrong, and she shook her head. I asked her if she was having a bad day, and if she wanted to talk about it. Yes, and no. Then I asked her if she just wanted to hide in my room for a little while. She nodded her head and folded herself into a chair nearby until the time came for her to go to class. Another student had an emotional breakdown in class a few days ago; I had to enlist several of her friends to help her to her counselor's office.

That was probably the hardest day of the week for me - my lessons bombed, I was even more tired than usual, and right when I was feeling completely incompetent my kids all seemed to be having a hard time, too. Today was completely different - my lessons worked, I got one of my rowdiest classes to do structured groupwork and stay focused all period, and I got to have fun with the same students who had cried in my classroom several days before. I also had my first evaluation of sorts, in the form of a lesson plan and student work review with my principal and half our staff. I got some good constructive criticism, and overall the reviews were positive.

It's hard being at the beginning level of something so immense. A severe discomfort with being bad at something has always motivated me to get better at whatever that thing is. I'm hard on myself, I know that. It's hard knowing it will take me years to actually be a good teacher, and that before I get there I'll have to continue on the road of failure, misfires and seemingly accidental successes until I figure out how to manufacture successes, again and again. One day, I'll be a mediocre teacher and after that, I'll be a good reacher. One day, I hope, I can be as great as the other teachers at my school, who are really the best mentors and role models I could ask for as someone just getting my feet wet in this profession.

After my lesson plan review session today, I was walking out of the room with my assigned mentor who commented, "See? that wasn't so bad, was it?" I replied no, it wasn't. Before the meeting I'd told her I was worried my lesson was going to be ripped apart. It was a work in progress, not something time-tested and polished as the other teachers with more experience were able to present. Really, she had said then, no one's expecting a masterpiece from a first-year teacher. She added that to be honest, no one was really expecting competency. It's just not realistic. After the meeting, I'd told her that even though the meeting went well, I still feel like I suck as a teacher. It was a moment of self-loathing whininess, for sure. She looked me in the eye and said bluntly, "You could be sucking a lot worse."

I'll take that as a compliment, because at the moment any praise will do.