the end is not nigh enough

My posts have been dwindling, along with my general interest in anything and everything school related. The hot weather comes and all I’m interested in is barbecues and swimming pools and watering holes.

Spent memorial day weekend with my cousins and it felt like summer already. Softball game: check, parade: check, pool: check, barbecue: check and check… I thought to myself, cool, what are we doing tomorrow? And then I was forced to remind myself that I will be at work tomorrow.

Now, it’s not so bad because tomorrow is our field trip to my alma mater, NYU, and Wednesday is the carnival, plus graduation practice takes up a period every day until the last week of June.

I just think that if the month of June were, for some reason, cancelled… the kids really wouldn’t be missing much. Especially now that it’s getting hot and the AC is broken it feels like we’re just running out the clock. We show up, we go through the motions, but especially now that the all-important Standardized Tests are done, it’s hard to feel like what we’re doing matters. I mean, of course it matters, in an inspiring the youth of America kind of way. But the last few weeks stretch like taffy. The end is near, but not near enough.

Three things you can say to piss off a teacher

Today's lunchtime conversation: things people say about teaching that infuriate us

#1. The "Aw, that's so cute" attitude.

I think people think elementary school teachers sit around all day singing the abc's and having story time and eating snacks. The truth is very far from that. When you think teacher, don't think Mother Theresa. Think Stalin. We are not puppies and kittens. We are tigers and wolves.

Sure, a good teacher makes it look effortless, but that doesn't mean it's easy. Basically if you're a classroom teacher, you have to bend a small army of (small) people to your will. You must be a dictator, to know exactly what will happen at every moment of the day, to dispense about a thousand instructions a day and to predict what every student's response will be to every thing you say and your possible responses to all their possible reactions. You must have an answer for everything. You must know what to do when a kid rips his pants wide open, when one loses her keys, when they pinch someone or call each other racial slurs or say that they will get beat for bringing home a bad grade, or they can't find their notebook or the notebook has run out of pages...

You must squelch mutinies before they arise and walk the subtle line between benevolent monarch and ruthless gestapo. You must live each day knowing that every move you make, every sound that escapes your lips is being closely monitored and scrutinized by impressionable, yet surprisingly judgmental young minds. You have to make your classroom run with discipline and efficiency, all the while making your subjects believe they have autonomy. They sit when you say sit, they stand when you say stand, they listen when you talk, they march when you say march. (None of this fits with my idealistic, individualized Montessori fantasy about how school SHOULD be. But the education crisis in this country isn't here because things are how they SHOULD be.)

You must be aware of the actions and whereabouts of 29 individuals at any given moment... I like to think it's like being in charge of 29 extremely needy and dependent employees (who are totally and completely id-driven, impulsive, clueless, irresponsible and who don't have the best judgement in general) and make sure they are doing the same thing at the same time and understand what to do and understand what to do if they don't know what to do

#2 The "You must love kids... I don't know how you have the patience."

Fact: many teachers don't love kids. Some love the act of teaching. Some love the ideals of education. Some love their subject matter. Some love immigrants. But I bet almost all would agree that kids can be a pain in the ass. Loving them is not actually a requirement of being a good teacher.

But what bugs me (and others) about this comment is the underlying condescension... Yeah, it takes patience. But if you mean patience like in Family Circus cartoons when someone draws on the wall with crayons, patience like when the baby spits up on your new outfit, patience like reading the same bedtime story over and over again, or counting cheerios for an hour, that's not what I'm talking about.

I'm talking about the patience that you use to build a civilization or plan a war. I'm talking patience like withstanding torture. Like building the pyramids or being wrongfully imprisoned. Patience like what was behind the Civil Rights movement. Patience to confront waste and disaster and injustice and utter helplessness every day, to look the monster square in the eye and not balk or shy away, even though you know it's not going anywhere. Patience like getting up Everest or Kilimanjaro.

It's true, people who go into teaching tend to do so with compassion, with some respect for human beings and what they are capable of. At least I hope most of them do. It's true we take on a nurturing role, we deal with tears and hurt feelings and all that crap. But you can't be soft. You're not necessarily comforting crying kids. You're dealing with them. Dealing with them in the context of a bunch of other needy kids who need to be kept occupied at all times, and a long list of impossible things you're expected to get done this year, and the never-ending power struggle of teacher versus entropy.

Sometimes that means letting the precious tearful child cry, or telling them to suck it up and pull it together, or ignoring them altogether. Being a teacher is different from being a parent or an uncle or a kind friend... You need to calculate your decisions based on the needs of the class, sharpen your knife on the rough edge of always having to be the boss (willingly or not). You need to be right even when you are wrong. And you must defer to the perpetual and unmerciful drive of curriculum and standards and limited time.

If you let your heart bleed it will quickly be bled dry.

#3 cause of teacher vitriol: "You're so lucky to have summer vacations!"

To which I say, we earn that shit. It's not about luck. If you calculate the hours of actual "work" we do - which is, for most teachers I know, the second you walk in to the second you walk out, plus some extra work you take home, I'd wager against an office worker any day... We schedule in our bathroom breaks at the beginning of the day... (Better go now, I won't have another chance until 1pm!) No coffee break, no facebook, no surfing the web, no extended lunches or water cooler conversations. We are on stage, front and center, every scene of every act of every show. And if you want to see 45 minutes stretched to maximum capacity, come watch me on my prep. We battle anarchy and we battle hard, and we reserve the right to bask in our hard-won vacation time.

Tune in tomorrow for tales of teachers who *don't* actually work that hard, but whose jobs are steadfastly secured by seniority.

But the other part of this question of whether to stay a teacher is more than just getting tired of all the paperwork or the repetitiveness of it... The bigger question is, how much does it really "matter" in the long run. Ultimately, what difference do I make as a teacher?

The education system is a leaky boat. Do you stay inside and keep on bailing water with your bucket full of holes? Or do you jump ship and swim for a different boat?

I'd have no problem bailing water to the end of my days if I thought it would save it in the long run. But it really sometimes feels as if "the system" is beyond saving.

Absence

The weather is weird, and matches my mood. It is bright, but not sunny, warm but not hot, almost drizzling but not actually raining, gray and muggy as all get out. It is non-committal, indistinct. Make up your mind, weather. What do you want to be?

You'd think with the lifting off of my thesis from my shoulders, I would be taking advantage of this opportunity to get my life in order, make use of all this spare time in my two-week reprieve before the final set of grad classes begins in June to get organized! Run miles! Clean the bathroom! Polish the floors! Plan ahead! Do errands! Dot i's and cross t's that I'd previously been ignoring...

But it's almost unnerving not to have the excuse of grad school and the constant threat of the thesis deadline -- I could hide behind those things, and my overstuffed schedule could explain the dirty-clothes carpet in my bedroom, the empty cupboards, why I never seem to have energy for anything but Hulu and Netflix on weekends.

Without my big excuse, evidence points uncomfortably towards me just being generally not an effective human being domestically. Maybe it's not some external force that's throwing my life off balance -- maybe I'm just not that good at balancing in the first place. Now the overbearing presence of the thesis has become an absence, and I have no more groceries or clean laundry than I ever did... I kind of feel absent from my own life, school too. The unintended side effect of all that emphasis on the state tests is that now that they're over, it feels like what we're doing really doesn't matter. I'm just trying babysit them through 'til June, when we can all go our separate ways and forget, for a while, that any of this ever happened.

I feel stuck like flypaper, like I'm doing laps in a wading pool. Waiting for a bus or a train that I'm not convinced is even coming.

***

My thesis is not the only absence I am feeling. I spent the entire weekend with Corky, playing connect-the-dots all around the boros with various friends' social events. I'm in love with our friendship, do you know that feeling? I am trying to capture her sunshine and bottle it up to stash away for later. And even though I am doing my best to love the fleetingness and impermanence, and to appreciate the present of her presence right now, and to be excited for the adventure that she absolutely deserves to have next year... every time she says something witty or clever, and every time we have the same thought at the same time, I am reminded what a gaping hole is going to be left in me when she leaves.

Her leaving is making me think about my next big step. Ending grad school is kind of a watershed moment. Once I have the degree, my commitment to the Fellows will be finished and my life is mine again to rearrange as suits. And I know I'll be going back to PS 00 next year, the immediate future is sorted. But what about after that? I promised myself I wouldn't become a "lifer," that I won't just wake up one day and find that ten years have gone by. I promised myself wild adventures and excitement and travel and the taking up of ambitious challenges... And not that teaching isn't challenging or meaningful...

But where do you go with it? I believe that's part of the trouble, part of the reason that a really big percentage of these driven young people that join Teaching Fellows and Teach for America tend to leave it after a few years. After you learn to be a teacher, what then? After ten years, you're still hot-gluing Word Walls and re-organizing your bookshelves and deciphering bad handwriting and typing up teaching points and making infinite copies of things. Pretty much the only place to go career-wise is administration, which is actually a totally different profession, since the best part of teaching is the kids, and administrators spend way more time shuffling papers and answering telephones and holding meetings than they do with any children. A conundrum.

For now, I am content with the responsibilities, great and small, that running a classroom entails. I'm 25 - chances are, any job I'm likely to get will involve some measure of tedium... stapling 29 folders to the wall, taking them all down again, walking kids up and down the stairs, copying things onto chart paper, hanging up bulletin boards, rearranging furniture...all that's part of the job I'm fine with all that now. And some people are really great at all those things and don't mind doing them in perpetuity. I just don't think I'm one of those people.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/23/magazine/23Race-t.html

Interesting article about Race to the Top and teachers' unions in the New York Times magazine...

I recently received notification that I've been recommended for tenure.

Interestingly, Mr. P has seen me teach exactly twice. Three if you include the time he walked into my classroom for a couple minutes last fall.

finishing

Woke up last Friday feeling empty and out of sorts. No particular reason, I think it's just that time of year - like mile 21 of the marathon... where's the finish line already??! Am I STILL doing this? Is it really going to end as they promised?

It's so easy to love my job in the summer -- I remember thinking last year, as I rode down a dusty road far far far from New York City, you'd have to be crazy not to be a teacher! I can't believe I'm being paid to be on vacation for two months!

And in the fall you can love it too, there's possibilities and potential to get excited about, sharp pencils and juicy new markers.

But your drive and ambition get spottier towards the end of the year, as you're worn down to a nub, and pencils are short, chewed-up, blunt and eraserless and all the markers are either dried up or lost.

And you're still in the boat rowing and rowing though your arms are getting tired and the shore doesn't seem to be getting any closer, at least not with any discernable speed.

What can you do?

Just keep showing up to work, I guess, one foot in front of the other. You make the most of your weekends and afternoons. Try to outrun your dispassion. Make plans for next year. Maybe a mental health day is in order, too. Drink sangria and sit in the sun. And you keep leaning on your friends.

A three-hour tour (three hour tour)

Today is the day of the fifth grade cruise... Yesterday the kids were buzzing with excitement, to the tune of not settling down for more than eight seconds at a time.

I have misgivings about the cruise, namely that I think it's a bit presumptuous to ask a community like ours to spend $40 on a luxury like a 3-hour boat ride. But Sh-- was walking around yesterday telling everyone what a 'milestone' it was going to be... they amaze me sometimes... milestone? where'd he get that word?

Milestone or not, it does mark the fact that the end of the school year is fast approaching and my class, my kids, all the intrigue and drama will evaporate before I know it like a long and very involved dream.

Part of me cannot wait to banish them from my psyche and to say so long, kiddos, go bug somebody else for a while. Part of me is DONE, boiled like a twenty minute egg in counting.

But part of me grieves the inevitable loss. They grow on you like a tumor, you know? Part of me feels so protective of them, like I would defend them to my last breath, even the ones who never seem to listen or who are completely oblivious and never know what's going on. Maybe especially them, they're the ones who are most likely to need defense. Part of me dreads letting them out of the careful homeostasis maintained within my four walls, to let them out into that big uncertain world where anything can happen. Exiting elementary school means exiting the bubble - no more safe zone, no more bumper lane. This group of kids have changed me like no other. Letting go of them will mean letting go of a part of myself.