I am in my eighth year of teaching. It took reading a research book for my next novel to figure out why. There are always frustrations on the job including new programs, miscommunications, disagreements, screaming kids, organization, and even planning the right lessons. I usually walk away each week (day) wondering if I made a difference. That is one of the reasons I went into teaching in the first place. I wanted to make a difference. I wanted to be that teacher that a kid pointed out at graduation that I was the influence that they needed to make something of themselves. But most of the time, the reality is: I don’t know what happens to them after they graduate my classroom.
Every day is another repeat of the previous. I get up early before light and return home right before the sun sets. I adjust lessons and make power points. I send out lessons in the format requested and I smile and hug the kids as they come to class. But every kid struggles and I don’t always know how. I do my best to support academically, but I notice more and more that many behaviors of acting out (screaming, hitting, vandalizing) are because they are crying out for attention. I cannot fix all their problems. But I can be there in THIS moment. They will not remember most of the lessons that I teach this year. But they will remember experiences. They will continue on to a new grade and a new teacher next year. But hopefully I will have built a foundation so that they can learn even harder concepts next year.
I taught this week on having a growth mindset, which is having perseverance when encountering failures. I am hoping this will encourage these students to forgive themselves, instead of falling apart in anxiety that they will never “be good”. As you might imagine, this came up in a recent conversation with a student, full of tears. Putting my lesson PowerPoint together reminds me of kintsugi, which I learned about earlier this year. I also read about this recently in the book Chasing Slow (Loechner). It is a Japanese art of putting together a broken pot with gold glitter and glue, sometimes taking months to complete. The end result is a way of showing off the faults, rather than attempting to hide them. I want to show these students that they have gold to shine, even through their failures.
I always want to be the one to make the difference. But maybe I won’t. Maybe I’ll just be their cheerleader. And that is as good enough reason as any to see them grab the baton from someone else knowing that they will run to the finish line to achieve their dreams. Most likely I won’t ever see the results, but I’m going to keep at it because every little action matters.
Eventually I’d like to write books as a full-time gig. Then my goal would change. I will spread history, knowledge, and mystery in my novels, opening up new worlds so that people can dream their dreams through what they read on the page. But until then, I will keep my routine. It is not enough and I know that.
But maybe it’s enough for one.
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