Makin' Me Tired

I say this quite a bit when I am at work.  

For those of you who don’t know, I am a teacher.  An English teacher by title, but truth-be-told, I am pretty sure I am a life teacher more than anything else.  Don’t get me wrong, I loves me some literature, and I love when my students discover a piece of writing that speaks to them, but I would argue I spend 80% of my time teaching life skills.  Responsibility, respect, compassion, critical thinking, patience, accountability, prioritizing, planning, empathy, integrity, pride, work ethic, coping with emotional turmoil, to name a few.  

A little background about being a teacher: while there are some teachers who do the bare minimum, the majority of us spend an inordinate amount of time planning.  For English/Literature in particular, in addition to reading the literature for ourselves, sometimes for the first time, sometimes for the seventh, in order to be able to answer questions, we also spend time considering an inordinate amount of other things.  Some of the things I consider when planning include what I need to do to introduce the unit so the students have a foundation to help them grasp the material, what activities they will do during that introduction that are relevant to what they will need to do in college and/or life.  How do I support the reading: study guide, required written summaries, blogging, class discussion, reflection prompts, comprehension quizzes, character charts, and/or podcasts?  I will spare you the details of the final evaluation preparation because the list is longer than the one above.  

To be honest, one can find so much of this online or in a teacher’s edition, if you have one of those.  It is also very easy and tempting to simply copy and use the same materials from year to year.  I have been guilty of both at times, but for the most part, these are things I have to consider and decide upon every year.  In fact, most of the time when I come up for an idea for one of my classes and run it past my co-teacher, she looks at me and says, “You know, I think we did that a couple of years ago.  Do you want me to check my files?”  I have several very good friends who also happen to be English teachers who positively rock at their jobs.  I also have several good friends who teach other subjects.  They are creative, innovative, demanding, passionate, collaborative... well, you get the picture.  I am willing to bet that each of them could add so much more to this list that I’ve forgotten.

I am not listing this to brag or lament about the difficulties of teaching, but rather for me to help explain why I say those words every. single. day.  You see, after all of the fun, and I mean that literally because it is my favorite part of teaching, of planning, when the time comes to actually teach what’s been planned, the kids remind me that their worlds ain’t exactly about literature.  They remind me when they get into a heated argument about whether or not the window should be open when the room is hotter than the surface of the sun and the snow flurries from outside melt before they can actually land on the countertop.  They remind me when it is the 110th day of school and they continue to come to a class in which we write every day and ask me for a pen or pencil.  They remind me when they walk out of class, leaving their novels and notebooks on the desk despite having homework.  They remind me.

This is why I say those words every day.  It’s not the teaching part of it because after they all finally get seated and start working, when I am done breaking up the window fight, have distributed all the pencils and paper and extra copies of the books, when I actually have an opportunity to teach about the power of words, I could go on for days!  It is the 4,987,367,093,256 other things that my college did pretty much nothing for which to prepare me.  To be real, people who are considering education should take parenting classes because frankly, that’s what I feel like - the mom away from home.  And I don’t say that to insult the parents; some of them are fantastic and others are lacking.  To put it simply, when my youngest niece asked me why I don’t have any children, I replied, “Because I get about 100 new children every year.”

I have a group of students this year, many of them for the second time around because I taught the younger grade last year.  To say they are challenging is an understatement.  They are bone-wearying, gray-hair-creating, frustrating-until-my-limbs-are-shaking exhausting.  And they’ve been that way for most of their academic careers from what I understand.  If I could print the graphic at the top of this page on a shirt, I would have enough shirts printed for every day.  Then, instead of correcting them, repeating directions, shushing them, etc., I would just point to my shirt.

This week, though, three of those energy-sucking creatures got into another heated argument.  No, it wasn’t about the window - that happened the day before - but it was about the characters in the book they were reading.  They had a legitimate fifteen-minute heated debate about the best way to describe them.  One of those boys, who last year wasn’t much interested in the academic part of school, sat and read his book in study hall in my room, then without being asked, put all the laptops away and plugged them in.  

I have never birthed a child, much less raised one that came from my body.  And the moms out there, you can correct me if I am wrong, but I have to imagine this warmth in my heart is a little spark of pride at their growth.  Mind you, it could very well be the fact that my room feels like the tropical forest on the hottest day of the year, but I think it’s probably pride.  Maybe, just maybe, being tired is worth it.