Loss of Confidence

I'm struggling. I am a tired, tired first year teacher. When I leave school at the end of the day I'm spent. I realize that I have to adjust my rear-view mirror in the afternoons because I just cannot sit up as tall as I was in the morning. I fail...miserably. I cannot get the attention of my students when I want to. I can't possibly summon the energy to teach another period 11 chaos class. My students will not love poetry like I love poetry. I cannot make kids enjoy reading......I am not the super teacher I want to be.

But I can still try. And when a single student, at the end of a random Monday afternoon, comes to me and says: "Miss Willis I really liked that poem we read...and can you come to my soccer game tomorrow?" I know that I make a difference in the life of a child and to me I have already reached success.

I am having....

...a really crummy day. My students are pushing my buttons, I have written my first referral of the year which is only my 6th one to date in my career, I assigned 2 after school detentions and 2 lunch detentions today, which means I have to stay after with the monsters. And my head hurts.

I know I sound whiny but I pride myself in being able to manage my classroom effectively without help from adminstration and I feel like I am failing, myself and the kids.

I'm tired and looking forward to school being over for the day.

Things that really

...bummed me out today:

A-the kid in the cafeteria during the 8th grade lunch that I supervise. Who has a beard and appears to be 30, and sits by himself every day.
B- overhearing the girls in the cafeteria talking about another little girl: "She wears that same sweatshirt every day, no wonder she has no friends. What a dirty skank...."
C- Offering my students time to do some silent reading in class, because reading makes us better readers, only to have a student in the back who would prefer to balance his pencil on his nose than actually read something. (I even handed him a magazine article about swimsuit models).
D- not having the proper materials (or money to get them) to offer my students the array of learning experience I want to be able to give them....and watching my students that are 6+ feet tall squeeze themselves into little, tiny desks, when they should be able to have tables and bean bag chairs and places to comfortably read from.

until.....
A-the new student teacher plopped herself down with the lonely kid at lunch, bought him an apple and had a long discussion about why he sits alone, (he's actually in 9th grade and doesnt know the 8th graders) and how he wants to be a published poet.
B- another girl at the table said to her friend...."Maybe she can't afford another sweatshirt Emily! And btw you wore that same hoodie on Wednesday." and proceeded to get up and go sit with other people.
C- I looked around the room and saw 23 other little heads bowed over their respective novels. Some of them even smiling as they read tales from a bunch of differernt authors in generes that interested them.


and D- I'm still struggling with this one and get frustrated....where does the money for education go? But its payday today.....and I need colored pencils.

Its a crazy life....

So our life is a little topsy-turvy right now. I cannot begin to describe the chaos which is us. I am back and forth from home A to home B several times week. I have been doing doubles at the bar because text books for him this semester are going to run us between $750.00 (most bought on Amazon.com [LOVE amazon]) -$1250.00 (the price of the books new at the book store)..... I will someday write text books, what a great gig they have going on.



See below: The catastrophe that is my home.

Note: the multiple wine glasses and coffee cups--my sanity savers.






I can only hope that this packing, upheaval, crazy process will someday ease into memory as a great and wonderful step in our lives.

I love summer....but its almost over.

I mowed my lawn today.... now, I have a love-hate relationship with mowing my lawn. Its pretty much the only time I get to spend some quality one-on-one time with the sun. So I tie on my bikini top and get to absorbing the rays in hopes of gaining a little summer glow. And I enjoy this time spent outside. But I hate, HATE, getting covered in grass clippings. My whole body itches just thinking about it. I hate the tiny pieces of chopped bug-grass-weed-dirt mixture that covers me head to toe afterward. I hate the way my skin feels and my eyes water and I hate that my feet turn green..... But mowing my lawn today made me really appreciate my dog.

She will quietly lay in the grass and watch. There's no need to leash her, or tie her up. She's perfectly happy laying in the sunshine waiting for me to get done. Occasionally she will get up and follow me calmly down the freshly mown pathway that the lawnmower creates, her own white feet also turning a bright shade of green. Or she'll roll happily through the grass clippings, loving the way they feel against her skin, or the way they smell, or the bugs that she can find still lurking in them.

And I envy her a little bit. The pure and utter happiness that a dog has by just being. I envy her trust, her absolute certainty that I will not mow her over, and that when I'm finished I will most likely throw her tennis ball that she has been patiently moving around the yard, away from the perils of mower blades.

I also realized how much I love my home. I looked around the yard today and noticed how tall my lilac has gotten since I bought this house. I planted it the spring that I moved in. The flower beds that my mother and grandmother painstakingly created for me, patiently explaining which were plants and what was actually a weed. (knowing all along that it would remain un-weeded until they came back again). My slightly crooked, quirky mailbox, the humming birds that frequent my flowers, the mint that makes perfect mojitos, my slightly eccentric neighbors, the puddle at the end of the driveway that clearly resembles the playboy bunnie after a hard rain.... I am going to miss being here. I'm going to miss having things that are mine. I'm going to miss making decisions about which color to paint, what plants to move where, which trees can be cut down. I'm going to miss being independent and I'm going to miss alone time.....

This is going to be a difficult change for me. I know that its for the best, and I am so excited to start my new job and begin a real life together...but adjusting to a house full of people, sharing a kitchen and laundry room, permanently, is going to take some getting used to.

Now Accepting All Forms of Praise

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I GOT A JOB !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


I will be teaching 10th grade English next fall at Cortland High School as a permanent, full-time teacher!!!

Flowers

My lilac is blooming and I am so so excited. Does that make me old? To be excited about plants?
Oh well. So I bought this lilac bush at the Lilac Festival 3 years ago and for the first time ever it is covered with blossoms. I didn't kill it, and its beautiful.

Life is good. And the Lilac Fest is this week and next week with great food, pretty flowers and wonderful music. If you have never been to Highland Park during lilac season GO. Go now.

Happy Spring!

ok...so its still freaking cold out. So cold that we still have our wood stove running constantly and the dog won't go more than three feet outside to pee.....but its SPRING!!! and I have flowers sprouting in my garden... and there are calves being born twice a week on the farm, and its spring break so I get to be HOME for 11 days, and I am so so happy.

Is it me?

There is something seriously wrong with some of the teachers I work with. Or......maybe its me. Am I an idealistic fool to think that there is something redeeming in every child? Now....don't get me wrong. I am not a saint. I have students that I detest. Kids that I truly wish would transfer to another district, students that I have to continually remind myself that "Someone, somewhere loves this child. You may NOT toss him out the window". However...... I genuinely love my students. I feel for them, I listen to them, I teach them. It's my job. It's what I spent 7 years and $60,000+ on. It's something that I am passionate about, it's what makes me laugh, and what makes me so frustrated I come home and race for the corkscrew and the crystal at night. It's what keeps me up till 3am trying to figure out why a student wrote what he did, and how I can help make it better. It's what makes me climb out of bed in the middle of the night because I just had a thought of another way to explain a scene in Shakespeare to my students and I have to write it down right that second or I will forget. I teach because I hope to inspire some kids to go to college, or to love Hamlet, or even just to think that "reading ain't that bad Ms. W".

So when my peers, my colleagues, other PROFESSIONALS.... come to me in the course of my day to chastise me for being so young, or to complain about their students or to assume I don't know what I am doing because I look 18....I get irate. I get furious. I want to demand an apology. I want to know what their philosophy on education is. Because mine is so much different than many, many of the teachers I interact with on a daily basis.

I have a student who comes to me during his free periods because he doesn't understand the way his English teacher explains what is expected of him. He spends his lunch, study hall and after school in my classroom pouring over his notes, scribbling away in his note book and asking questions so that he can finish his senior research project and go on the senior trip without having it on his mind. He's not my student, he's not on my roster, and I am not accountable for his successes or failures..... but he's a child, and he has asked for my help. His teacher approached me in the faculty room last week to question why he comes to me for help. Telling me that she would love to send him to me during her class time with him because she's "known him since the 7th grade and he is a real ass".....and....."good luck with that kid Molly, I gave up on him a long time ago. He's not going anywhere, don't waste your energy." Well..... I told her that I don't give up on students and smiled politely while I walked away from her so as not to hit her. This student is a clown, and is easily distracted. But, with a little patience and a quiet atmosphere he's a hard worker who knows his limitations and asks for help when necessary. There's not much more we can ask for. But really......... I'm an educator and he is a student. It is my responsibility to teach. A doctor cannot drive by the scene of an accident without stopping to see if their is anything they can do to help, should a teacher be allowed to so easily shrug off her responsibilities and write a student off for lost?

I am so disenchanted with...... not my profession, but with the "professionals" in it. Is it just because I am so new that I haven't become jaded yet? Teachers come up to me in the hallway and say things like "How's it going ready to run screaming from the building yet? We have some really terrible students here." IN FRONT OF THE KIDS! Or they will poke their heads in my classroom in the middle of my lessons to say things like "Oh! I'm sorry. Is there learning going on in here today? I thought Miss Willis was every one's favorite teacher just because shes so ___________________" (insert word of the day here: fun, hot, easy going, young, etc) and yes......this has happened more than once in the few weeks I have been working at my current job.

...And when students come to me and say "Miss Willis can you help me on my math (science, social studies, Spanish) homework because Mr/Mrs So-and-So said I would never be able to learn how." It breaks my heart. There is hope for each child that wants to learn, and turning away a child that has a question or an idea is horrible. I don't think that every person can do well in school, I do NOT believe that every kid is going to graduate, I think that we should fail kids that fail to do their work, I think that there should indeed be children "left behind"......but I think it's a crime to stop trying. I think that when we stop feeling empathy and stop striving for successes for all our students then we stop being educators. I think that tenure and unions are ruining the education system and that we need to be able to fire teachers that no longer do their jobs.

Is it me? Am I alone in feeling this way? Am I really too ________________ (young, naive, inexperienced, idealistic, hopeful, caring, etc) to become a successful and good teacher? Or....are there any good teachers left out there?

Oh.... dear.

Me: OK guys so Shakespeare was from England, and he spent most of his adult life in London. Where's London?

Random kids: "Canada?" "France" "Is it that place in Australia that they always show on TV with the weird white theater thingy with all the pointy parts?"

Me: Are you serious? Who's your social studies teacher?

Student B: It's in France I know it is. London is in France!

Student A: No it's not. It's in England.

B: Whatever same thing.

A: yeah, that they're both in Europe.

B: I thought you said London was in England. Now you're saying its in Europe.

Me: Stop! London is a city, on the island which is England, on the continent of Europe, on planet Earth, stuck in the milky way, in a universe that we cannot measure.

B: Wait. What's a continent?

----------------------------------------

Needless to say, when I came home from school, and poured myself a glass of wine, and sat down to watch tv only to hear the president say: We need to raise standards and raise graduation rates. I wanted to get him on the phone and give him a piece of my mind.....

Those 2 things are completely contradictory. 100%. If we raise standards then gradutation rates will drop. AND THEY SHOULD. Children are getting passed along and not learning ANYTHING.

Thats like..... Lets say that there was a new rule saying that in order to eat dinner tonight you had to run a 10 minute mile. Many, many people would be able to eat dinner. Now lets raise the standards a little. In order to eat dinner tomorrow, you have to run a 4 minute mile. How many people do you think will be eating dinner tomorrow?

If you cannot meet standards you will fail. If you cannot lift 10 lbs and someone tells you to pick up your car. You will fail. And thats ok. Only those really huge, ugly guys on TV are supposed to lift cars.

I feel like we are making a joke of the education system. A certain suburban school district near Rochester boasts a 100% graduation rate.....well, I taught there....and lets just say that all their sutdents are not rocket scientists. How is this possible? Why do we just let kids float along through life? What are we teaching them? That mediocre is ok? That things will always just be handed to them? That life is easy?

It just seems like such a disservice. To kids, to society, to our country. It makes me sad and angry at the same time.

I need more wine.