What I Want: Teacher Edition

When I was in college, a professor told my class of wanna-be teachers, “You won’t be able to be everything to every student every day. But you can try to be something to some students every day.”

Eight years ago, that maxim bored itself into my brain like a worm into an apple. It haunts me. It implies—no, preaches—that accepting less than perfection is acceptable. I still wrestle with its reality daily.

Because to the student who can’t currently read or write well: I want to be your tutor.

To the student who lacks confidence: I want to be your cheerleader.

To the student who lacks manners (and believe me, I've seen the emails you send to me): I want to be your Ann Landers.

To the student who needs validation: I want to be the writer of positive sticky notes and giver of high fives.

To the student who needs boundaries: I want to be your rule maker and rule enforcer.

To the student who needs someone to listen: I want to be your sounding board. 

I’m equal parts drive, stubbornness, and perfectionism, so I don’t give up easily and am very motivated.

And yet sometimes in teaching, I find myself so utterly exhausted, so spent at the end of the day that I come home and half-joke to my husband, “I’m not doing this anymore. This is ridiculous. These hours are crazy. This paperwork is nuts. This is my last year.” Every single year, I have seriously considered throwing in the towel.  

Honestly, if I am being transparent with you, I do lack intrinsic motivation sometimes. I fantasize about my job at Barnes and Noble where I made coffee for JMU students and only worked 8-10 hours at a time and never brought work home with me.  

And then, I go to school in the morning and stare at all the faces on my “wall of fame” (where kids have given me their senior picture). And on really rough mornings, I open my overflowing “smile file,” with student drawings and thank you letters from the past six years. I look around my room at twenty-five kids who told me they "hate reading" invested in The Crucible and BEGGING me to keep reading so they can find out if Abigail gets her just reward. I linger for a few minutes after school to talk to the kids who swing by my room to get a hug, a snack, or a pep talk. 

And that motivates me.

Because no…I can’t be the perfect teacher. I can’t be everything to every student. 

But maybe today, I can be something to someone. Maybe I can teach someone something new, whether its to believe in himself or trust herself or use a new reading strategy or use a new vocab word or speak in a more respectful tone or whatever. Maybe I can listen to one of my students fret about her future or ask for advice on how to write his college application essay. 

And it's not just that my kids learn from me. I learn from them daily. Sometimes I look around the room and think, "Each one of these kids is someone's baby," and my eyes fill with tears. I have been entrusted with the most precious gifts in the world. Yes, some of them are smartphone-wielding, Jordan wearing, teeth sucking, eye rolling sassy pants. But they are still precious gifts. 

While I am excited to spend time with my own baby next year, leaving the classroom is going to hurt. I am going to miss it. I have burst into tears just thinking about it multiple times over the past few weeks. 

What I really want for my profession: 
More respect from students, parents, administrators, community members, and society in general.  
Acceptable pay (Virginia's teacher pay gap is insulting and appalling)
TIME to collaborate, plan, grade
Freedom to actually teach 
...and so much more

Maybe when I return to teaching someday, the field will look different. Maybe we'll have progressed as a society. Or maybe I just want too much. 

Until June 15th, though, what I really want more than anything in the world is to savor these last few weeks with some of the best kids I've ever taught and the best people I've ever taught with. So, I plan to do just that.