He Was Right, I Am a Teacher

I remember the day I told my parents that I had finally decided what I wanted to be when I “grew up”. My announcement that I wanted to be a zookeeper was met with some shock, and a bit of dismay. Scooping poop for a living was not quite what my parents had dreamed for me. But I was adamant, and alas, my parents supported my decision and I began my collegiate journey with an internship at the Cincinnati Zoo, and finished it with a degree in Wildlife from Penn State. During my journey, my advisor was nothing short of horrified that I was not pursuing a teaching degree. He was insistent that my personality and enthusiasm lent themselves beautifully to teaching. I pointedly, and repeatedly told him that I WAS going to be a teacher, but at a zoo, not in a school. Teaching in a public school just was not for me. Too many rules and regulations and chalkboards. No thank you. Upon graduation I would resume my career at the zoo, in the education department, where I had been invited back for a guaranteed position. That was my plan. We argued over this continually until I graduated and said my goodbyes. Imagine MY dismay when just one short year later life’s journey found me teaching Spanish, in a very rural and very public school, under an emergency permit, for one year. A rural public school in the mountains of central Pennsylvania? This was not in the plan at all! But I served my year and found it incredibly rewarding. I never did realize my dream of resuming my work in a zoo. I married and had children, and today I am back in the teaching arena, as a Spanish teacher in a charter school. I often think back on that professor, and smile. What would he think about the path I have followed? I think he would be very satisfied that he was right. I hope someday I have the chance to tell him. In the meantime, I still hold onto my dream of teaching wildlife and conservation in a zoo. But for now, Spanish is my teaching realm. I have to say I sort of fell into teaching. The story behind that must be saved for another day, but nonetheless I am, in all ways, a school teacher. Which leads me to the heart of this essay. I was once asked by a student teacher placed in my room what I do to avoid becoming emotionally drained and overly involved with my students. This was my reply.

The first school in which I taught was in an impoverished area. Many of my students did not have appropriate clothing and lived in near squalor, and a large majority of them only got to eat one decent meal a day, their school lunch. For kids who are hungry, cold, neglected and tired, Spanish, and school in general, is not really a priority. In this environment, it was impossible to not become “too involved”. We discussed this as teachers often. Everyday your heart was broken, many times over. Teacher turnover rates were very high. When I began teaching in the school I am in now, It was a revelation to me to teach in a “normal” school, where teachers actually have budgets, parents actually attend school events and conferences, children are properly clothed, and teachers can teach without wondering if the students have eaten that morning. Not every teacher will experience this extreme dichotomy, but for me, it was a valuable lesson. I learned that by recognizing the needs of my students, I was able to make my class an escape, and students, by design actually learned what I wanted them to learn. What is it that you want your students to learn? Every teacher has to discover and decide this for themselves.

Emotionally drained? This is just part of the job. You can’t escape it, only learn to deal with it. In reality, we as teachers spend almost as much “quality” time a day with student’s as their parents, more so for elementary educators who have the same students all day, every day. For this reason, it is very hard to not become “too” involved. To be an effective instructor, you have to know your students as individuals. You have to know their personalities and stories, and to truly reach them, you have to help them know that you deeply care about each one of them, and find out what motivates them.

Emotionally drained? I think exhaustion is a given in our profession, especially when you get to the working parent stage of life. As a working parent you care for kids at work, and at home. It is a continual process. A professional educator cannot be defined as someone who solely instructs students in a given discipline. You must understand and accept that you have to nurture as well as educate. You become, in a sense, a daytime parent. You wipe tears, mouths, hands, noses, tables, desks, walls, and floors. You tie shoes, button pants, hook overalls, fix hair disasters, tighten ponytails, put band-aids on boo-boos, handle lost teeth, and, on occasion, reinsert lost earrings. You have to, at some point, deal with every bodily fluid imaginable. You heat lunches, sharpen pencils, pick up CONSTANTLY. You read stories, sing songs, do silly dances, occasionally you cry, but mostly you laugh… A LOT! You learn that no matter how smart you think you are, the kids will out smart you every time. The trick is to not let them know it! You begin to learn, and eventually realize that their little kid problems are just as important to them as our big kid problems are to us (you have to recognize and acknowledge this in order to not constantly fight it). You repeat, repeat, and repeat yourself over, and over, and over, and over again. That alone is exhausting. Did I mention that you will spend the majority of your day repeating yourself, and that repetition is a huge part of the job? Teaching, by nature is repetitious… It is a very repetitive process.

I could go on and on, but basically, to answer your question, emotional exhaustion and over-involvement are simply part of the job, and in my mind, they are important factors that ultimately make teaching so interesting, fun and rewarding.

And so, in reading this, I have finally, and truly accepted myself for who and what I am. I believe my former professor. I believe that in order to be a good teacher, you have to invest yourself emotionally in your students. I believe that I have become, and am, in all ways, a teacher. And I believe I am better for it.