Truth Talk: The Things We Don’t Think About.
“The art of teaching is the art of assisting discovery.” – Mark Van Doren
Today was a difficult one. I’m not going to sugar-coat it or talk about how beautiful it was that we all got a chance to in some way, shape, or form honor our students at the end of the year because that wouldn’t be the truth. The truth is, this sucks sucks.
As educators, we spend so much of our days consumed by thoughts on how to reach that one child in our room we may not be reaching. We don’t go home thinking about the great things we did that day or that one lesson that just really had an impact. No. We go home thinking about the students we still feel we haven’t quite gotten to know or done as much as we can for.
I fell into teaching, in some ways by accident. After graduating college with an English degree, it turns out it’s pretty damn hard to find a career path that has anything to do with rhetorical analysis, debating the author’s meaning in a certain line of text, or why literature is still even important or relevant in peoples’ lives. I found a job in IT recruiting and to put it mildly, I hated every second of it. I felt I had so much to offer if someone would only give me a chance. I later quit that job and decided to work retail while I worked on getting my teaching certificate. I viewed teaching as a fall back option and an opportunity to one day sink my teeth into being an author since I would have summers off. But after working in schools for three years, I fell in love with my students, my fellow teachers, and the feeling of helping young people realize their own potential.
Fun fact- I am a Pre-K teacher, but we like to think of ourselves as our students’ “introduction to learning”. As an Early Childhood educator we have the profound privilege of working with children at a very important age in their development. I get to watch them grow more in one year than any other grade level I’ve ever taught in. Their excitement for learning and getting to witness every small thing through their eyes is truly remarkable.
Due to Covid-19 (wow, I wonder how many sentences have started out that way this year so far), we unfortunately were not able to finish our school year together in the classroom. It’s been a tough transition as the weeks have passed realizing that I wouldn’t be able to say a real goodbye to my kiddos. I wouldn’t get to hold them tight and tell them how much I love them and I’ll miss them. I didn’t get to tell them how proud I am of them. It sucks. Instead, I got to wave at them through the car window as they drove past so we could celebrate their year in Pre-K without violating social distancing. It certainly isn’t how I imagined this year would end. Seeing their art work and stories still covering my classroom walls broke my heart, but I know sometimes life isn’t fair and we just have to make lemonade. But that doesn’t mean we can’t still say ‘this sucks’, right?
