I was encouraged at the beginning of the year to keep a journal, to document the daily experiences, joys, stresses, successes and struggles of a teacher. I was encouraged to somehow capture what it was like to be a teacher, especially now. And I did, for a while. Until life seemed to get in the way. I cruised along, writing about the moments that felt like the epitome of the teaching profession as well as those struggles that felt like the reason so many of my colleagues are looking for other careers.
And there were days when I meant to write, but the ups and downs of my personal life set claim to those moments, reminding me that every hour isn’t just about the kids, or the needs of their parents, or even the needs of my administrators, but that I am also a wife, a sister, a daughter, a mother, and that those people need me, too.
The balance has become more and more difficult in the past month, when my personal life took an unexpected and severe turn and I found myself struggling professionally to put in the effort, the energy and the enthusiasm that ten year olds need out of their fourth grade teacher. I found myself short-tempered with colleagues and declining involvement in school activities that I once readily participated in because my personal life needed more and there is, after all, only so much to give.
But it was yesterday, that I realized how difficult it is to ever truly separate the personal and professional life of a teacher. Sitting in the oncologist’s office with my beloved husband, as the doctor helped us navigate the truly unexpected and devastating diagnosis of Stage 4 metastatic melanoma, she used the phrase, “between a rock and a hard place.” In that singular moment, I was two people. Completely and utterly two distinct people. My husband’s wife was struggling to catch her breath, swallowing the description in an effort to wrap my mind around all that was happening to our world, our life and the implication that the road forward is far from clear or easy. And at the same time, the teacher in the same chair thought, “Ooh, an idiom! I’ll have to remember to tell the kids about that one!”
It sounds absurd to even type it. It seems ludicrous that I even thought it, but that, in every sense of it all is exactly what it is like to be a teacher. I could not possibly find a better way to explain it to anyone else.
I wrote sub plans on Thursday for the following three school days. It’s a far more difficult task that it might seem, especially when I knew my students would have three different substitute teachers. My dear colleague and co-teacher repeatedly assured me that the kids will be fine and that she will handle anything that comes up. My administrator assured me that it was all good and everything would be handled, and not to worry. But I can’t not worry. These are my students. These are the ten years olds whose parents email me at ten o’clock on a Thursday night with a concern. These are the precious children who were all but robbed of a normal school year last year because of COVID, virtual learning and social distancing. These are the children who I have worked all year to close gaps, move the academic mountains and fight for additional supports for. These are the children who depend on me to make sure they know the things they need to know before moving on to fifth grade.
In the past month I have been absent from school more than I have in any other school year and I know my absences are far from over. I will continue to stress about leaving meaningful sub plans and not just “busy work”. I will continue to worry about this student and that who do not do well with changes in routine, changes in teachers. I will continue to worry about all the responsibilities that come with my profession – the meetings I am mentally absent from even when I am physically there, the colleagues who need my collaboration or my feedback that will get little more than blank stares and minimal input. And I will worry that I am not going to be enough for my students, that I will fall short of engaging and exciting and that my lessons will be little more than opening a TE and teaching the next page. I worry.
And I worry about my husband. Every second of every moment since we first realized there was a problem, I have worried. I worry about what our next steps will be and how we will manage everything and I worry about being enough for him during this time that he needs my everything.
And so while it seems absolutely absurd to think that while this world-renowned oncologist is delivering life-altering news to my husband and me, my thoughts jump to my class and my kids and the damn essential standard on idioms that we have been working on for months, it is not absurd at all.
This, in every single ounce of it, is exactly the life of a teacher. And this duality, these precious people on both sides, leave me feeling like I am indeed stuck between a rock and a hard place.
Teaching at 3am 