Week 3: Exhausted, yet Hopeful

I started this blog post at 9 o'clock last night and fell asleep on the keyboard. Here I am now at 8:45am Saturday morning trying to articulate all the exhaustion, love, frustration and hope I felt this past week. Teaching is hard. I know a couple weeks ago I wrote about the honeymoon phase and how amazing my days were, and I hope this post doesn't tear the last one to shreds, but I have never been so overwhelmed in my life. This week I taught a lesson about tone and told my students that the term "yet" is their best friend when analyzing a piece of literature. "The tone of the passage was exhausted, yet hopeful." That was what one student expressed after reading an excerpt from The House on Mango Street. When he said that, I thought, wow, I think that is the tone of this week. 

I'm exhausted. Dang, am I exhausted. Just when I think I have thought of everything, and spent hours making a lesson perfect, I realize within the first period of teaching it that the links to the videos the students are supposed to watch are broken, the kids that don't speak any English are super lost, and my computer randomly disconnected from the projector and now my PowerPoint won't project. On my way to school one morning I missed the turn to the interstate and audibly said where the heck am I? and turned around in an auto shop parking lot. I forgot my lunch all packed and ready to go on the counter of my apartment. I got my first angry mom email, who is tired of having to call the school to fix her son's attendance report because I didn't change his "absent" to "tardy" every day that he came in late last week. It's a lot. Dang, is it a lot. 

There is a joke I have among my roommates that they can tell how my life is going by the state of my shoe rack. Yesterday I came home looked at my shoes scattered around the room, my unmade bed, and the pile of laundry on my desk, oh and another on the floor, and just cried. I hopped on my bed in my slacks and blouse and just sobbed my little heart out. My roommate came in later and saw me crying and said "So this is what teaching looks like." I laughed because it felt like Truth. Perhaps I am getting a behind-the-scenes look into the lives of all my teachers and the whole time, behind all their PowerPoint and learning targets, were days of dripping snot on their slacks and mascara on their favorite turtleneck. 

I guess it is time I change the tone to hopeful because if I'm not careful I am gonna set myself back again. But yesterday, when I just really did not want to wake up so early, I sat in my car and said a prayer. I said, "Father, please help me remember my purpose. Please give me the strength to do what you need me to do." During the last period of the day, I noticed that one of our new students (we'll call him Juan) was not switching to the next station. After prompting, he switched. Then I realized Juan was not even on the assignment page, his Chromebook was not even loaded. After prompting, he loaded the page. A few minutes later, I realize Juan is working on the wrong activity at his current station. I point out to him the instructions on the board, written in both Spanish and English. He looks at me still a bit confused and I realize that the instructions may have been in Spanish but the assignment itself was all in English. Juan was lost, and so was I. Later I talked to my cooperating teacher about Juan. She informed me that he just moved here from Mexico 3 months ago and that this past week was his first time ever in an American public school. She then said, when you are working with level 1s, Ms. Gee, you need to figure out what is important and then only assign that. Perhaps that means giving them a totally different assignment.

On my drive home, I kept thinking about that question, what is important, and then thought about how this whole unit is about the American Dream. I thought about my students, all my students that have immigrated here just in the past few years, all my students that are the first to receive an American education in their family, all my students that do not natively speak English: what is my role in their American Dream? And it was then my prayer got answered and God helped me remember my purpose. A teacher can make or break a child's American Dream. Charity lies at the center of that dream, with the extra effort to accommodate and differentiate being the pulse of the whole operation. No effort is wasted. And all the extra miles I walk for my students, and all the extra miles I still need to make, are not for nothing. Instead, they are pumping oxygen to the most vital elements of their American Dream. I cannot crush it. I cannot extinguish their hope and goals and aspirations with my exhaustion. It's sooo heavy to think about, but the same God that answered my prayer concerning my purpose, will answer my plea for strength to do what He needs me to do, and that's what makes it hopeful.  

And all the extra miles I walk for my students, and all the extra miles I still need to make, are not for nothing. Instead, they are pumping oxygen to the most vital elements of their American Dream. 

                                  

    -Ms. Gee