Dear Potential MTC First-Year,
One of my husband's best friends called me about a year ago to ask about my experience in the Mississippi Teacher Corps because he was thinking of applying. He still recalls my first words on that weeknight chat: "The Mississippi Teacher Corps has ruined my life." I elaborated for about twenty minutes. Several months later, he joined the program.
Once he was well into the school year, we had another late-night chat. "Why didn't I listen to you?" he asked. We talked about how there's really no way to describe to a prospective teacher how to difficult it will be. We all want to jump in and feel it for ourselves. Why can't we just stay away? Are we masochists? Everyone tells you it will be incredibly stressful, heartbreaking, and will isolate you from family and friends. Perhaps I didn't realize how much it would isolate me from my very self.
It would be unfair to say that my experience hasn't changed me in positive ways. I've become less of a perfectionist and learned to just get the words out even if they're not the perfect words. I've built up endurance for pushing through and surviving, endurance that I think will be stored up after this for every heartbreaking and difficult time in my future. I will survive.
I'm incredibly lucky to have a supportive husband who makes sure I eat breakfast and packs me a lunch and cooks dinner because I'm too tired to get out of bed. We were newlyweds when I started teaching my first year, and this has been a very critical time for us to be rock solid supports for each other. I'm confident that my time here will make me a better mother. That's gotta be worth it, right?
But most days I see the undesirable changes in myself. About 30 pounds from stress and lack of exercise. Do I have the motivation to do anything about it? No. I'm just too damn tired all the time. Even now in my second year when I have a strong grip on management and the kids respect me, I'm still just so tired.
I've learned that I have a tortuous colon, a deviated septum, and a right bundle branch block in my heart. Why? Because I have spent hours and hours in an emergency room with health conditions that I have never had before. I've spent thousands and thousands of dollars on medical bills just to stabilize my health to a place where I can keep this job. And then somehow I feel guilty for missing work for these work-induced illnesses.
I've questioned if I am absolutely insane for staying in this program after it has done so much damage to my body. My body has been sending me warning signs from the start. "What you're doing is not good. You're hurting yourself. Your body will not support this. We're forcing you to shut down operations." And yet I don't want to quit. Last year I didn't care too much about quitting on the kids. They made me too miserable for me to care. I worried about letting down my administration and the people who had cheered me on from the start. Not great reasons. This year I love my kids, and I didn't want to quit on them.
The physical damage is only the manifestation of the inner. I feel quite lost and just sleepwalk from day to day. There are so many parts of myself that I haven't seen in so long that I worry they will never come back. I worry that the damage is irreversible, that I'll forever be a little bit numb and dulled.
Not everyone in MTC has this experience, though. I think it takes a certain personality to be able to handle it. The people whom I have seen succeed are often athletes or outspoken people who like to talk and who can talk to lots of different type of people. I'm a quiet, observing, reflective type, and I think it takes a lot of extra energy for me to put on the teaching show every day.
The things that used to be my strengths have often been weaknesses in this job. I've always been an excellent, focused listener. Well, I can't give all my attention to one student in a classroom full of twenty-six, and it makes me feel sad that I can't fully look one student in the eye for any extended period of time because I have to watch the happenings of all the others. I'm not good at listening this way. In fact, I'm quite bad at it, and kids have said before, "You're not even listening to me."
I'm quite attuned to the feelings of others, and this has always been a strength. Well, once again, this has not made my job easier. It just makes me more vulnerable and exhausted. A room full of twenty-six sixth graders has a whole lot of emotion bursting from it. It's like someone with hypersensitive hearing going to a rock concert. I feel like I can't truly help those who are hurting because the pain of middle school (a critical needs middle school, at that) is so loud, and it's coming from everywhere.
I'm writing this pretty late at night, and I'm not sure if I'm making any sense.
But let me tell you about my Friday. I felt like a true educator on Friday. I encouraged three English Language Learners with low reading levels to read aloud an essay that they had written. One boy even told the reluctant other two, "It's okay, we won't laugh at you." Melt. They all got up the courage to read their essays.
Switch to another class. I asked a boy if he had written any poems recently because he had shown me a poem a couple months back that he had written. He asked "Why are you asking?" I said, "Because it was really good, and I think you have talent." Well, when he finished his work, he immediately started composing a poem called "Brains v. Bronze." Two periods later, he finished the poem and gave it to his reading teacher, another Corps member. I was so proud of him.
On Friday I also found a way to push struggling writers to finish their essays. On the spot I invented the position of Peer Writing Coaches. I recruited several students who were finished with their essays to "coach" the stragglers. It was pure delight to see kids telling other kids, "Come on! All you have to write now is your conclusion. Write your first sentence….ok, now, let's get another….alright only three more to go…you can do it."
Days exist when I can't stop talking about all the good moments in the day long after the kids and I have gone home.
Should you join MTC? Who knows. It will burn you. But on some days you'll drive home smiling. We all know you're going to join anyways. A blog isn't going to stop you.
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