Naked

I had the naked at school dream. I left my house in a towel with my hair wet. I got on the train to work (naturally), and people glanced at me like, "What's that girl doing in a towel?" I knew I was in a towel, and I was aware that this was not normal, but still I continued. 

When the train arrived, I emerged from the underground station into a bustling metropolis. People in suits with cell phone hands and briefcases squeezed by each other, pushed by morning inertia. 

I walked up the vast steps to my school: a tall, dark glass building with revolving doors. The bellhop greeted me at his podium. When I saw him, I knew this wasn't right. No, I would not be going into my classroom in a towel. I told him, "I won't be coming in today" and simply turned and walked the other way. I glanced over my shoulder as I was leaving, and I saw him mouthing wide-eyed to another person, "She's been teaching a long time." 

I came into this experience utterly unprepared. I could have never been prepared. I found myself supremely vulnerable. Each day in my classroom was a battle, and if there were victories, they were just decorative feathers stuck to the thick tar of my defeats. 

I didn't want to tell my students anything about myself. My age, my family, my history, my music, my interests--I couldn't let my students see those parts of me that were not their teacher. They could cut Mrs. Gray The Teacher, but that's where their gaze would end. I clutched my towel desperately close to my body. And still I'd lose it on a daily basis. The tighter I grasped the towel, the clumsier my fingers, and there I stood naked again. Naked in a room full of twelve year-olds. 

I eat lunch with my honors class this year, which is a predominantly female group. I sit by and listen to them talk about their boyfrands and allude to their crushes. "Mama says it don't hurt to look; it only hurt to touch." I see them strategically point to their noses, hint hint about inside jokes, and use code words like "mayonnaise" and "monkey" for certain people. 

They ask me questions that maybe I shouldn't answer. How old are you? Do you want to have kids? How many? Do you know who I like? How long have you been married? How old is your husband? Are you pregnant? M shares her Star Crunch with me, and I let them sample my Insanity (hot) Sauce, which they coined "Suicidal Sauce." I let down my guard. 

Sometimes I worry that I'm too friendly with my students this year--too forthcoming with details about my life, too silly as I stretch with them in the hallway during bathroom breaks or require them to make an animal noise before they leave my classroom. Am I doing them a disservice? Should I tell them it's rude to ask those questions to an adult and just leave it at that? Should I direct their conversations away from the topic of boys? Should I encourage only professional behavior in my classroom? 

I still feel unprepared every day to teach my students what they need to know by the time they leave sixth grade. I won't get through the whole curriculum. That's a certainty. I have no idea how to teach writing. I walk a fine line of competence and unnoticed failure in most aspects of my job. I've accepted those truths. 

If there's anything I want to accomplish in the rest of my time in Teacher Corps, it is to enjoy the time with my students. No, it's not a well-defined goal, and it won't be formally assessed. I simply want to enjoy them and love them and teach them all those lessons I've been storing in my mental shoebox on the good days when I stay after school dreaming up writing lessons. I want to facilitate as many magical writing experiences for my students as possible. I want them to love the heck out of writing. I want to remember why I came here. 

I may never teach again after May. The Naked in Front of the Class feeling is already history. The next nine weeks in my teaching career should go in the books with skinny-dipping on a Grecian beach and dancing naked with my bridesmaids around a bonfire in the woods one Mississippi July. This is my last hurrah.  If this girl's naked in class, she's going to be streaking.  

Another day in paradise

5:15 a.m. Alarm goes off. Wonderful Husband gets out of bed to make coffee, let the dogs out, and pack my lunch. I relish in the fact that I still have twenty minutes of sweet slumber. 

5:35 a.m. I'm pulled out of sleep by the sound of dogs clumsily racing up the stairs. I throw the blanket over my head just before the light corrupts the room. Kindest Man in the Land says, "Time to wake up" and brings me coffee in bed. He has mixed it with vanilla almond milk, and it softens the blow of the fact that it is morning. Sometimes he brings a side of granola with chocolate covered soy beans and almonds. I dream of being able to sit in bed like this all day with a book or Netflix and crocheting. I dream of May. 

5:45 a.m. I stand up and assess the situation. Did I bathe the night before? What clean clothes are available? Do I need to iron? I attempt to find a balance between the path of least resistance and being presentable and hygienic.I check my e-mail to see if any of my Santa Fean leads for next year have responded to me. No. I look at pretty things on Pinterest. 

6:00 a.m. The day's on. The six o'clock hour is here, and in 35 minutes I will get in my car! Time to fake it to make it. Time for pump-up music: Arcade Fire's "Wake Up" today. "The children don't grow up...Our bodies get bigger but our hearts get torn up." That's right. You're connected to these kids. Sixth grade sucks, and you survived. I manage to arrange clothing in an acceptable way on my body. Can I do anything with my hair today? Eh, ponytail. 

6:15 a.m. I go downstairs for breakfast. The Sweet Man has eggs waiting for me on the table today as he does most days. Orange juice is served in a wine glass. We bid each other a good day before he runs out the door to go to the gym. 

6:35 a.m. I get in the car and begin the 20-minute trek north. This morning I see a shaggy dog in the median of 78 desperately tearing away at a dog carcass. This is Hell, I confirm. On my way home I expect to see that dog, too, dead on the side of the highway. Every day there are new casualties.

7:00 a.m. I arrive at school and manage to clock-in before 7:05. I smile and put on my Good Morning Face. 

7:10 a.m. Children start freewheelin' off buses. They're ready for another day in paradise! I will either report to the gym for morning duty or prepare my classroom, alternating each nine weeks. When I have morning duty, I make sure students are sitting in their appropriate grade level section of the gym and grouped by homeroom. "Scoot all the way down on the bench," "No, ALL the way down," "You can't get up once you sit down," "Leave your backpack down here," "Only walk up the aisles," "Take your hood off," and "I know that's not your homeroom" are my refrains. I hope my comments will be received with minimal eye rolling, sighs, shrugs, scowls, and verbal protests. But someone always wants to make a small problem a big problem. When I don't have morning duty, I prepare my board, read the Daily Bulletin, and re-align my desks. 

7:30 a.m. Voices of children echo down the hall. I take my tea out of the microwave and take my post at the door. I smile and put on my Good Morning Face. Homeroom means 30 minutes of Sustained Silent Reading. I take attendance and then check the progress of the Accelerated Reader goals of my homeroom. Announcements time. Since it's February, we get to hear students bring us "A Moment in Black History." 

8:05 a.m. I teach with my Whole Brain. It’s the first period Trial Run for my lesson. At the end of class I take kids on a mandated class-wide bathroom break and then walk them to activity.

9:00 a.m. Planning Period. I eat lunch with Mr. Gioia, and another sixth grade teacher comes in to use my microwave. We chat about the prospects of the day, then run some copies, visit the office, walk the halls, and 9:50 comes too soon. 

9:55 a.m. I teach with my Whole Brain. 

10:35 a.m. I eat lunch with my third period class, my honors class. It’s mostly girls in that class, and I don’t bother censoring their conversations. It’s pretty much the only time in the school day they get to talk freely to their friends. They can talk about boys all they want. That’s what my friends and I did at lunch in sixth grade. 

11:15 a.m. I teach with my Whole Brain.

2:10 p.m. 7th period electives. On Tuesdays and Thursdays, I get an extra planning period. On other days, I’m the esteemed Tier III Reading Interventionist in the 6th grade, so I meet with the lowest 16 readers in groups of 4-8 at a time, depending on the day. We work on sight word recognition and reading comprehension. I monitor their progress. 

3:00 p.m. Bus duty. I walk behind the buses and make sure no one’s doing anything fishy. I herd elementary students. First load puffs off, and I stand around talking to teachers about “those lambs.”

3:16 p.m. Second load bus duty. I try to keep students under the awning while the elementary students get on the buses first. I try to avoid confrontations with any of my students from last year. They still infuriate me at times. We get the signal, “Middle School Students, WALK,” and they come charging. They’re on the buses in no time, and Mr. Gioia says, “Another day in the bag!” as we walk away.

3:30 p.m. I go back to my classroom and prepare my Powerpoint and handouts for the next day. I dabble with some grades and some Big Ideas for future lessons. 

4:30 p.m. Ahh, time to drive home. This is what I’ve been thinking about all day. 

5:00 p.m. I immediately change into pajamas when I get home. I get in bed and watch mindless TV on Hulu and Netflix. If I’m feeling ambitious, I’ll crochet at the same time. If I’m feeling committed, I’ll put on a movie and piece fabric for a quilt. 

6:00 p.m. Dinner with the Sweet Husband. These days I don’t do a lot of talking about school when I’m at home. We talk about our future, the Land of May. We make plans for our move and our Spring Break and post-Teacher Corps vacations. Life after Teacher Corps looks like one big vacation from where I’m standing. 

6:30 p.m. We do dishes, maybe talk to roommates, and then I get back in bed to watch more Internet TV and to call my family. 

8:00 p.m. It’s wind-down for bed. Some nights I’ll take a bubble bath or shower. The Adoring Husband and I may take in an episode of a “dark, understated” feature such as Mad Men, a “cerebral” show such as Into the Universe with Stephen Hawking, or a “dark, cerebral” series like Downton Abbey. 

9:30 p.m. Lights out. I drift into a forgetful sleep, part of me eager for the next day because it brings me one day closer to the end of the Corps. 

Burned and broken but here I am

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. 

Sleepwalking

I must have been in about first grade when I walked in my sleep in the middle of a New Hampshire winter. We lived in the woods in an idyllic little spot on 2 Goodfellow Road with a creek that wove by our house and a cobblestone fence. It just so happened to be Robert Frost's house. It may as well have been the place where he wrote "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening." 

The darkest evening of the year the woods were filling up with snow with the only sound being the sweep of easy wind and downy flake. (Thanks for the borrowed words, Mr. Frost.) I creaked down the old stairs and found my way to the mud room door. I placed my hand on the knob, and it started to turn when my mom placed her hand on my shoulder. She guided me gently back to bed. 

I've wondered before if I would have kept walking into the dark and lovely woods had she not caught me. 

I've awoken frozen in deep woods many times over the past two years. Ask me how many times I've been in a waiting room or on a hospital bed. Ask me how many times I've gotten straight into bed when I came home, not to sleep but to lose myself in mindless television. Ask me how many times I've counted down the months and days until the end. Ask me how many times I've cried on my way to school. 

Just when I've gotten comfortable and okay with where I am, once again I find myself between the woods and frozen lake. I don't have control over my body. My mind is not waking. I don't know exactly how I got there until I'm shaken awake. Am I ever awake? Or will I look back on this to find that I was more awake in Holly Springs than ever before or since? What if this is just the second coming of age, another realization that Christmas and your birthday feel just like every other day? No, this is unnatural. It's not the real me. Even worse, what if this is what I'll be like for the rest of my life? What if I get stuck here in this waking sleep?  

I have faith that I will find my way back. At times I feel a hand on my shoulder guiding me back to my senses."The woods are lovely, dark and deep. But I have promises to keep, and miles to go before I sleep, and miles to go before I sleep."

Picking Favorites

I really like a lot of my students this year, and so it's hard to pick a favorite. Part of it is not wanting to single out a favorite. Is it the girl who can hardly sit through her Do Now because she's so anxious to show me the latest simile she's found in her  book? Or the boy who always says with a smile, "Good afternoon, Mrs. Gray" every afternoon when he leaves my room? Or the pudgy, elfish blonde boy the girls call "Lil' D" and who told me, "I really like this tutoring stuff, Mrs. Gray"? There are some great kids in the sixth grade. 

I had to go with a gut feeling, though. And there's no doubt there. When I see her in the hallway, I can't help but smile. When Mr. Gioia and I talk about her, I adopt a gentle tone. Marie. Cue John Lennon's "Beautiful Boy" but sing "Beautiful Marie." Marie's a SPED student who really haunted me at the beginning of the year. She shuffled done the hallway and would come in with her head down, eyes on the floor, and she would barely make eye contact with anyone. Forget about getting a peep from her. I described her as having the look of a wounded animal. When you asked her a question, she would just look up at you with a sideways glance and then avert her eyes back at her page. 

I remember the first day she raised her hand to answer a question in class; I delightedly called on her. I was worried that she would get the answer wrong and then would never raise her hand again, but she got it right! Then she kept on raising her hand throughout class. When the buses left, I told Mr. Gioia about Marie's triumphant debut in class, and he said the same thing had happened in his class! "Wow, Marie had a great day!" we exclaimed. Marie kept on having great days, and now every day is a great day for Marie. She gives a shy smile whenever I greet her at the door, and the wounded look in her eyes has become a sparkle of wonder. I love giving her praise because for Marie it seems that her lightbulb moment comes the instant you tell her she has gotten the question right, that she has done an excellent job, that she understands. She tells you the answer timidly but steadily, and I am so proud of her progress. She does as well as most of the regular ed students and better than many.

I know all this sounds really cheesy, but this girl fills me with genuine joy.  Sweet Marie. 

Poem

monday comes too soon

sunrise in the rear mirror

wake me up in may

Pets mark the spot

 We came to Holly Springs with one dog. Add a cat, lose the cat. Add a dog. Add a cat. Now they number three. Follow me now through a year in the life of my pets.

September 2010: More Mississippi than we could have ever imagined

November 2010: Dog foliage

December 2010: The lurker

December 2010: Two wise pets

January 2011: Eppie the Snowspectre

January 2011: "What an inferior oaf."

February 2011: Tracks

March 2011: Sir Fenian Dondero, Lord of Earth and Sky

March 2011: New dog on the scene

April 2011: "One last look before I go."

April 2011: Squinty-eyed passengers

September 2011: Double stuffed Oreo

September 2011: It's clear who's the dominant one in this house.

September 2011: This reminds me of birds in flight. 

September 2011: Dog, y'all.