Teaching in Teams/ Teaching to the Times and Falling in Love with Teaching Again

I am staring across from my therapist last winter on the computer. We are silent for a few moments. “Do you want to continue teaching or do you want to be done? I can help you with either.”

It is an honest question. I have asked myself it before. This is last winter. The sky is gray outside, the tar iced over. When you step outside, the air is only warm when you breathe out and the rest of your body is numb, especially numb.

“If I can’t teach, I don’t know what else I am.” This is an honest response too. I love my kids, my students, but really my kids. Last year, was the hardest year ever in my teaching career. I watched colleagues, friends, past teachers of mine get done. People called it silent quitting. Some days I was envious at them, some days I was happy for them. I was tired from fighting for student services, fighting for my services, learning new programs, missing old programs. I was achy from the grind and constantly in survival mode.

“Today Heather came over the intercom and wanted help with the strawberries for Dr. Seuss day. I looked up at the speaker and said no to the strawberries. I say no to everything these days, if it’s not directly for my classroom students. I would like to reach a place where I want to help with the strawberries.”

Fast forward to fall 2022. Now my therapist and I meet every other week. Every third week now. Progress. Some days she asks me how the strawberries are. We both laugh. I am having an amazing year so far.

What has changed you might ask? Have the students? Do they know everything? Is staffing better? More Planning time? The answer to that is no, no and no. But then again a lot has changed. The truth is, I have stopped working against myself and my empathic scattered ADHD brain. I have leaned into my super powers, which have been and will always be what makes me a most excellent teacher. I have stopped hiding away in my classroom 24/7 and giggled in the hallway with my team of three plus me. I have found the joy in teaching again.

The process started this summer with the running and then more running. The half marathon is tomorrow. I don’t know if I will sob, laugh, cry or vomit at the end. It is so significant. I have been running for my life in a way. Running to show how strong I am, running to shed dead weight, old habits, to love myself more. When I run it is my time, the problems are underneath, but not on the surface and they are more stamped out by the time the run is done. I feel the strongest I have ever felt and it has nothing to do with weight. I feel strong in my core, strong in my arms, strong in my soul. Centered.

I summered harder than any other teacher this summer. I did nothing for school. I stuck my feet in the sand and felt the heat from every grain of it, the air from every breeze, the salt granules from my pores. When I did go into school. I just kept throwing things away. Old files, other people’s files, broken toys, ripped books. On open house, I met them. A new 16. They are sweet you guys. Warm. Just like I needed this year. They take care of each other. Not in a perfect way, but in unison. They are funny and artistic and quirky. Innocent, honest, and earnest. Every day they come to school like Covid never happened and no one screams when someone sneezes. I find myself smiling at their stories, my shoulders are relaxed, my mind is not always twenty minutes ahead of them. I am just there, with them.

My joy in teaching has continued with my team. They are wonderful in all different ways and have very different strengths, so much stronger than me, but I don’t feel in competition, I just feel peaceful by it. Tracey has been my teaching partner for three years now. She taught with me when the world was normal, when it wasn’t and through my depression. She is a God send and I wish everyone had a partner like her. She is warm and inviting, but down to Earth and real. She likes the details, the memos, the fine points of a lesson. She pushes me to do more science, more fun, more hands on. Where I am big picture, broad strokes, end game, she is fine edges and margins. On some Monday mornings, She leaves those Trader Joe’s dark chocolates on my reading table and writes Happy Monday. In meetings, sometimes I observe her because she is not easily ruffled, a cool cucumber, very good with boundaries. If she tenses up and her mouth works into a half smile, then I know it is time we lean our heads together and trouble shoot. I always tell my husband if Tracey isn’t happy, then something didn’t land right. I become offended for her, because she is so rarely offended and that is the job of a loyal scorpio.

This is my second year with Freda. She is hard to describe and easy to describe all at the same time. She is always the hardest worker in any room. She is on 55 different committees, taking care of her 3 kids and going in ten million directions. She is one of those people that when you say, I was thinking of trying out this new lesson, she has prepped it for you. It is on your desk at 7:15 on a Tuesday morning. It has been counted out, all laminated in binder clips. The night before open house, I couldn’t get the twinkle lights in my classroom to work, she was in there on the workshop day, putting them up with a ladder and some kind of power tool Mark Whalberg would use. We are both sensitive and emotional, but we work well together because she I make a creative mess and she cleans it up and makes it into something beautiful. Most days, I wish she could have started teaching with me five years ago, but then I think no it had to be now, when education is at it’s most messiest, because she knows how to tidy it up.

Emily is new to our group. She is gorgeous, inside and out. I’m not kidding. Her classroom looks like something out of Ikea and Pottery Barn. I would be jealous but she is so open with her time and her energy and her resources that I never am. She is a little math whiz, which is fun for me, because I lean into ELA and she helps me open the door to the other. I have enjoyed her energy, her sass and her collaboration most this year. What a gem she is.

Of course I have other tips to bringing joyful teaching back besides teammates, because sometimes you are on your own in this gig. On your own little island. Something I do this year is outside time and movement. We snack every day outside unless it is down pouring. I have found this to be so good for me and them. I walk around our field. I talk to them , to my teammates. I observe who looked sad this morning, who is hiding under their hoodie. I could fill my head with a million excuses. We don’t have time for outside recess. Tommy has speech, Billy has title one, I need ten more minutes of I-Ready. Hard stop. They have to move, they need to move. No one needs to feel guilty, period.

Perfectionists look away at this next part, but I also force myself to not always be on, marching about the room, looking over the tops of their heads. Sometimes during lexia, I correct a few papers, have a side convo with a student I am worried about. I relax my senses and my body. I stop looking at the clock like a crazy lady. On Friday, I let my hair down, they get more choice, they earn Epic. They bring the stuffies.

I also have kept up my walking at lunch time. I don’t go as long this year. I try to do just twenty minutes, but I call it my re-set walk. My trouble walk. Sometimes I listen to Lizzo, sometimes a podcast, sometimes I text my team about what is wrong with the world, but I have continued using a large part of my lunch break for that and it helps me a million percent.

I also have carved in ten minutes right lunch to read to them from a chapter book. We are reading Bunnicula for October purposes. I thought it was too heavy for them, but they are loving it, even with zero pictures. They ask me when we can open it all the time. I let them lie down in their favorite listening positions and close their eyes to visualize. It. is. awesome. How do you find the time? People ask me that a lot. Something does have to go when I read to them. A number drill, a handwriting worksheet, a phonics something. But in it’s place, comes a memory. A core memory I give them. I remember teachers I had reading to me when I was a kid. I remember being in the story when they read out loud, I remember their voices, how they did the characters. It made me want to create my own. So I have zero guilt about that Bunnicula. If I had someone from the government stomp in and say why aren’t you doing what it says on your schedule right now, I would have 25 different reasons for why I have Bunnicula open and you should too.

Education is weird right now. Things are hard. Students are still catching up from some of the fall out of Covid, but I just want to stay in this soft, fluffy place of happy with them. Some days I am not caught up on my assessments, or my correcting. Some days I race out of school to watch my own kids play soccer and the to-do list is a mile long, but I feel I always share the hard parts of the job and I wanted to come here to say, some days there is good too.