I am in the thick of my third week as a teacher, doing my best to prioritize the my many to-do's as I pile everything else on the back burner for now. One thing I know for sure: I am not infinite. I get tired. I miss a lot of phone calls. I crave downtime. I need sleep. Most importantly: I need balance. Yesterday, balance was washing my dishes and crawling into bed at 8:30pm. Today, balance was going home before formulating any lesson plans for tomorrow and throwing on some sweatpants while eating mozzarella sticks for dinner.
Each day holds new challenges of its own, but each day also gives me the opportunity to step deeper into the profession I have been training to do for so long. Today while washing the remnants of play-dough, soil and beans off of my tables, the chaos of my job was temporarily stabilized as I realized that I am actually a teacher.
I spend a lot of time lesson planning and learning Science, but my true teacher moments happen when I get to stand in the gap in unplanned ways. Sometimes those moments involve the ability to respond in kindness to a warning, like when an aid pops his head into my classroom seconds before the bell rings to lets me know that one of the students lost his play-dough and would really like to make it again. "He's actually really mad and agitated about it, so. . .I don't know what you have planned but I just thought I should give you a heads up." No problem. I will never forget the grateful hug I got from the student when I announced we were making play-dough again or the looks of relief from the aids when they realized that the play-dough saga had been put to rest. Sometimes those moments are the result of an on-going conversation with a student, like when one student asks Sam the Scientist to 'say ahhh' everyday and then comments in surprise on how he "still doesn't have a tongue." This morning this student told me, "tomorrow Sam the Scientist will have a tongue". When I curiously asked him how that was possible, he explained "I am going to make him one!" Imagine my surprise when my very last class was interrupted by a little boy with a determined smile on his face, a paper tongue and tape in hand. After taping the tongue inside Sam's mouth he left the room with satisfied smile with one final instruction for Sam to 'say ahhh'.
Other true teacher moments come from being able to extend grace and kindness to my co-workers. I really believe that we were created to respond to those who love us first, therefore, I pray for moments to choose love on behalf of someone else. So here I am, the 23 year old new teacher, being intentionally kind to the veteran staff that fill the school, not because I need any more friends, but because everyones day gets a little better when kind words are shared. By choosing to be kind, I am also choosing to steer conversation away from gossip and politics. I am not naive enough to think that I can always navigate conversation away from such topics, but I do know that genuine kindness builds genuine trust and when genuine trust is present, there is less of a need to pick teams by gossiping.
So my mantra remains: one day at a time, but as I tackle things one day at a time I doing my best to make time to wash my dishes.
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