It came in the mailbox this week. A rare find...a personally addressed letter/card to me.
I opened it to find a graduation announcement and this picture:
Immediately, my mind flashed back to 1997. I had just graduated from college, and gotten hired to be a first grade teacher. I wasn't hired in August, like most teachers. I was hired on November 1. The class had started out the first two months with a different teacher. She had struggled with finding a way to handle some of the kids' behaviors, and finally, fed up, at the end of October, walked out on those kids, never to return.
As any first year teacher will tell you, that first year is a magical year. You try 1,000% harder than anyone else in that building, because there is so much to learn, and you feel charged with such an amazing responsibility. You don't want to let anyone down. I had 25 kids, their families, and a school district who believed I could do the job.
The only one who doubted me, I think, was me.
In your first year teaching, you discover many, many things that you are not taught in college that you need to know in order to be a successful teacher. For example, that was the year I learned how to get a bee out of the classroom. I learned which brand of scissors worked best, and I learned how to keep the desks in place.
I made very little money as a first year teacher, and much of what I did make was spent on materials for the classroom. Which turned out to be fine, because I had no social life whatsoever. I spent weekends at school, sometimes as late as 10:00 PM. In my free time, I watched videos and read books, all of which related to the work I was doing in my classroom.
I even scheduled surgery for December 26th, so that I wouldn't miss any school that year.
I stared at the picture of the grown woman. In my mind, I still see her as a little girl, along with these 24 other kids:
Looking at this picture, I have so many memories flood back to me. All the while, tears flood down my face.
I remember creating a behavior plan for the little girl who had a stealing problem.
I remember the boy who was licking his desk on the first day I arrived.
I remember making a mom cry when I referred her daughter for reading assistance.
I remember the girl who had attachment issues, and cried frequently in class.
That was the year that one boy lost his father to suicide.
That was also the year another boy lost his father to manslaughter. I remember attending the funeral for this man. I remember the look on the boy's face when he recognized me. It lit up like I had come to his birthday party, and I heard him say, "That's my teacher!"
These 25 kids went through so much that year. Having a teacher abandon them was traumatic. The other things that occurred out of our control added to our collective trauma.
It was my first year, and I had no idea what I was doing.
And yet, when I think about that year...how hard I worked, and what those kids experienced, I can't help but hold it in my memory as my absolute favorite year ever. It was a magical year. All along, that year, I thought it was about me teaching those 25 kids.
Come to find out it was really about 25 kids teaching me how to be a teacher.
Congratulations, class of 2009. I love you.
