2001: My first year, the one where I went into team meetings feeling like I had nothing to offer. The year a colleague was forcibly transferred during Christmas and by the end of the year, I ran myself into a verbal confrontation with another partner. This was the year of 9/11, when I walked past the hallways where kids were watching cartoons for indoor recess on a crisp, sunny day while the teachers were huddled in an empty room watching people fall from the sky.
2002: I took most of my third graders to fourth grade this year, moved hallways, found new partners and made bonds that have lasted me throughout my teaching career. All my point systems and discipline models worked. I felt accomplished. The fifth graders down the hall scared me. The boys had facial hair and the girls all wore tight pants and smiled suggestively. The entire wing smelled of bathroom, spoiled milk from the dumpster and recess sweat.
2003: My second year in fourth grade was a team-teaching year with two of my best friends. We raised test scores, took kids to Kings Island at the end of the year and I started to get this crazy idea of starting a soccer team. I started to recognize most of the kids in the building and they knew who I was. No more strange looks when i told a kid to line up. High fives in the cafeteria. We would joke in the teachers' lounge on how many kids were named after alcoholic drinks.
2004: This began the "golden era" at my old school. I started my soccer team with zero funds and plenty of passion. I drove those kids to practice, home and their games. We scuffed up the floors and wore our uniforms on game days. We would kick soccer balls on the roof during recess so I would make periodic walks up this thin air chute/ladder and wave at kids from the roof as school released. This is ironic in how I viewed the entire neighborhood and my role as a staff member. I started thinking of myself as a prima donna. I acted like the school needed me instead of the other way around.
2005: A tumultuous year for me. I had my largest class size to day, about 31-32 students. Most of them did not get along with anyone, much less me. I yelled a lot. I grew cocky with administration. Soccer was rocketing forward. In my personal life, my wife had been pregnant and miscarried twice that year. It was this summer that we began to foster care. Lisa came to live with us.
2006: I moved to the very last room on that back hallway, which was another indicator of how I felt within that school. My attitude only grew worse, more from burnout in running the soccer team everywhere, home, a lack of spiritual life and lots of other issues that were something then but nothing now. I think I was probably the most sarcastic I had ever been, and I began to draw battle lines.
2007: My last year. I dropped all soccer commitments that summer as Cruz was getting older and Milly had just been born. I needed to become more of a father but had no idea what that role was to be. I had a great group of kids. Two girls who fought constantly, a kid from Africa who made proved that our own American kids just didn't have much of an educational priority. I sat on my ass a lot that year. The heat of the building was both literal and figurative, and it burned a hole through the middle of me.
2008: My first year at Shady Lane. I was teaching with my wife, a new school, a new principal. It was a brand new start. I was given 20 something fifth graders who tested my patience and ran the batteries from all my timers because I was always giving them ultimatums and prisoning them with deadlines. I thought I was a horrible teacher and no one was going to tell me the truth because my wife worked there and telling me so would hurt their friendship with her. I grew paranoid, but by October I took on a 4/5 split class and enjoyed the fruits of probably the highest class I have ever taught.
2009: My most polite class. Loved these guys. I went on my Emmaus walk in the winter of this year and it has since propelled me into looking back and appreciating where I am, where I've been and where I am going. I wanted to bring those qualities out in my kids, and it just has given many of them a safe place to act like how they have been raised to act.
And cut to now. My old arrogance hasn't completely diminished. Being the only man in the building gives me the idea that if I just had more men with me, we'd have this school-thing down pat. I keep having to apologize for things I say, and I realize that I rarely tolerate apologies in my classroom--"You wouldn't need to say sorry if you were doing the right thing" I would say, or "Show me your apology in your actions." I haven't found the thin line between encouraging the adults around me and being discouraging with my own complaints. Same goes for my kids. I read some old letters today, and more than one noted that I would get angry, or that I would "get" those that don't do their work. I look through cumulative folders and see a drop in someone's grades and wonder if it was me. I have high expectations as my neighbors surely do, no more, no less. Surely I haven't been as sarcastic as Mrs. Such-n-such? Was it a wasted year for that kid? Did I reach them or push them away.
Tomorrow, I'll be playing games with my kids and enjoying their company. I'm giving hugs and being hugged. I might even tear up a little. Not because of missing them over the summer, but for the work that is yet to be done. I cry for their futures. And I cry for mine sometimes too.
I really liked reading this, brother.
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