IT DIDN'T WORK OUT

I've been thinking a million thoughts every night, trying to piece together how I feel about my experiences and what I'm taking away from them. I've felt guilt, inadequacy, anger, sorrow, and nothing. Feeling nothing is pretty awful. Feeling numb is maddening (is that ironic?).

There will never be a way to describe my experiences teaching in an inner-city school, but I am going to do my best to try for 2 reasons. First, I enjoy writing and want to put this out there for my friends and family to read. Second, I want more people to know how blessed and privileged they truly are.

When I moved to Texas, I took a teaching job because of the interview I had with a promising and dedicated principal. She shared a vision that I did, her approach to standardized tests and behavior and parents was similar to mine. It seems like a wonderful fit. I spent the weeks leading up to the school year excitedly hanging bulletin boards and reading about teaching in poverty; I welcomed the new challenge and as I read about students with incarcerated parents, I felt ready and prepared to give these kiddos a safe haven from the world.

Oh how wrong I was.

By the end of the first day of school, I was holding back tears and frantically searching my mind for a solution to the challenges I was facing. These students couldn't afford a pencil or back pack, yet they were getting in fist-fights over their Jordan tennis shoes! I'll spare all the details, but you can refer to my previous blog post to understand the challenge I struggled with. I quickly reached out to my mentors, principal, friends, and family because I wanted to make this work.

On my own dime and time, I attended workshops and invested my efforts to focusing on my students interests. I tried to establish community and discuss their goals. My lessons were interactive and engaging, utilizing technology. My students were having NONE of it and I just kept thinking, stick with it, stick with it, stick with it. My students were used to screaming and yelling and fighting, so when I offered them something different, they naturally resisted. I had things stolen from my desk, arguing, cursing, and speaking to me worse than any human ever has. To say that I have been overwhelmed and depressed doesn't even come close to the emotions and frustration I have felt.

Over the last few weeks, I hate the person I have become. I am not teaching. I'm not using the skills and talents that I know will best teach children because I'm managing the behaviors and social destruction that has been instilled in these children since birth. I'm stereotyping social groups and I hate that I'm doing that. I am feeling numb toward these children and their families.

That is infuriating!

The most difficult part of the past 10 weeks has been the defiance and opposition to learning. I have given more than I ever thought I had to give and I need to remove myself from this situation. My 5th grade self would have boldly declared that Bush was the greatest president because that's what I thought my parents believed. These 5th graders believe what their parents have taught them and I don't know how to show them that there is so much more. I tell them, I show them, but they don't value it and they don't want it right now.

This is where I say that I don't have the answer. I'm not blaming anyone, but I'm saying that this current system and society is broken. The poverty I've experienced in the first-world is NOTHING like the poverty I have experienced in the third-world. I am not qualified to influence these children and that's okay. I will make a difference somewhere else. I will be a better fit in a different school, at a different time, at a different place; however, saying those things doesn't make it any easier.

Part of me feels like I'm giving up. I worry that my peers and fellow educators will view me as a failure. Ultimately, I don't need to defend my decision. I know what is best for my family, and I have to be honest and say that my leaving is best for these kids. I am not going to be the person they look up to. As much as I wanted to teach them, and as much as I wanted to inspire them to learn, they don't want it. They don't know how to want it and I don't know how to teach them to want to learn.

In the movie Freedom Writers (If I have talked to you recently, you already heard me say this), Hillary Swank's character dedicates her entire life for two years to those students in poverty. But in the process, her marriage fails and her health declines. I'm just not willing to sacrifice myself in that way. Does that make me a bad teacher?

A dear friend said to me, "This doesn't mean you're a quitter. If just means that the reasons for staying have diminished to a point that you feel you can do more with your life and goals if you leave." My actions to bring change will take place in a different way.

Now, go thank your parents and God for the privileges you have. 

SOMETHING'S WRONG HERE

In an effort to keep things professional, this post (and future posts) lacks many more words that express my feelings and experiences. I'm still recording those words for myself, but for now, enjoy my insight to my experiences over the past couple weeks.

I started teaching in an inner-city school two weeks ago and I've experienced emotions I never knew existed. The fear, hopelessness, doubt, frustration, sadness, and anger don't even come close to anything I could have anticipated.

Don't get me wrong, I love teaching. I love finding innovative ways to support individual learners and provide chances for students to discover their own learning styles. I seek continued professional growth and development outside of what is required through employment because it's all so interesting and I know that good teachers must continually seek the latest teaching tools. More important than teaching is helping students learn. I love seeing a student learn something while doing what they love. Frustratingly, I feel like none of that is happening.

What's most frustrating is the push for better teaching, more engaging lessons and more positive feedback. What am I supposed to do when I'm applying my skill-set pertaining to those categories, but the behavior is so bad that teaching is next to impossible? I can teach character skills that are in no way being reinforced at home. I can be positive toward the 10 seconds of good behavior in an entire day. I can know the curriculum and content and continually research new ways to engage children, but when 11 year-olds are saying and doing the things they are doing in my classroom, I'm no longer a teacher, but I'm a juvenile-corrections officer. It's not what I signed up for and it's not something for which I'm prepared, trained or qualified.

Quitting isn't an option for me, it never has been. I am a committed person. What disturbs me most is not all the poor behaviors, language, and choices I see in my students, but the fact that a profession I love so dearly, a profession I cherish and value, a profession that drives me to become better has driven me to complete exhaustion is such a short amount of time. I'm a committed person and quitting isn't an option, but what has disturbed me most is that I truly want to quit and find myself actually contemplating plans to do so.

"I know you can do this and I know that you want to get better at math because the ability to accomplish something hard will help you get into college and get the job you want."

"Mrs. Johnson, I don't want a job. My mom doesn't work and we get free groceries and an apartment."

How do I respond to that?

PASSION

(ashleigh brown)

I've tried blogging since I graduated high school because it seemed to be something that all my peers were doing. In the growing trend of putting your life on display via social-media, there was something both satisfying and validating in the comments and number of hits I received on my overly-emotional young-adult blog posts. Eventually, I tried posting daily outfits in my attempt at a fashion blog (that lasted about three weeks) and then I rebranded my digital space with some catchy name. After getting married, I domesticated my blog space in an attempt at a cooking blog.

That one stuck for a whole 6 months, before I abandoned my blogging efforts all together.

Over the past several months, I've been feeling this urge to journal and document things that are important to me-- not just overly-filtered snap-shots on my instagram (even though I do love the way my cellphone photos look with those film filters). The reason I loved blogging when I was 19 was because I could get out all my emotions. I could type whatever was on my mind, reflect, and wrap-it all up in a way that helped me process important things happening to me at various periods of my life. What stopped me from writing freely was this need for attention and growing followers, when really, I ultimately blogged to write.

I've always loved writing because it's such a wonderful outlet for all the overwhelming thoughts we experience. I'm not an exceptional writer, nor do I proclaim to know all the technicalities and mechanics of writing; in fact, I know that these posts will have countless mechanical errors, but I don't really care.

I'm excited to be writing again.

Because it seems to be all the rage, I recently read an article about monetizing a blog. The suggested best piece of advice was to make a blog focused on one's passions. When I think about my passions, there are too many and frankly, not one specific category that merits an entire blog space. I'm finally finally fine with blogging for attention because my thoughts, ideas and moments of growth are my passion. I'm passionate about my experience in this world and I hope others will read my words to remember the woman I was, am and will be.


Do you keep a blog? If you do, paste your link below. I'm always looking for new reading material.