Category: Teaching

Identity Crisis

~ jlrowse ~ 3 Comments

If you follow me on Instagram, you know I’ve recently embarked on a 100 Day Project of writing six word stories. I’ve written six word stories before, but they’ve been exclusively about my school life, only written on school days. This time, I’m not sticking just to school, partly because of this piece I’ve been working on for nearly two years. I think it’s finally in a place where it can be published. I think.

I’m not entirely sure who I am anymore.

My social media bios and my website here succinctly declare: Teacher. Writer. Musician. Yet I am not sure that any of those monikers are correct.

Perhaps it’s a mid-life crisis I’m feeling, this unsettled mush of being unsure of what I want to be when I grow up. I fell into teaching a bit by accident, and it’s worked out wonderfully. But the times they are a-changin’, and I don’t know how many more years I have left in me. So while I’m still teaching, my most recent attempt at a book has stalled out multiple times and I no longer teach piano lessons. One out of three ain’t bad?

I’m left with this dilemma: if I’m not a teacher, writer, or musician, what am I?

And I’m not talking about how will I pay for my lifestyle–I’m fairly resourceful and I think I know enough people who could help me figure out private sector options if needed. No, I’m talking about who am I, if not a teacher?

This is a question I’ve been wrestling with, and most of time, I shove it to the far corner of my brain. But then I read a piece from the Harvard Business Review about the relationship between careers and identity.

Some of the article doesn’t apply to teaching because, well, no matter how many hours I work or service I provide to the school and district, I’m not ever bringing in a six-figure salary. But then, near the end of the article, these questions:

How much do you think about your job outside of the office?
Is your mind frequently consumed with work-related thoughts?
Is it difficult to participate in conversations with others that are not about your work?

How do you describe yourself?
How much of this description is tied up in your job, title, or company?
Are there any other ways you would describe yourself? How quickly do you tell people you’ve just met about your job?

Where do you spend most of your time?
Has anyone ever complained to you that you are in the office too much?

Do you have hobbies outside of work that do not directly involve your work-related skills and abilities? Are you able to consistently spend your time exercising other parts of your brain?

How would you feel if you could no longer continue in your profession?
How distressing would this be to you?

Reading these questions, I realized my identity is 100% wrapped up in “teacher,” and I don’t think that’s a good thing. Because I think I am–and I want to be–more than my job. And there’s never been a more acute time where figuring out what that entails.

I very well might keep teaching at my current school until I meet the Rule of 85 (nine more years) and can retire. I enjoy the content I teach, I enjoy my colleagues, and I enjoy my students. But what happens if one of those legs falls out from under me, and it’s time for something new?

A friend asked me the other day what my summer plans were. Other than a quick trip to D.C., I have no concrete plans, and usually I do. I’ve been thinking about summer ever since, and the beginnings of a plan are taking shape. Rest and read–obviously–and find one or two activities that I like to do, that I want to do. My summer’s goal is to start creating a life that doesn’t fall apart when I’m no longer teaching, and might actually grow into something far beyond the limitations that come with creating a life based on a career.

Will writing and music be part of that? I’m sure it will be; I don’t think those parts of me will ever go away. But I’m feeling a pull toward looking for more, and I think I’m ready to figure out what “more” looks like.

Semester Classes

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Except for my newspaper class, I teach all semester classes. Which means the past two days have been a repeat of August for me: meeting over 130 new students, going over policies, procedures, and setting up needed technology for my classes.

And the August nerves are always there, too. I loved my classes last semester—what if this semester’s classes aren’t as fun? What if they don’t like the course content? What if my usual classroom management and general demeanor doesn’t work with them like it did last semester?

Then I think about a very important lesson I learned as a 12 year-old military kid. We had a 10-month assignment in Montgomery, Alabama for my dad to go to a command school. We knew going in we’d only be there a short time, with no option to extend at that base. What kinds of friends and connections could I make in ten months’ time?

Turns out, quite a few. Because when we left Montgomery, I was a wreck. And I was again when I left Nebraska, and again Montana, and everywhere I have lived since—I have found things to love about the place forced upon me and was monumentally sad to leave. 

Shout out to all my Enneagram 4s. Anyway.

I’m learning a similar pattern the longer I teach semester classes. Every semester is different, and I find myself thinking at the end of every semester, “No way can the next one be as good,” only to learn that it can, and sometimes the new semester is even better.

Two days into the new semester and I can genuinely say that I think I’m going to have a blast. And I hope my students do too. At least one student in every class so far has made me laugh, which is always a good sign. 

One of the “first day” activities I do with my classes is have them submit five things I can expect from them as students, and five things they expect from me as a teacher. Their responses are sometimes heartfelt, sometimes funny, and always hopeful.

The world feels like a dumpster fire most days, but I try my best to not get drawn up in the fray too often and focus on this: I’m lucky to teach the courses I teach and have the students I have. Every semester, every year.

And I will try to remember this in mid-April when we are all just DONE with ALL OF IT. 

The Not-Lost Year.

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I keep waiting for journalists to write the stories I’ve seen and lived this past year—teachers, students, secretaries, administrators, custodians, cafeteria workers, parents, and anyone else who supports a functioning school—the stories about all these people who have performed the Sisyphean task of keeping schools open during a pandemic.

I keep waiting for journalists to write the stories of kids who showed up in the face of fear of a virus and wrote papers, solved math problems, prepared for AP tests, took college classes, worked jobs, played sports, put on musicals and concerts.

Yet here we are, at the end of the 2020-2021 school year and I see story after story of learning loss.

And while this year has been anything but normal, there are thousands of stories of students and teachers who saw success.

Was it traditional success? Sometimes.

Did some of us redefine what success looked like? Sometimes.

Did every student succeed? Depends on the metric being used.

Here’s what I know: from teaching in person since August 13, every day I saw some success. A kid took a great photo, or wrote a perfect caption. A kid asked a compelling question. A kid created something beautiful. A kid wrote a story that mattered. A kid took a risk and soared.

My classes were smaller than they’ve ever been my entire career, but every single kid succeeded at something—even if some days it was just getting out of bed and hauling themselves through a too-long school day.

Was this a lost year? For some, perhaps. But what truly mattered in my teaching and in my students’ learning was crystallized. What I needed them to know came into sharper focus. I wouldn’t count that as a loss.

Maybe instead of feeding a narrative about a lost year, a stolen year, we can reexamine the metric that shifts the narrative: we survived a pandemic, and kids still learned. We survived a pandemic, and teachers still taught. We survived a pandemic, and teams still won championships.

We survived a pandemic, and my newspaper staff still published a damn paper.

We survived a pandemic, and Stueve’s yearbook staff still published a book.

We survived a pandemic, and our tiny staff still broadcast over 30 live events.

It wasn’t a normal year, not by a long shot. But success stories are out there.

Go find them.

A peek inside my COVID-19 life.

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Every ten days or so, I bring home a reusable tote bag stuffed with microfiber cloths. These cloths have been sprayed with a disinfectant and then used to wipe down the mice and keyboards in the lab I share with Mr. Stueve.

We could just spray directly on the keyboards and mice—and we used to—but it leaves a sticky film that irritates the students, so we started cleaning this way, after every class that uses the computers, and haven’t heard many complaints since.

Though maybe they are keeping the complaints to themselves.

Our custodial staff is amazing, and they make sure that we never run out of the cleaners that we need (one for the tech and fabric chairs, a different one for the desks). We have a steady supply of gloves so that our hands don’t have to touch the cleaner. They fog our room every night. They are each performing Herculean sanitizing tasks, and I worry about the toll on their health.

But the smell of the cleaner—it does something to me.

When I put those cloths in my car, I can’t escape the smell, and that’s when I start to glimpse the toll teaching face-to-face in a pandemic has taken on me. I’ve heard that the sense of smell is tied most to memory, and the memories associated with this cleaner aren’t entirely pleasant.

I wash them—twice, to try and rid the stench—and then I use homemade vinegar and lavender oil dryer sheets to try and make a dent. When I fold them, I take a random cloth and see if anything has worked. The scent is more faint, but it’s still there.

On the bright side, it’s a good test for my own efforts to avoid getting COVID-19 (haven’t lost my sense of smell yet).

I’ve seen a lot in my social media feeds in recent weeks about mental health of students who’ve been remote learning now for nearly a year. Groups are clamoring for students to return to the classroom, citing mental health as a key reason.

The stories I’m currently missing, though: what about the mental health of students who returned to face-to-face instruction last August? What about the mental health of their teachers?

Mental health is a public health issue, pandemic notwithstanding. Sending kids and teachers back to school isn’t going to solve it. I’m sad that so many people seem to think it will.

Because I’m here to tell you—when I walk down the hallway to the lab after Mr. Stueve has cleaned it, and the scent of that cleaner permeates two layers of a cloth mask and a five-layer mask filter, my stomach churns. When I open the washing machine full of microfiber cloths and am overpowered with the cleaner odor, my heart starts to race. Those are physiological reactions that I usually associate with my fight or flight response.

I can’t wait to never smell this again, and I worry what will be triggered if I ever do.

If I’m thinking it…

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I told a class this week that if they were thinking of a question or comment, chances are that at least two other people were thinking something similar, so they should speak up. In that same spirit, in case you have sneaky moments that untether you from any stronghold you’ve been able to anchor yourself to, here you go.

I figure if I was thinking it, at least one other person out there is too.

Comparison is the thief of joy, so goes the saying, and yet…

We are in a pandemic where I feel I need to give so much grace to my students and yet…

I want someone to pull me aside and tell me it’s all okay, that everything will be okay, and yet…

(Not that I would even listen to or believe them because the evidence feels overwhelming that nothing is okay.)

Sometimes you have to remind yourself to find the wins and remember that they are, in fact, wins.

Sometimes you have to wear metaphorical horse blinders, you just cannot look around at what others are doing, how you perceive others are succeeding while you feel you are failing, and instead ask yourself, “is today just incrementally better than yesterday?”

Sometimes you have to write the advice you’d give if someone came to you distraught, despondent, discouraged, and remind them–and yourself:

You’re doing the best you can.

Perception is rarely reality

The people who matter are on your side.

It’s all okay, everything will be okay.