End of School Lessons & Reflections
Last week, I closed down my classroom for the academic year. I piled post-its and stacked sheaves of paper. My grades long finalized, I turned in my key and security card to the bookkeeper, took a last look around and let out a deep sigh before exiting my classroom’s exterior door.
Yesterday, I met a friend, who is a wise, retired principal, for breakfast. I shared with her my wearying experiences from the school year as she munched on her egg, bacon and cheese bagel sandwich. As I spilled my stories to her, I looked down and realized I had yet to even take the first bite of mine. From receiving disappointing growth scores from the year prior, to being assigned my lowest observation scores, to the parent that reamed me out on the phone for something I had said to her son, to even more - this year was difficult. I found myself explaining my failures and fears as I sought her insight.
As a veteran educator, but more importantly for me, a true friend who also walks with Jesus, she could hear my heart for both my career and my Christian convictions. She has been there and done that. She knows all the metrics and the abbreviations, how the system works and where the scriptures fit. As our coffee cooled I was finally able to ascribe my reflections and frustrations to a single question: How do I define and pursue what success looks like in my classroom next year?
Her advice was extremely practical and applicable on one hand, and then on the other hand I was able to make connections and reflect on a philosophical level. All of this has led me to a place where I am reevaluating my expectations for myself and my students over the summer break.
As I flesh out my thoughts here, I am reminding myself that these things need to be a matter of prayer for me. It’s one thing to type them out, thinking them in my head, it’s another thing to live them out, believing them in my heart. For example, I can say that standardized state testing scores don’t define me as a teacher, but in real life, they do affect me and should impact my instruction. The question is how? How should those scores impact me? How can I use them to impact what I do or what I don’t do in the classroom?
Being born a rule-following, oldest child in a competitive family, I have always been driven to do my best and achieve whatever was set before me. When I reentered the world of public education five years ago, I wanted to be the highest level teacher. I wanted to be a lead teacher. I wanted to be the kids’ favorite and my colleagues’ cheerleader. I thought I could do whatever “they” told me to do in my grad school classes, faculty meetings and professional development trainings and automatically, like a conveyor-belted factory, produce the successes that would entitle me to all the accolades I believed would establish my success. All the high scores and top rankings should follow. Right?
Ah, but I have learned this year, that isn’t how my profession works. Through the trials and adversities I have faced this year, I have learned that teachers have more in common with doctors and lawyers than I realized. I must practice education. I must get to know my individual students, ascertain where they are and evaluate their needs to help them all learn the content I am tasked to teach them. Like the physician evaluates their patient or the attorney determines their case, teachers cannot utilize a one-size fits all mentality.
This may seem obvious and even ridiculously elementary, but stick with me. When I started grad school, the expectations of me were to be able to perform certain tasks in a certain matter and I should have received certain results. I was not allowed or ever encouraged to follow my gut or to trust my instinct to know what my students actually needed. I had to follow the ciruculum and the pacing guide with fidelity. With my undergraduate degree not in education and lacking much experience, I did not have the confidence to believe in myself, stand up for my students or even alter my instruction to meet their needs. I was overwhelmed with all of it - standards, and technology, and classroom management, and school procedures, and on. and on, and on.
In order to be a good teacher, the list of things I had to do just kept getting longer - small groups, interactive activities, grammar instruction, social-emotional lessons, scaffolds, differential instruction, data-driven individualized lessons - I was trying to drink from a fire hydrant to do all things and to do them all the “right”way but when the observation scores came, I found myself not achieving the level of success I thought I should. My confidence took hit after hit.
I ended the 25-26 school year, summed up in one word: tired.
Since closing my classroom, I have come to the following conclusion: I am not the educator I thought I was or the one I want to be.
My confidence is growing, not in spite of but because of all the adversity I faced this year. I have a deeper understanding of my subject and I have a freedom from my administration to make instructional decisions based on my students’ needs. I am a professional. I have valid insights. My instincts are good. I can trust my gut.
I wanted to teach so I could impact middle school students. Somewhere in the overwhelming list of responsibilities and the constant flow of decisions I am expected to juggle, I lost that. I wanted the number ranking. I wanted the titles. I wanted the recognition from my peers and superiors. Those things became my motivations and I forgot the why I was there to begin with.
God opened the doors for me to go into the classroom in my mid to late 40s. I thought I had my heart in the right place, that I was doing it all for His glory and my public middle school worksite was my ministry field. However, my disappointments and tears over my sweat and hardwork proved the real state of my heart.
He can (and will) be glorified in my work and how I approach it. My public school of assignment is also His assigned ministry field for me. I fully believe He has placed me with my co-workers and my students with intentionality. I can do everything I do for Him and for His glory by utilizing assessment scores not ascribing to them the measure of my success or failure.
There is nothing wrong with me wanting to do well, to score well, to teach well - but what does “well” look like? What did I learn this year?
I don’t want to hold up scores as a measure of my worth, but I do want to acknowledge how those scores can better help me form impactful relationships with my students. Scores have a place, I just need to keep them in it.
I do have more confidence in my abilities and capabilites to impact, and advocate for, my students. I have experience and expertise in my field. I am not the same teacher I was. I am better.
Adversities and trials reveal true motives. They are opportunities to learn about myself and grow.
This morning as I read my Bible, God reminded me that He has been with me through, and even ordaining, it all.
“It was good for me that I was afflicted,
that I might learn your statutes. . . .
I know, O LORD, that your rules are righteous,
and that in faithfulness you have afflicted me.”
Psalm 119:71, 75
I believe with my whole heart that God’s character is good. He is sovereign. He is utilizing good plans for me. This includes my professional life. He is revealing my flaws and actively reshaping my future. He is making me the teacher He desires me to be, and who brings Him glory. It isn’t always easy, but doing this with Him is always worth it.
