I am currently sitting in my first period classroom with no students because they finished school on Friday, but I have to be here in case any of them forgot something. There are two Juniors in the classroom cleaning it up because my Mentor Teacher is retiring and they just finished asking me what I am doing next year and telling me they hope I teach here and teach senior English again and that they can transfer to my class. it was a really sweet moment for me. Earlier this morning I had a senior drop by to give me a sweet thank you card and a Gatorade. This whole year has been such a whirlwind of emotions, that I would be remiss if I did not reflect in some way.
When I was a kid all I wanted to do was be a teacher. I have no idea why, but I always just wanted to teach people. I loved helping my peers with school work, I loved learning and teaching things in church activities and as I got older, that desire for teaching never went away. Whether it was coaching basketball, or helping younger people with homework at rehearsals, I wanted to help people learn. However, when I hit high school, the concerns from outside sources started to override me. Teachers do not make any money, they have so much work outside of school, is it really worth it? Blah blah blah... I got away from my childhood dream for years and years and there I was from 19-25 years old drifting around in an abyss of nothingness. Yes, I had jobs. I was rarely without work, but I was just meandering from job to job, house to house, and what's worse, paycheck to paycheck. From being a cashier at a clothing store, to working in a warehouse of a paint store, I was truly miserable. Life was kicking me in the ass without me fighting back (does that sound familiar on this blog?).
One day while at lunch my dear dear friend Taylor, she asked me what it is I always wanted to do. I thought about it and realized that deep down I still desperately wanted to teach. The dream I had at 9 years old came rushing through like water bursting through a dam. Of course! I would go back to school and be a teacher. Here I am 5 years later, knocking on the door of a dream realized. It was a long, stressful, fulfilling journey that has left me with lifelong memories, incredible new friendships, and a teaching credential. For the last year and a half I have gone through Sac State's credential process. It was a 3 semester program where my responsibility to young people built each semester. I spent class time with the same group of would-be teachers for these three semesters and now that is over, I am left with more of a desire to teach than ever before. The reasons being two-fold. First off, my fellow cohort members. The passion, laughter, hugs, tears, stress and drinks we have shared over the last 18 months only fueled my fire to be as idealistic, passionate and knowledgeable as they are. Second, spending time in a classroom has only strengthened my desire to do this. No matter how many teachers, administrators, or random people tell me how impossible it is to find a job, and how awful it is to be a teacher, and how the students are just getting worse, I know deep in my heart, I want to be a teacher. I have something at 31 years old that I did not have at 19: confidence in my decision making abilities. I know now what is right for me in my life. Yes, I am aware that teachers do not make great money considering how many extra hours they put in, and I know that budgets are tough and finding a job is going to be tough, but what really worth doing comes easy?
In the fall of this year I started teaching in an 8th grade classroom and it was not an easy start. I had a rough group of students who made my life difficult, but when I left that school, I left with great memories of smiling students, great stories of my teaching, and all of this new knowledge of how to manage a classroom. Then I moved over to a high school this Spring and my entire world changed. In fact, it was because of my senior students that I decided I needed to make changes in my life. If you are my friend on The Facebook, or follow me on The Twitter nonsense, you have read the stories of how great my students were and how much fun we had and all of that great stuff, but it was more than that. I work at a school where the percentage of people who live with both parents is under 30%. I work at a school where my students had to fight to get everything and so many of them did it. I have a student who moved to America when she was 10 and became fluent in English in a year because she worked hard, taught herself and took every opportunity for help. One young man in my class has two parents and two step parents, none of whom speak any English, he has two older siblings who flunked out of high school and he is going to Cal Poly with insane amounts of scholarships for academic and athletic excellence. These are just two of the unique, inspiring stories from the students in that class.
My life has not been perfect, but it has been pretty nice. I have two extremely loving and supportive parents and three great loving siblings. I am smart, but I was lazy in high school. If these students can pull themselves out of these incredible hardships, what excuse do I have to not make myself better? Simple, I do not have an excuse. These students showed me every single day that life is exactly what you make of it. If you want to complain all of the time, then that is your life, but why not try everything you can to make it better? There was a group of 4 students who sat towards the front of the class, and are the best group of friends. When one young man's brother was killed over a weekend, he came to school on Monday because school is where he had structure and where his 3 best friends would be there to comfort him. School is where he felt safe. In my classroom he felt safe. Is it not my duty to be the best version of myself in order to best help these young people? Is it not my duty to be the best version of myself so when I tell my students to be the best version of themselves, I can feel like I am practicing what I preach? Yes, of course I do and I have these amazing students to thank for showing me that we all have a duty to make life be the life we want and not sit around and be complacent in some unhappy version of life.
So here I am, 31 years old and on the verge of achieving a dream I first had when I was a child. Yes, the dream got hazy and I let people distract me from my dream and worst of all, I let myself put the dream aside. How foolish of me and how foolish of any one who tells someone not to chase a dream. What kind of life would we live if people stopped chasing there dreams? Every major work of art, every major advance we have made as a people come from people who chased their dreams. it took me a long time, but I finally chased my dream down, and now it is my dream to make sure every student I have continues to chase their dream in the face of anyone who says it is foolish. If every students chases their dream and a few of them actually hit their dreams, imagine how wonderful a place the world can be. My other dream is to not lose my idealism as a teacher. I have spent too much time around teachers who have been turned bitter or callous, or unhappy. I know days will be rough at times and I know I will have bad students, bad classes and even bad years, but I truly believe that being a teacher means something and that I can mean something to someone somewhere. I believe I can help the people who can change the world and I never want to lose that. And it starts with me getting myself physically, emotionally and mentally healthy.
So to answer the question of my all time favorite poet, A deferred dream lingers in the back of your mind until one day it wakes up, screams at you to stop ignoring it and fuels you when you finally realize that dream is what makes life worth all of the crap that comes at you.
