As a child of immigrants, my parents weren't exactly thrilled at the idea of my becoming a teacher. They knew I would struggle, showed me statistics about how much teachers make, and tried to convince me to pursue something more lucrative. They supported me, but I'm sure they would've preferred I become a doctor or a lawyer or pursue a career in business. But I insisted I was passionate about teaching children and that I wanted to make a difference. Thus began my journey into the world of education that I have reflected on often ever since.
My first job was as a STEM instructor for an education company. My classroom was portable (a cart) and I taught K-8 over the course of one school year. I had to plan lessons and buy supplies and do it all a-z to deliver quality content that would later boost science and math scores for the small charter school in Southfield, Michigan. However, science was not my teaching major and I didn't see a future in that position. So I resigned and went on to find a job at another charter school in Ann Arbor. They paid 30k-- low, even for a teacher-- but to me it was more than I'd made ever before. I had no idea how much my labor was really worth, and poured everything I had into that job. Many nights, I stayed until 8:00 or 9:00, planning and grading and prepping things for the next day. I was learning how I wanted to run my classroom, how to manage behaviors, how to create routines for myself -- all things they don't teach us in college. I didn't mind working so hard because I was single and still living at home for that first year. Little did I know how big of a mistake that was, and how much it would cost me down the road.
A year later, I moved out and started grad school, a leg of my journey that would take five years. Upon having to pay real bills and support myself, I realized that what I was making wasn't nearly enough to sustain myself. So, I quit. I found a job working with the fifth-largest for-profit charter school network in the country and stayed for three years. There, I learned how to maintain a better work-life balance (although it still wasn't ideal), to establish my own routines and procedures, and most importantly, to build a network of support within my school. I made friends at work-- which I don't do easily as an introvert-- and actually hung out with said friends. After 3 years, it wasn't perfect but it felt like a family to me. I loved working there, but it was eventually time to move on. I tried my hand at public school.
Thinking that my job at a very organized charter school system was restrictive, I hoped public school would be different. It was. I had more freedom than I knew what to do with, so I had to reestablish those routines and decide what I wanted to keep and what I wanted to do away with. However, when it came to behaviors and administrative policies surrounding them, I found it was not all that different from the charter schools that I came from. I also found that since most teachers had been around a while, there were established cliques and groups that were hard to break into as an introverted newcomer. While adjusting to all of this, I let my mental health fall to the wayside. I was working long hours again, in addition to still being in grad school, was barely seeing my friends, and had yet to form any real friendships with my colleagues. As someone who has struggled with mental health for as long as I can remember, this should've been a warning sign.
Around January, I sank into a major depressive episode. I struggled to get out of bed and go to work, to do basic daily tasks. My world felt like it was fire, and eventually, I realized I couldn't keep going. I got help, but by that time my job was in jeopardy. However, considering everything that was going on inside of my head, I knew it was more important for me to get help than to keep working and pushing through. Despite a union representative by my side and the support of my administration, I could not picture myself going back to my own classroom any time soon and moved down to preschool as a teaching assistant. I finished out the school year there and learned that I do not, in fact, want to teach younger students (like, ever. I'm just not the right breed of teacher for that).
With my mental health back on track, I went back to the classroom but reflected greatly on where it all went wrong. While my diagnosis is what it is, there was much I could've done to prevent falling down a rabbit hole...
1) You must have a network to survive in education. It is so easy to become isolated in our classrooms and keep pushing through on our own, but if we want to thrive it is necessary to establish a network of support where you work. This is what they mean when they say you need to have teacher friends, and I finally understand that. It's great having friends, but they don't understand the ins and outs of what we do and how much it can weigh on us. You need someone who will understand if you say your student was being an asshole rather than gasp and ask how you can say that, or worse-- ask if it's really that bad.
2) A self-care routine is vital. As a single person living alone, it is incredibly easy to just pour all of yourself into this job. Surrounding yourself with healthy role models and creating a routine for yourself that involves self-care is the most important thing you can do. Taking time to do little things for yourself because you deserve them and not feeling guilty about spending money (that you can afford) on yourself and not your classroom is all part of this. While I can't speak on being a parent in addition to being a teacher, I imagine that self-care is even more important in that situation because you have two groups of tiny people you are responsible for, and that is a lot of weight to carry around.
3) You can't save everyone. With 25-30 students in a classroom at a time throughout the day, it is impossible to save them all. We do what we can, but even the best of teachers is not a replacement for negligent parents, a broken home, or any other condition in which a student might be living. When I started, I really thought I would change the world. Maybe I will, but the unfortunate thing about teaching is we never really see the fruits of our labor because they take years to manifest in the biggest ways. We see academic progress and behavioral improvements within a school year, but we don't see the true impact of our work because it doesn't show up until the kids are much older. So did I save them? Maybe. Maybe not. But if I worried about every kid I've ever had and how they are doing when I'm not with them, I would drive myself into an anxious mania. This leads me to my fourth lesson:
4) Don't take work home with you. I don't mean papers to grade. I mean the mental baggage we all carry at some point in worrying about our students' futures. At the end of the day, teaching is just a job. An incredibly hard, unimaginably stressful, and immensely rewarding job. If you quit, you will be replaced, just like any other job. The work will always be there, and there will always be something more we could do. But that doesn't mean we have to do it all. So don't forget to have a life outside the classroom and worry about yourself sometimes.
Bright-eyed, full of hope and wonder, naive about what I was getting myself into, and convinced I was going to change the world -- like most educators, this was how I started my career. Eight years in, my perspective is a little different. Maybe it wouldn't have shifted so much if I'd taught in wealthier districts or in more public schools. But students are students no matter their zip code, and they're all in need of good teachers. Teachers who care, but not so much they burn themselves out. Teachers who stay, but not at the expense of their mental health. Teachers who support themselves so they can support their students.
As they say, you can't pour from an empty cup. Eight years in, I am learning how to keep my cup full. In another eight years, maybe I'll still be in the classroom. Maybe I'll move on to something bigger. Maybe I'll run for president. All I know is that how I function as a teacher depends on what I put in my cup. Whether it is the worries of my students or self-care routines, how I fill it will determine so much. What I do know is that, after eight years, my cup is finally filled with the right things, and I will do everything I can to keep it that way, no matter where my career takes me.
My first job was as a STEM instructor for an education company. My classroom was portable (a cart) and I taught K-8 over the course of one school year. I had to plan lessons and buy supplies and do it all a-z to deliver quality content that would later boost science and math scores for the small charter school in Southfield, Michigan. However, science was not my teaching major and I didn't see a future in that position. So I resigned and went on to find a job at another charter school in Ann Arbor. They paid 30k-- low, even for a teacher-- but to me it was more than I'd made ever before. I had no idea how much my labor was really worth, and poured everything I had into that job. Many nights, I stayed until 8:00 or 9:00, planning and grading and prepping things for the next day. I was learning how I wanted to run my classroom, how to manage behaviors, how to create routines for myself -- all things they don't teach us in college. I didn't mind working so hard because I was single and still living at home for that first year. Little did I know how big of a mistake that was, and how much it would cost me down the road.
A year later, I moved out and started grad school, a leg of my journey that would take five years. Upon having to pay real bills and support myself, I realized that what I was making wasn't nearly enough to sustain myself. So, I quit. I found a job working with the fifth-largest for-profit charter school network in the country and stayed for three years. There, I learned how to maintain a better work-life balance (although it still wasn't ideal), to establish my own routines and procedures, and most importantly, to build a network of support within my school. I made friends at work-- which I don't do easily as an introvert-- and actually hung out with said friends. After 3 years, it wasn't perfect but it felt like a family to me. I loved working there, but it was eventually time to move on. I tried my hand at public school.
Thinking that my job at a very organized charter school system was restrictive, I hoped public school would be different. It was. I had more freedom than I knew what to do with, so I had to reestablish those routines and decide what I wanted to keep and what I wanted to do away with. However, when it came to behaviors and administrative policies surrounding them, I found it was not all that different from the charter schools that I came from. I also found that since most teachers had been around a while, there were established cliques and groups that were hard to break into as an introverted newcomer. While adjusting to all of this, I let my mental health fall to the wayside. I was working long hours again, in addition to still being in grad school, was barely seeing my friends, and had yet to form any real friendships with my colleagues. As someone who has struggled with mental health for as long as I can remember, this should've been a warning sign.
Around January, I sank into a major depressive episode. I struggled to get out of bed and go to work, to do basic daily tasks. My world felt like it was fire, and eventually, I realized I couldn't keep going. I got help, but by that time my job was in jeopardy. However, considering everything that was going on inside of my head, I knew it was more important for me to get help than to keep working and pushing through. Despite a union representative by my side and the support of my administration, I could not picture myself going back to my own classroom any time soon and moved down to preschool as a teaching assistant. I finished out the school year there and learned that I do not, in fact, want to teach younger students (like, ever. I'm just not the right breed of teacher for that).
With my mental health back on track, I went back to the classroom but reflected greatly on where it all went wrong. While my diagnosis is what it is, there was much I could've done to prevent falling down a rabbit hole...
1) You must have a network to survive in education. It is so easy to become isolated in our classrooms and keep pushing through on our own, but if we want to thrive it is necessary to establish a network of support where you work. This is what they mean when they say you need to have teacher friends, and I finally understand that. It's great having friends, but they don't understand the ins and outs of what we do and how much it can weigh on us. You need someone who will understand if you say your student was being an asshole rather than gasp and ask how you can say that, or worse-- ask if it's really that bad.
2) A self-care routine is vital. As a single person living alone, it is incredibly easy to just pour all of yourself into this job. Surrounding yourself with healthy role models and creating a routine for yourself that involves self-care is the most important thing you can do. Taking time to do little things for yourself because you deserve them and not feeling guilty about spending money (that you can afford) on yourself and not your classroom is all part of this. While I can't speak on being a parent in addition to being a teacher, I imagine that self-care is even more important in that situation because you have two groups of tiny people you are responsible for, and that is a lot of weight to carry around.
3) You can't save everyone. With 25-30 students in a classroom at a time throughout the day, it is impossible to save them all. We do what we can, but even the best of teachers is not a replacement for negligent parents, a broken home, or any other condition in which a student might be living. When I started, I really thought I would change the world. Maybe I will, but the unfortunate thing about teaching is we never really see the fruits of our labor because they take years to manifest in the biggest ways. We see academic progress and behavioral improvements within a school year, but we don't see the true impact of our work because it doesn't show up until the kids are much older. So did I save them? Maybe. Maybe not. But if I worried about every kid I've ever had and how they are doing when I'm not with them, I would drive myself into an anxious mania. This leads me to my fourth lesson:
4) Don't take work home with you. I don't mean papers to grade. I mean the mental baggage we all carry at some point in worrying about our students' futures. At the end of the day, teaching is just a job. An incredibly hard, unimaginably stressful, and immensely rewarding job. If you quit, you will be replaced, just like any other job. The work will always be there, and there will always be something more we could do. But that doesn't mean we have to do it all. So don't forget to have a life outside the classroom and worry about yourself sometimes.
Bright-eyed, full of hope and wonder, naive about what I was getting myself into, and convinced I was going to change the world -- like most educators, this was how I started my career. Eight years in, my perspective is a little different. Maybe it wouldn't have shifted so much if I'd taught in wealthier districts or in more public schools. But students are students no matter their zip code, and they're all in need of good teachers. Teachers who care, but not so much they burn themselves out. Teachers who stay, but not at the expense of their mental health. Teachers who support themselves so they can support their students.
As they say, you can't pour from an empty cup. Eight years in, I am learning how to keep my cup full. In another eight years, maybe I'll still be in the classroom. Maybe I'll move on to something bigger. Maybe I'll run for president. All I know is that how I function as a teacher depends on what I put in my cup. Whether it is the worries of my students or self-care routines, how I fill it will determine so much. What I do know is that, after eight years, my cup is finally filled with the right things, and I will do everything I can to keep it that way, no matter where my career takes me.
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