Have you ever been so sad about something, so connected to someone who leaves your life, that you can feel your heart actually hurt when you think about it? Just for a moment, you can actually feel it rise in your chest to take a heavy sigh before it settles back into place and the tears start?
The first time I felt that level of pain was the first time I had to take to Jason to the airport after he visited me in college. I remember driving away from the airport, and a plane flew over my car. I was sure it was his, and I felt it -- my heart was sobbing, and I felt terribly alone and sad. There was a longing with it that I knew wasn't going to be satisfied for months until I saw him again.
I felt the same way a handful of times since, usually as a result of a tremendous loss, but in the last few months I have felt it again.
I've been watching Glee while I work, specifically the last couple seasons, when one of the original members of the Glee club loses his sense of self. He doesn't know what he wants to do with his life, and his original plan didn't work the way he thought it would, so he questions everything. Long story short, he decides to go to college to become a teacher, and there are several scenes of other teachers reminiscing about what it means to teach and how it feels to connect with a class of kids.
Then I received a lovely card in the mail from one of my former students. She's in her third year in college, pursuing her dreams of being an actress. In the note she told me that she has also added a major in early education education, and that I impacted her life, as a teacher. Most of the time we don't really get to hear these things from former students, especially as an elementary level teacher, so when we do get that level of feedback, it makes a huge impact.
Anyway, all of this has contributed to some major decisions being made. It's been 5 years since I've been in a classroom. When people ask me why I left, I always explain that the politics of being a teacher are exhausting and you just can't teach anymore because you always have to worry about test scores and not always what's best for kids. However, there is another truth...
The last four years of my career were spent in the same school, the first three of which were working for someone who managed to make me doubt myself on a daily basis. She mistreated my closest friend (who, incidentally, is an amazingly gifted teacher), she created a hostile work environment by pitting teachers and other staff against each other, and she made it clear that the secretary and registrar of the school were the most important people there, even above the kids we worked with. To make matters worse, the final three years of my career were spent working with a teammate who was the single most manipulative, passive aggressive, mean girl I have ever met. A million times worse than Regina George. These two women contributed to my overall feelings of inadequacy, instability, and self-loathing. Those feelings have stayed with me all these years, no matter what happened, no matter who tried to tell me differently.
But then I felt it. About a month ago, watching Glee and hearing these fake teachers talk about impacting the lives of kids, I felt it. My heart rose into a heavy, deep sigh, and and the longing began. I wanted my own group of kids so badly that it hurt. My passion for education and doing what's best for kids has never wavered, not once, despite feeling like a failure.
And for the first time in 5 years, I actually considered going back.
The more I've considered it, the more I want it. I'm still terrified because after 5 years I feel like a new teacher all over again. But, I also have regained some confidence that I thought was gone forever. Yes, I made some mistakes in my career, and there are things I regret and kids I know I could have worked harder to help, but I also know there are kids like Ashley, who I did impact in a positive way, and there are more to come.
So this is all to say that although I will continue to make pretty things and have a shop, I am also going back to school for spring semester so that I can renew my Wisconsin teaching license and try to get back into a classroom next fall.
I hope that in a year I will be able to reclaim part of my identity that I have been missing and can no longer deny will always be part of me.
Teacher.
