The Struggling Teacher
I stepped closer to the edge and looked out into the distance. There was nothing but blue sky and a few scattered clouds. I tried not to think or wonder, but my mind kept pulling at my thoughts. When I finally reached the edge, I didn’t bother looking down or pondering what it would feel like when I hit the bottom. Instead, I closed my eyes and embraced the silence around me. I told myself it was now or never. I took one last long breath and jumped without a care.
My feet momentarily dangled in the air, and when I finally hit that pool, it was one of the best feelings in the world. That was always how I began my summer vacation: a full two months of freedom, or as I like to say, “a little taste of retirement.” At 27, I left my legal career and accepted my first middle school teaching position.
I entered a program that paid for my master’s degree in education. However, I had to accept a Title 1 funded school job. Title 1 is a federal education program that aids schools and students in impoverished neighborhoods. Where most people did not want to work. My first day on the job, several new teachers came to work, went to lunch, and never returned. I won’t lie, I thought about joining them and forgetting this career altogether, but I needed the money.
During my first week on the job, I was cursed at, ridiculed, ignored, and told to leave by my students. I went through major culture shock, broke up two fights, and almost got hit by a chair. Even worse, none of my students paid attention to my lessons or did any of my classwork. When I threatened to fail them, call their parents, or send them to the principal’s office, the students just laughed in my face. The noise level from my classroom was so obnoxious it was offensive.
I felt lost, confused, depressed, and like a total failure. I hated waking up and going to work. I wanted to cry moments before the first bell would ring. It felt like I was being punished and serving a prison sentence. I started looking for other careers, but I wound up taking the punishment each day and staying for the entire year. Then something great happened, or so I thought; I landed another job at a different school with a better reputation. But it turns out the students treated me the same way. It hurt even more when I saw my students behaving like perfect little angels for other teachers but didn’t act that way for me. I couldn’t believe my students were purposefully choosing to be disrespectful to me. Even after I had been so kind and caring towards them. WTF!
After some self-reflection, I realized that maybe I was the problem and needed to work on myself and my pedagogy. Over the years, I have worked with the worst teachers who had the best intentions but were never academically successful. I’ve also had the privilege of working with the best teachers, where students behaved respectfully and continuously scored at the top in their district. I have learned a lot, especially what it takes to be a leader, an Alpha, someone students respect and act accordingly. I wish I could go back a few months before I ever began teaching and give myself the tutelage I know now. I can confidently say that my life and career would have been much more fruitful.
That said, becoming an excellent teacher is by far not an easy task. It will take a lot of hard work and dedication. You will learn that a teacher’s day has no final bell. Sometimes, you are up all night laboring or thinking about the following day. When you understand that your students become your children, and you have a responsibility to mold them into successful citizens, there is a good chance you will learn what it takes day in and day out to make your students effective, engaged lifelong learners. It takes an alpha to manage a pact of adolescent students, but it takes determination, perseverance, and a willingness to adapt, learn, and work hard for about two hundred eighty days of the year, to become a remarkable teacher. Allow me to show you how.