A Few Things I Remember About My First Years of Teaching

Take a Trip Down Memory Lane with Me

The Interviews

The lie told was whoever received the job offer first was where we would move. I received/earned three offers in Georgia but we moved to central Indiana. This meant a Meijer cashier job for me and a mantra to never be a substitute teacher in my career.

The first Indiana interview was tough and specific. The committee was the HR person and two principals who had openings in their buildings. I began my career in fourth grade, three weeks into the school year. [I would start the school year late in 2000 as well after relocating after my Oma’s death.]

Those first students were never really “mine”. About the time we would start to feel cohesive the teacher that left would come sauntering in for hugs and “I miss you”s and disruption. The last time she did it was late in the year, April I believe, and I just left the room and let her be. I looked forward to starting the new school year with my own students.

Odd Teaching

Even from the beginning, I was progressive and “odd” with how I approached teaching. I used to blame it on that my degree was earned at a teacher’s college. Maybe the approach was different there than other places. [I do know this is partially true because I had a student teacher my third year who had much different skills than I did coming out of college. I also was on the hiring side of the table with interviews and Ball State grad answers are different than other colleges.]

I know now it is just how I operate. My first year (1996), I played an instrumental nature sounds CD and had kids freewrite. They produced the most amazing writing that day that even surprised them. I did grade appropriate centers in fourth grade to wrangle the afternoon. According to my “mentor” teacher, “That will never work.”

“Watch me” was my reply. I have professed this many times over my 26 years in schools.

Once I had a teacher burst into my room and proclaim, “I have no idea how you get these kids to write this,” pointing into the hallway. My first graders wrote after our shared writing every day and by the end of the year every student could write a full page. I posted them in the hallway every day. Lots of reading happened outside of my classroom because of it and my authors were proud of what they produced.

Flow

That first year, I went to the administration building to fill out the substitute application to my dismay but I didn’t want to be a cashier with an education degree. While I was there the secretary told me there were two openings in the city elementary schools. I took that application home and ditched the sub app. This was a paper/pencil application with the first interview in the form of many questions to answer about my teaching style, background, and experience. The answers flowed out of me at my little apartment kitchen table and I returned the paperwork that afternoon. The next week I had the interview and was offered the job.

Students

This year my first students will turn 35 years old. [OMG] It was an interesting mix of personalities that year, as most classrooms are. I busted up a fight late in the year by getting in the middle of two students. One wirey boy jumped on the back of a girl who outweighed me by at least 100 pounds. I never made that mistake again. At the parent teacher conference that girl’s aunt told me all about the trauma in their lives for an hour.

Since that first year experience, I had an aversion to parent teacher conferences. I would throw up before the time slot shuffle began.

They were a fun group full of stories. I had one student who loved science and making machines in his desk run on batteries.

We sang happy birthday to Indiana and even had cake.

Work Friends

Are there any other kind?

My mentor was not my friend and for some reason seemed to not want me to succeed. I learned I was alone in my classroom a lot that first year. The collaborative teams and planning and friendship advertised in college was a myth.

I had planned to be at that first school forever. I was going to be a legacy teacher. I have realized looking back that death has shifted my living/working situations on more than one occasion.

There was a group outside of my grade level team that took “teacher field trips”. We went to quaint towns for lunch and shopping. We took a line dancing class. We went to author visits at the Barnes and Noble together. We took a painting class. It was fun and I never had that experience after that either.

Luckily, over the years I have worked with many great teams and I have become friends with some of them, at least while I was at the school.

Magic

“I’m magic,” is my canned response to the question, “How did you do that?” when something happens that a colleague has deemed impossible or unbelievable. Teachers don’t have to be magic but some authentic enchantment goes a long way. I have always been authentic with my students and am always willing to do what I am asking students to do. Because I am a writer, students write differently for me than anyone else. How do I know this?

On several occasions, exasperated teachers would show up at my door lamenting about how terrible the writing was when they teach it as opposed to when I came in. I usually went through the questions about modeling, exemplar texts, talking before the writing , etc. with the teacher. One time, I went down to the class with the teacher and asked the students what was going on. The writing they had turned in was dry and unimaginative. Their response?

“We weren’t writing it for you.”

I explained to them whenever they wrote anything they needed to use all their knowledge about writing up to that point. They reluctantly agreed they would try.

Students who had been historically poor writers have produced writing that staff have walked by and proclaimed there was no way “they wrote that on their own.”

Believing in students is not magic, it is how we should feel. All students can learn has never been just a catch phrase people use in interviews. I lived it and honored it every day.

#happyreading #happywriting