Collecting Stories

I love watching great teachers in action. I sit back and observe and daydream about how I would love to be as great of a teacher someday also.

Back to reality: I am not a great teacher.

I am a first year teacher. I am doing the best I can with what I know. It is the ultimate test of patience - I want to be good now, but teaching is a craft that only can truly be learned in the process of doing it.

I recently heard a talk by Dr. Glenn Nierman, the president of the National Association for Music Education. He had the persona of a great teacher - clear, charismatic, engaging, accomplished. But he said something very interesting as he reflected back on his first year of teaching:

"That first year, I wanted everything to be perfect. But I got to a point in which that was impossible. I almost didn't come back after Thanksgiving. I felt terrible to scale everything back, but I had to just to survive. I had to focus on only one thing being really good and let the rest be just ok."

Here I was listening to the president of the entire National Association for Music Education telling me that his first year, even he thought about quitting. I found it inspiring that his decision to push beyond that first Thanksgiving was the first step that led him to the speech he was currently making.

At this moment, something started to click for me:

This year isn't about being a great teacher, or vaguely "changing students' lives."

It is about collecting stories.

I need all these stories of fatigue, and temptations to quit, and imperfections, because they are the stories someone will need to hear from me 30 years from now. They will see the [hopefully] great teacher that I aspire to be. That won't need to be talked about. They will need to hear the memories I tucked away in my back pocket, the stories of struggle, of being a little less than ok and somehow making it anyway.

I will make it, because I have the story someone else will need.

Back to reality: I am not a great teacher.

Yet.

I am
Collecting Stories.

The Third Lap

I'm sitting at the park. The only sound I hear is my car heater running as mist coats my windshield. I came here to run but that probably won't happen.

I am tired.

I am a first year teacher. 

I am five months into a journey that has proven to be quite arduous. My schedule is such that every 25 minutes, a new class of 30-40 children enter my room for their music experience of the day. These children are beautiful, inquisitive, sometimes challenging, often inspiring. 

I am an introvert. I am a highly sensitive person. Emotions are thick, almost a waxy solid in my life. I feel everything - my energy and everyone else's. It's a heavy weight to carry when 400 people walk in and out of my life daily.

As I sit in my car, my imagination transports me back to a memory. The lights are bright, energy is high. I am at a mile race. I know the third 400 meters is crucial. This is the heart of the race, the place where the pain amplifies immensely and I am not sure I can finish. Keeping up the same pace as before is crucial or I fade behind the pack. I struggle. The finish feels so far away. Muscles ache and feet burn on the track surface. I have never felt so far from the end.

This is the third lap of the school year. I feel emotionally worn out, but am afraid to talk about it. Teaching is supposed to be a passion. Any discussion of wavering strength shows weakness and lack of dedication to the profession. Am I allowed to discuss my fading strength?

All I know is the rain pours, it's the heart of winter, and the third lap is mentally the longest.