Why do I teach?

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Typically this is a question I ask myself on some days, however it is not because I regret my decision to teach but a mantra that reminds me I do it for the love of education and the willingness to help develop young minds to help them grow to take direction of their life. Teaching was never my plan, at all! I took a year and a half off from schooling after high school graduation but my original plan was to save up and start two years post diploma. My dream was to become a police officer and eventually to become a detective in the sex crimes unit. That dream never came to be. Due to a party gone out of hand I became one of the statistics of rape. After starting my recovery my parents said it was time to either pay rent, move out, or attend college and live at home rent free for a while. My $800 a month from a janitorial job at the grocery store was not enough to cover any sort of bills so I applied to the local college. I stupidly signed up as a criminal justice major still hell bent on my original plan. At the end of the semester it was very clear to me and my professors that I was not in the right state of mind to keep going the way I was. I would have to leave classes early due to flashbacks, panic attacks, outbursts, etc. My original therapy provided by the local women and children's shelter didn't work out because my therapist was the wrong therapist for me to work with (I will post more about that in a separate entry). I was helpless and had to start my life anew. I made a quick and hasty decision to switch my major to History with the hopes of being a researcher some day. Sitting in a basement surrounded by books and artifacts with little human interaction was ideal for me and it was something I saw myself enjoying. I minored in Creative Writing because it had been a passion filled hobby in high school. I was grasping at straws. Little did I know that when it comes to working in museums especially in archives and inventory 99% of museums require that you have a masters degree (even to be a tour guide)! At the end of my college education I was $30,000 yes that's thirty-thousand dollars in the hole for my student debt. Yikes! In order to pay for my basic bills of schooling such as books I had continued working throughout school, however I had left my job as a grocery store janitor and begun working as a substitute teacher. My first day was at the end of October in 2008 and I hated that job so much for the next several years. Having put so much debt into earning my degree I wasn't financially stable enough to move out on my own and not having a master's degree I couldn't move out of town seeing as no one was taking me seriously at the museums. The summer of 2014 I had an interesting phone call come in from the high school I frequently subbed at. The foreign language department required two french teachers to accomidate the large class sizes and the teacher for the beginner levels had submitted his resignation. I was asked to remain on call for the first couple of weeks of school instead of taking assignments at other schools so that I could fill in long term if they need me to. I was recommended by both the current teacher and the resigning teacher seeing as I had studied the language and culture for 5 years through both high school and college. I gladly accepted in hopes that by being a long term sub I would have more stability to begin paying back my student loans. Unfortunately for me they found a new teacher before school started and I was no longer needed to sub...until said new teacher resigned on the third day of school. She didn't live locally and taking her students to school near her home and making it to work on time weren't working out. I was immediately asked to fill in until they could hire someone else. Taking on such a task was daunting to think about but lesson plans were made and all I had to do was follow along. At least that was what should have happened. There were no lesson plans as the teacher was making them up day by day. My first task was to organize the classroom and create a calendar of plans to follow. I also had to learn the online grade recording system. Yet things took a turn after subbing in the class for only two weeks the school pulled in a retired French teacher to take over. I was about to be out of a steady job again! Thankfully things worked out for her and I, she needed to be home during the second half of the week so that she could over see the remodel and selling of her house, while I was staring my weekend job working at a renaissance festival (I'll post more on that adventure some other time too), so I could use the first half of the week to recover from a physically demanding job. And so our schedules were set. She taught Monday-Wednesday and I taught Thursday & Friday until the first half of December then she shifted her Wednesday to me. I was the one writing the plans to help her out and we followed them with the approval of the official teacher. Normally subs aren't required to come in for teacher work days and staff development meetings but I figured if I was in the class more than 50% of the time I ought to pick up a thing or two from my co-workers and these were the times to do so. Madame Waddenful was estatic to see that I had completed all of our grading and other tasks during our Jan. work day before classes started again when she arrived for the second half of the day. Her husband a retired teacher himself said "Anielle's got this, she's a great teacher and you can let her take over." That was the first time someone had called me a teacher and not just a substitute. From August to the following May I had found a place I felt I belonged. I had even begun working on my alternative certification for teaching in order to be official. Sadly I did not pass the French Mastery test and have put it off until I can find a tutor and become more fluent (you need to speak and respond at a 4th year advanced level in order to pass). However Madame Tymniak (the official French teacher for our third and fourth year students) had become my mentor and suggested that I look into English Language Arts first with my background in creative writing, it also happened to be the same path she took before becoming a French teacher. I took her advice readily. Over the summer of 2015 I applied to the same high school for a 12th grade English position but lost out to a teacher coming out of retirement. The school, as any job would, went with the more experienced applicant. However a similar situation occured only two weeks in. The teacher had up and quit at the end of the first week and the school discovered she had no intent to return. She stated "health reasons/concerns" on her resignation. It was later found out that her classroom management skills were not useful for her 7th period kids and their behavior caused her blood pressure to skyrocket. Rather than risk any further health complications she returned to her retirement. I was called in and interviewed to take over the classroom. I started as a long term sub and again found that these classes did not have any lesson plans created and were already two weeks behind the other senior ELA classes! It was my job to catch them up quickly! This was very challenging. When instructed to write an essay explaining who their "Epic Hero" was (basing their hero on the characteristics of epic heroes from literature such as Beowulf) it was evident they had no clue how to construct an essay; they weren't pulling my leg either. I found myself with one week to teach over 100 students how to write an essay well enough it could be used for a college application. The first task was to create an outline. Thesis: _____ is my epic hero because ____, ____, and ____. Body 1: reason one with example. Body 2: reason 2 with example. Body 3: reason 3 with example. Conclusion: restate your thesis in a new way and summarize the body paragraphs. I took suggestions from each class period of who they saw as hero in real life and each class period suggested my own mom. My mom was a familiar face around the school having worked there for 16 years in several different positions and had already been involved with the education of each one of my students. Thesis: Mrs. K is my epic hero because... Each class period wrote a list of reasons why she was a hero including "she's always smiling and making our day better", "she listens to our problems without judging us even if we did something wrong or stupid", and "she comes to work every day even though she's sick". That last one touched me deeply because I had forgotten mom never hid her battles she wore them proudly to show everyone she wouldn't be beaten by them. She taught these kids through her example that no matter what you go through you can always over come it. The sample essay my classes wrote together with me before I turned them lose to write their own told the story of my mother's fights against cancer, multiple fights. My mother was not a high school teacher. Her jobs over the years included copy room assistant, special ed. assistant, in-school suspension observation, attendance clerk, and finally assistant principal's secretary. Yet they call her "teacher" because she was a teacher to them in a different sense. Mamma always told me that I would be a teacher one day, I remember her telling me that when I was about nine years old teaching my two year old little brother basic sight words. I didn't believe her and at some point had completely rejected the idea and here I was learning from my classroom that she was a teacher all along and that even if I didn't earn my certification that I would be a teacher some how even beyond subbing. That December I took my mastery test for English and missed it by six points. I re-took the test and passed with an excess of points! I was then given full-time teacher pay as teacher of record for my English class. I could finally say it was MY classroom and that these were officially MY students. Their futures were absolutely in my care as I helped to mold them into adults. What got to me the most wasn't even the classroom teaching but the club I ran during lunch time. I created a creative writing club that was tiny but productive ten students met with me twice a week for 30 minutes to exercise their minds in a hobby we all shared. At the end of the school year two weeks before graduation I made an announcement that broke my club students' hearts. I was leaving Huntsville. I had grown up in the same town and lived there almost all of my life and as I was finishing my certification process I was relocating to a town with more job oppritunities. When I say it broke their hearts I don't mean sad faces and a "we'll miss you Miss K" it was crying, sobbing, pouring their hearts out heart break. The president of the club gathered her friends after school hours in the parking lot, without my knowledge to plan a going away party and to give them their final writing challenge. When we came together for our final meeting we had candy and food, but unlike our other party meeting days there were no games. Instead one by one each student read a new piece of writing and each had dedicated it to me. The challenge was to write a story using everyone from the club including me to illustrate how I helped them with their writing or anything else (as I had become their confidant as well). Their stories were beautiful and touching, and every student had brought a copy for me to keep. The president, bless her sweet soul, couldn't finish reading her story out loud through her tears. I sat next to her holding her hand as she cried on my shoulder and her boyfriend finished reading in her place. Her life was described as desolate, a true trailer park story of upbringing where she was desperate for escape and school had given her such an escape but beyond that she desired a home; in her story's conclusion stated that lunch time twice a week in room 1108 (my room) she came home. So why do I teach? I do not teach just because I want to prepare students for their futures. I do not teach students so that they can pass the state tests. I do not teach students so that they know right from wrong. I teach to help students find themselves. I teach so that they have a safe place. I teach so that they are confident.