girlfiend

Until recently, I’d been sort of glad not to be teaching. Making dozens of medium skim lattes isn’t really a bad career. But these last two weeks or so, every now and again I’ll get a small feeling of loss or regret. It happens at the most random moments and there’s no real rhyme or reason. I don’t feel it all of the time and I certainly don’t feel it most of the time. But when I feel it, it makes me stop and think about the last six years of my life.

Working in the big, icky, urban school district was horrendous. Well, teaching kindergarten wasn’t all bad, aside from the woman I team taught with it was quite lovely. I loved working with small children and I loved teaching little kids to read and love books. I just hated being forced to teach them with outdated, slightly racist materials and records with corresponding worksheets from the early 1960s. (”M… Moccasin… Circle the moccasin in the first row.” Like poor five-year-olds in the ghetto know what a moccasin is.)Teaching sixth grade in the district was the worst thing I’ve ever had to do, but that was more the fault of the school itself and it’s terrible leadership than any fault of the kids.

Teaching at the urban charter school, despite my hatred for the principal and several of the school’s stupid policies, was actually a wonderful experience. I learned how to teach, how to manage a classroom and how to form close relationships with students without crossing any weird lines. Teaching Special Ed English classes was incredibly challenging and rewarding as was teaching high school. Damn those kids were dirty. For a while I taught this half hour multi-sensory reading class where the kids had to look at a letter, say a word that starts with the same letter, then make its sound. “Apple, aa. Mouse, mmm.” Only with those kids it was, “Dick, d. Titty, t.” I missed those kids dreadfully when I first left for the ritzy suburban district.

Of course teaching in the ritzy suburban district was as rewarding as working in the charter school if not more so. Those kids were smart and funny and motivated, and the ones who weren’t were fairly well-behaved. I actually got to teach there, not just manage and contain. I loved the kids and the staff and the school and was heartbroken when I got booted from my position.

I’m boring myself here. I won’t even get into the challenges of last year and those cutie little peanuts and the less cute little assholes and the fatass principal and her complete lack of tact and understanding. I miss teaching sometimes. The back and forth. The little challenges and the planning. I miss creating units that the kids think they’ll hate and end up loving and the projects that turn out better than I ever expected. I miss having an excuse to read tons of teen and young adult novels and the ability to recommend the good ones and the thought-provoking ones and even the ones that are just plain silly to kids who’ll end up liking them as much as I did.

I am glad that I didn’t have to start anew with new kids and a new staff and a new school while experiencing my first pregnancy. I know I’ll be thankful that I’ll have the luxury of being a mom at home with my kids and I won’t have to miss all of their firsts. (Back in college when I worked at the daycare it was heartwrenching when parents would come in and say, “Junior took his first step last night!” and I’d know that Junior had actually been walking for a few day, but we didn’t want to say anything because we didn’t want mom and dad to feel like they’d missed something.)But I do miss it. All the teacher blogs I read aren’t really helping matters much either.

Chris from Practical Theory left a comment on my last post. Reading his site really made me want to be a part of what he’s doing. The opportunity to start a new school, going in there with all of the shiny blank slate idealism and energy. It just makes me miss the classroom. Desperately. But maybe tomorrow when I leave work at noon and don’t have to create sub plans and behavior charts and hands-on activities to keep the kids from driving the sub up a tree, I won’t miss it as much.