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| My major award... |
My sister made me a ribbon for getting through the school year. And, I immediately put it on. In fact, I'm wearing it, right now, as I type. I usually spend the first few weeks of summer, reflecting on and learning from the previous school year. But, this year, I've been reflecting, in an irritated way, during pretty much the entire school year. And, I just want my ruffled feathers to finally be soothed. So, here is what I learned. For an entire year, I had an amateur, guided only by self-interest, proceed to dictate how I did my job for nine months. But, the dictation was never up front. It was always conducted behind my back. There was criticism of me to my boss, to other parents, to students, and to basically anyone who would listen.
It reminded me of a woman who approached me in the grocery store a few weeks ago. I was wearing a ceramic pendant. As I was walking out the door with my bags of groceries, she stopped me and asked to stroke my jade for good luck. I stared at her blankly. Then, she pointed to my necklace. I explained that it wasn't jade, it was ceramic. She started arguing with me, insisting that it was jade. I said that she was welcome to touch it, but that I was a ceramic artist, and the pendant was made with porcelain clay, and then glazed with a celadon glaze. She shook her head, and walked away.
I have been teaching for 20 years now. I make personal connections with kids. I watch them. I study them. In order to have anyone learn anything, there has to be motivation. So, I try to figure out what makes all thirty of them tick. I know that I can make the year better for each and every one of them, if I figure this out early on. Usually, I'm not too far off about kids. I read their journals, I have personal conversations with them. I listen to what they have to say. Most of the time, kids will almost directly tell you what they need, if you're observant. The amateur negated all of this. Everything I did in my classroom was wrong. There was zero trust in my judgement. But, to my face, all I ever received was smiles.
It was so unnerving. For years, I've been valued. That doesn't mean that everyone has loved me, by any means. But, usually, I'm able to win most people over. They see how hard I work. They see that I genuinely care about kids. Not this time. By December, the negativity started to take it's toll. I started to feel almost constant self-doubt. I felt like since the amateur firmly believed that I was doing a lousy job, there must be some grain of correctness in her opinion.
I stopped finding pleasure in the things that usually made me happy. I slowed my art making to a crawl. If I'm lousy at teaching, then I'm probably lousy at art, too. In January, at a show that I was in, I only sold one piece: confirmation.
Then, the anger kicked in. I'm good at what I do, dammit. I have gotten twenty years of feedback from kids, otherwise known as my "clients". I have gotten positive feedback from parents and colleagues, too. So, I started to go on the offensive. I purchased an angry clown photo and hung it up near my bathroom mirror. Don't mess with me. And, although modeling myself after an angry clown probably wasn't too helpful for friends and family, it did help me to cope.
Also, it helped that I genuinely loved my students this year. I worked hard to help them make gains. And, because I'm a professional, I have the data to back up these gains. Proof. Take that amateur. One student even made a three year gain in math. Three grade levels. In the immortal words of Liz Lemon, "Suck it, monkeys!" Everything I did wasn't wrong. Because before you seek to destroy another person, there had better be proof.
I'm trying to hop back on the art making horse. I know that Austin Kleon is always right. So, I've been getting out there. I started making some small shapes after school in April. I just need a few more shapes to finish off filling my glass jar. These shapes will be white, like a cloud at the top of the jar. Because adversity just makes us stronger. Erasing self-doubt lifts us.
I am grateful for my loving, kind, funny students this year. They were definitely my raison d'être. They did good work, and learned a lot, despite my manufactured personal crisis. And, they themselves, were the proof of my methods. I could see them growing and progressing every
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