05 October 2005

Missing the Best of Me

Growing up, I had a temper. A bad one. I would yell and slam doors and then pout about yelling and screaming until I got my way. My parents did not believe my babysitters, my teachers, and the mothers of my friends that I was calm and amiable when I was away from home. Don't get me wrong, I wasn't a terror or badly behaved. But I am stubborn and I did believe that being loud would serve me. My temper tempered itself over time, but there were still the occasional flare ups through my teenage years. I remember throwing a pool cue across the pool hall I frequented every weekend of high school. Once I threw a chair across the kitchen because I was losing the argument with my dad. And at least once the ref had to step in between myself and the girl I was pissed off at on the basketball court. I never would have hit her, but I looked like I would.

Last year as a student teacher I was observed every day by my master teacher, once a week by my university supervisor who came to check in on me, and sometimes by fellow student teachers. Their feedback was always the same, that I was calm, collected, seemingly confident, and never ever raised my voice. I was soft-spoken and "gentle." Even hearing these descriptions sounded strange to me. That was not the person I knew. I had never been called patient in my life! Who were they watching? I started to try and step outside of myself and observe this person who was me dressed up like an English teacher. I wanted to see what they saw. Last Spring I had the chance when I was required to submit a video recording of my teaching to the State in order to receive my credential. I watched the video and hardly recognized myself. They were right! I did look confident. I was calm. There was strength in the fact that I was even-keeled, that students knew that they could not get to me and that I would take things in stride. My supervisor even told me that it was a powerful strategy because the day I did raise my voice or truly get mad at my class, the effect would be much more powerful.

I still didn't believe that I was a calm, somewhat confident teacher until I had the experience of interviewing in an affluent high school district across the way. I had an hour long interview in front of a panel of ten including two administrators, teachers, parents, and students. Question after question was fired at me without a chance for follow up as they went around the table one at a time, each with a different angle. I was a nervous wreck. My voice wasn't stable. All of the theory I'd studied was slipping right through my sweaty hands. I was bombing the interview with each shallow breath. What saved me was the end. They asked me to prepare a ten minute mock lesson. The moment I stood up in front of the panel and began to teach by leading my "class" through a close reading of Edwidge Danticat's "Farming of Bones," I was at peace. My voice regulated and softened. My heart stopped racing. I suddenly felt at ease and all thoughts of whether I would be offered the job or not, slipped away. I was in the moment. I was all of the best parts of me and I could see my "students" reflecting that back at me. At the very end of the interview they asked if there was anything else they should know. I said, "Well, I hope it was clear to you that I am most at home and comfortable when I am teaching. I love it. " You know what? They offered me the job.

I don't regret turning the job down to work with less privileged kids, but I do regret that I am not in a place where I love who I am in front of my students. In fact, I don't. I am angry. I am tired. I am not my best. I spent the first week of this job calm and even-keeled in the way that had provided me strength in the past, but it got me no where. Now, not a day goes by that I don't raise my voice, that I don't almost throw down my overhead pen or my clipboard. Not a day goes by that I don't consider walking right out and slamming my door, as if that would help me get my way.

Does my temper help the situation? Yes and no. It doesn't help because it lets students know that they are getting to me. Just yesterday, as I tried to be even, a student said, "She's mad. I can see it in her eye. She wants to throw something." I successfully ignored him, but I knew he was right. My even temper was just a look; I was burning up inside. One day last week, after the disaster with the sub, I came into the classroom pissed off, thinking I could use my anger to make a point. All it accomplished was to get the few students who do back me up to get mad at me too. One even said, "If you are gonna have a bad attitude, don't expect us to have a good one," to which I shot back with, "After the way you treated the sub, you deserve my bad attitude. You earned it!" But my students just stepped up to fight and were not scared into any sort of compliance at all. It was the wrong tactic.

I haven't yet found the place to be on my tempered line. One minute, I get the message that I should try signifying or engaging in the verbal insult play that is a part of the culture, an entry door to acceptance. Sometimes this works. But the next minute, any attempt at signifying comes off as sarcasm and disrespect. It does not sit well with me or my students. It is not the kind of teacher or person I want to be and it is not a part of my culture so it doesn't come naturally. I am constantly wondering how to function as such a stranger, to make it clear that I mean business and can hang with their rhetoric. What I do know is that it is hard for me to separate from the feelings that come up in class. If I don't stay calm and unmoved, I take too much home with me. But if I let them walk all over me without reaction, we get no where.

Without a doubt, I am missing the kind of teaching that I fell in love with, the kind that removed me from my own ups and downs and put me fully into a moment I wanted to embrace. I know when I am that kind of teacher, my students shine. All I'm doing right now is hurting myself and possibly my students too. And yet, I've been called the "gentle voice" on campus. How is this possible and what kind of tempers are being unleashed in other classrooms? I try to remind myself to go towards tranquility. I ring a "singing bowl" used in Buddhist meditation to get my students' attention. I decorate my walls with poetry. One day I wore a shirt that said, "Tranquility." A student asked me what it meant and why I wore it. I answered: it means peace and it reminds me to be peaceful. He said, "Are you a hippy?" I said, "Maybe." He put a fake joint up to his lips and pretended to inhale and suddenly the idea of doling out marijuana to all of my students didn't seem like such a bad idea, a little induced-peace would be nice.

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