As the Georgia TOTY, you
would serve as a spokesperson and representative for the entire teaching
profession. What would be your message to other professionals in
education and to the general public?
I
am honored to be a teacher, and honored to be recognized by my peers. I am
surrounded by brilliant, inspiring colleagues, and I stand of the shoulders of
the great teachers and mentors who have helped me along the way. Every teacher
knows that the profession can be a roller coaster. In the course of a day, you
can go from feeling like the protagonist in an inspiring Hallmark movie to
wanting to pack your desk and walk away for good. Our profession is built on
imperfect relationships with imperfect people, so it can be discouraging, and
we’ve all spent time wondering why we keep coming back day after day and year
after year. Theodore Roosevelt once said, “Far and away the best prize that
life has to offer is a chance to work hard at work worth doing.” Esteemed
colleagues, if teaching is not work worth doing, then what is?
It
can be hard to distinguish our real purpose as teachers from the paperwork and
politics that are so easy to get bogged down in. Even the wisest among us
cannot predict what new evaluation systems, assessment plans, software programs,
and classroom management trends wait for us around the bend. I am a
barely-recovering perfectionist, so every change hits me hard, because I want
to master each one. I have fallen into the trap of exhausting myself by trying
to hit a bullseye on an ever-moving target. It’s days, weeks, and months like
these that prompt me to turn inward and re-evaluate why I stay in this
profession. What makes teaching my work
worth doing? Searching for purpose isn’t easy, and I’m sure that in five or ten
years I’ll think differently, but right now what I’ve made peace with is that
my purpose as a teacher is to make people’s lives better.
Most
days, executing this purpose doesn’t look like much. Most of these actions,
choices, and words are small things, like not being a jerk even though I’m in a
bad mood, greeting students when they enter my classroom, and grading work and
entering it into the online gradebook (which our students check obsessively) in
a timely fashion. Making the other students in the room be quiet when one of
their classmates has the floor and posting our daily agenda online feel like
inconsequential tasks.
I’ve
never had a student express gratitude over being held accountable for tardiness
or bringing their own supplies to class. In fact, a lot of the choices I make
in the name of making lives better are met with eye rolls, annoyed sighs, or
silence that makes me wonder if the person I’m speaking to can even hear me.
(Please tell me that I’m not the only one who has to ask at least once a week if
my thoughts are actually being said out loud of if they’re just in my head.)
Making lives better, especially teenage lives, is often messy and difficult. We
rarely see our efforts come to fruition.
A
scene from the television show Parks and
Recreation comes to mind: Leslie Knope, a Parks and Recreation Department
employee in a small town, is literally on her hands and knees on a sidewalk
spreading coffee grounds, trying to humanely eradicate slugs from the sidewalk
in front of an old woman’s house after she complained about them. The old woman
returns from the store and yells at Leslie because she wanted some of the slugs
gone, but not all of them. Leslie’s co-worker, April, begins to lament how
terribly so many people respond to Leslie trying to help them. Leslie reminds
April, “that’s not why we do this . . . We do it because it’s good and it helps
people, not to get the applause.”
Teaching
can feel like slug eradication on many days, and if you’re discouraged, I urge
you to tap into what makes the work worth doing for you. I’d bet that it’s
probably not keeping up with the newest curriculum and assessment updates or
utilizing your data binder to its fullest potential. You teach because it’s
good and it helps people. You teach because it makes lives better. The little
things we do every day that point our students toward reaching their potential
are important. The small kindnesses we show to our students and colleagues make
a bigger difference than we often realize. As educators, we are blessed with
countless opportunities every day to improve the lives of the people around us
in small ways. My friends, working hard to seize those opportunities is work
worth doing.
