I feel as if I have been under water since June. I was offered the job at the dreamy, blue charter school and accepted enthusiastically. Soon after my husband landed a job with a large conservation organization in DC and we were on our way. Moving. Pulling up roots with every last ounce of energy we could muster and transplanting ourselves in urban soil. The process has been exhausting and painful, but here we are.
One week after moving (while my husband was out of the country for a month with his new job) I started our three weeks of in-service. Day after day, hour after hour, I kept pinching myself and asking if these people were for real. Everyone was young, smart, creative, articulate, vibrant, flexible. It's a diverse staff in every sense of the word (gender, sexuality, race, ethnicity, language, religion, age, origin) and I felt immediately at home. Comfortable. In love. The mission, instructional focus, pedagogy all make sense to me. I was in heaven.
We are three weeks in to the school year and I am still impressed and amazed that I have landed in such a learning community. However, there are challenges.
I continue to be challenged by time and space. There is never enough time to teach, or to prepare myself to teach. I always struggle with managing the space, and the stuff, of my classroom.
I have left the house every day before my children were awake. I see them only for a few hours each evening, which are a mad dash to feed, bathe and sleep. My husband has been working long hours and is once again away for a week, and we are all weary.
I cannot sustain this schedule. Something needs to give.
And so once again I find myself in familiar territory. A hazy vision of who I wish to be as a teacher, what I wish to do, cloudy by the clutter of my reality. Only so many hours in a day. Only so many hours in a day.
The question for this year will be: Who am I now that I have found the right place? Now that I am in the right "room" among peers who will appreciate and support me, can I teach? Can I grow and succeed?
If the answer is no, then it will truly be time to throw in the towel.
If yes, then hallelujah.
1 comment:
It is wonderful to read this. What a relief?! But yes, even in a dreamy school the needs and possibilities are far more numerous than your hands. What pains me the most is the tear I feel in your heart when thinking about whether or not to give your energy to the children at work or the children at home. As you say, not sustainable if you are forced to make such a choice too often.
It seems that the first few weeks are hard for everyone and then it is possible to settle into some kind of routine. In my limited experience it is possible to keep that productive but manageable hum going until the spring, when it feels like everything needs to happen at once and I forget to eat.
I also feel like a switch to a new school is *almost* like starting out again as a new teacher. Not exactly, of course, but I think a year from now you will find that it is easier simply because you know more about your school, your colleagues and how to get things done.
Is the international travel on the part of your lovely husband going to be a regular thing?
besos.
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