In My head- Out Loud

 There are so many things I want to write, so many things I want to reflect on, talk about, but they come and go so quickly through my head I can't keep up with my thoughts and that intimidates me when it comes to writing them all down. What if I miss the important ones. I guess if I just stop to write, I can get some of it down and just go from there. 

I live my life in school years. It's the only way I know how. I have been in education pretty much all my life between learning, and teaching, the year to year thing doesn't even connect with me. So here we go... 

22-23 Year: 

It was suppose to be a year of change, a break year to figure things out and explore. A Year off. It has been a lot of those things, but it HAS NOT been a year off and it's turned out better than I could have expected. Partially because I'm still learning to set boundries, I was roped into teaching 8 weeks of somoene's maternity leave and how little I knew it would change my perspectivie. 

July... Sitting beside this nice parent at our kids swim lessons we were casually talking about our jobs. She mentions she was hired at my alma matter to be a dean (assistant principal type position) of faculty and development with a focus on DEI and hiring as well as cultural development in staff. As we continue to chat, she discovers my background and asks if I want to do a sub job. NO... no I do not. I'm not ready to go back into the classroom. I was so burned out, so angry.  She asked if she could at least pass my information on to the head of the high school and I acquiesced. The head of the HS was my former history and civil rights teacher, he was kind and made a very distinct impact on my life. He called within the hour and we talked about school, my hesitation to teach again and my frustrations with my past experiences. He listened and understood, he respected and acknowledged what I had to say and he still asked me if I would please come in and work for them teaching Chemistry for 8 weeks. I offered no letters of recommendation, no resume, nothing. Then he did the coolest thing, he told me, don't make a decision now, think on it, decide what is best for you and let him know after the weekend. Monday morning rolled around and the text came in saying, what ever you decide, know we want to support you whether you are here at our school or in what ever endeavor you pursue. My dad also worked for this man and has only ever had wonderful things to say. After a bit of processing, I agreed to take the position. It's only 8 weeks, no long term commitment, just a short term new experience. 

Post my long term sub experience, I can truly say it was one of my must fun experiences in teaching that I've ever had. It was an incredible experience, in no place have I ever had that level of support, which in turn gave me confidence to walk in and rock it in the classroom. I got to start a new leaf and leave a mark, set boundaries and teach something new and exciting. I discovered that it wasn't teaching that I didn't love, it was an unsustainable environment that I had to close the door on to allow me to open up opportunities to other things. I built delightful relationships with the students and they still ask me to return, despite their new teacher being awesome, energetic and highly qualified. And since then I have been placed on their permanent sub list and have had the amazing opportunity to tutor some students, teach 5th-7th grade math and just be an active member of their positive campus environment. 

I have to stop and take a moment and give gratitude for my past experiences. It took several months for me to stop being angry and be able to look back on my past experiences and recognize the things they gave to me instead of the frustrations they held. 

First 7 years: I loved my first school, they hired me quickly and if found a strong community. I was nieve enough to be over confident in what ever I did. I worked hard and put in many, many hours to my job. I was single and free and it taught me to write curriculum, build relationships, teach adults technology and explore so many new aspects of teaching. It was a great way to start my teaching career and I will be forever blessed for the experiences I had.  I had supportive principals and realized my talent as an educator. One of my most proud memories was teaching a class of 32 students (I didn't even have enough desks) a lab and my head principal brought in a whole team of principals to observe my work, approximately 10-15 principals were also in the room observing. Despite dancing around one another in our packed room, the kids learned and I was able to show off my skills as an educator. It made me confident and proud. There were imperfect and some very difficult times, I had challenging students, I broke up a fight, I was threatened, there were kids I wanted to take home with me. It was a wonderful and exhausting experience, but I was young and single and free and able to take all my energy and make mistakes. ... Then I got married and had a child. 

Even married the 45 min drive game me time to decompress and listen to audio books, but once baby number 1 came on the scene, things had to change. I took a leap of faith and found a job closer to home at a private school.  It was a very tough time in my life. My son wasn't sleeping, I was exausted and overwhelmed being a new parent, trying to balance life. Something in me panicked and I lost my confidence and my focus. I realize now, I had balanced my life with ADHD without any medicine and just providing structural support and with a child throwing off my structural balance, I was spiraling out of control, but it took me YEARS to figure that out. So in my jump to private school, I was asked to teach a new subject at a new level. So in the name of trying to be closer to home, I think I took off more that I could chew.  A non sleeping one year old, teaching high school, teaching physics a subject I always struggled at, in an almost entirely male school destroyed any confidence I had walked into to education with. 

7 Years in private school: Man I learned a lot, I have always been resiliant as hell, due to many other stressors and health problems I have experienced in my life, but this was a gig much tougher than I anticipated. Most life challenges I put my head down and pushed through and looked to the brighter side, and for many of those things I think my ADHD tendencies helped, because I would quickly forget my struggles because I often have the memory of a gold fish.  Working at an all boys school, manifested some past struggles I had growing up. Never having any boys in my life, I was very unexperienced in the direct no nonsence was boys handled things. I was afraid to talk to boys/men for the better part of age 9-23. Didn't date till I was at least 23. The fact that I landed my awesome husband Nick was a testiment to my confidence building and his kindness. Moving into the all boys school, with entire new curriculum, enviorment, and limited support system with the addition of the lack of sleep had my confidence at the lowest it had been for quite a while. The boys school was much more throw you into the deep end and see if you can swim/trial by fire experience. There were no Training new Teacher meetings, they thrived on autonomy and independence and each teacher was given the opportunity to do what they wanted according to what they thought was best in their classroom. As far as I could see my days of a Professonal Learning Community where we developed curriculum as a 4-5 person team and then taught similar things was over. It was me, myself and I. The other physics teacher was an incredibly intelligent physicist with catholic faith, but not an educator and we did EVERYTHING differently. The only intersection of how we taught was that we were supposedly teaching the same content from the same book. When he and the other physics teacher got together, they talked in English that I didn't quite understand. I felt so lost and unnerved and teenage boys can smell fear.  An ultimately kind but intelligent young man, called me out my first year for not knowing what I was doing and I had to walk out and I cried. It took three years, to build my knowledge, three years to independently build my skill, and craft in the subject of freshman physics and it was insanely challenging to do it alone.  But I was resilient as hell damn it and I was going to do it. Why I stuck it out so long, when my coworker and I always argued about teaching methods and so little support was offered, was beyond me, but I put my head down and pushed through. By the time my freshman were seniors, they had come back and recognized me for the work I put in and asked me to teach an independent class for them and support them in other ways. 

Year 4, I finally had some assortment of street cred at my school. The admin seemed to some what respect me when they actually saw me in my basement hole, they gifted me my own classroom, finally, and word had gotten around to students and parents that I put in the work and educated children/young adults well. Confident Teacher Kris was re-emerging. The best parts of these years was my choice to persue my Doctorate and the opportunity to essentially chose my new physics partner as the super smart physicist chose to move on to a career that better suit his skills. Thing turned around, I was finally respected by my admin, parents and the students and I felt I was making an impact in the school. 2 years of effective team work with my new co-worker Lauren and we created amazing things. Just as things were finally coming together, I was wrapping up my doctorate and excelling as a teacher, something that NO ONE expected us, slammed us to a grinding halt. 2020.... Just saying those words now probably strike fear into peoples hearts. COVID began and the world shut down March 2020. Spring break never ended, which sounds great if we were allowed to do any of it. The first 2 months of teaching online was silly, kinda fun, unique. Gave me an opportunity to home school my son in Kindergarten and get creative in how we taught physics to students in a long distance manner. At the same time we were working through the adoption process.  I "graduated" from my doctoral program virtually, the kids ended the year virtually and things were fun... till they weren't. 

Summer of 2020, we were blessed with our spark of happiness. C man joined our family not long after he was born and education for many continued virtually. We also moved into my parents house to reno our home to make room for a new baby and create a more effective layout for the house. So my maternity leave consisted of sitting in my sister's childhood bedroom, with my 6 year old, helping him learn 1st grade via zoom and cuddling a baby. My presence was missed profoundly at my school as they immediately fired my maternity substitute and my new freshmen were thrown into a frenzy of new teachers and arrangements of learning in person, but with masks and huge restrictions placed on them. 

Upon my return, there was so much more in my wild frenzied world. Living with my family in my childhood home, trying to raise to young boys, manage a renovation, teach freshman physics in person and virtually, while keeping distanced, while staying together ALL the time. We ate lunch together, we spent all our free moments together. This year helped me form the strongest and most impactful relationships with student that I had ever made. Kids came in early and sat in my room, the ate lunch with me and then stayed after school with me. The class of 2024 will always have a special place in my heart. The powered through a terrible maternity sub and build our relationship twice as fast upon my return. They were truly my children. I poured everything into all of my boys at work and at home that year. My coworker of awesome and I put everything in to what we did and innovated and did our best to create an environment that engaged and supported in every way to support their mental and educational health. It was the most amazing and exhausting year I have probably ever taught. There will rarely be a moment when I will forget that weird and overwhelming, but beautiful year.  

21-22- The beginning of the end. COVID year broke some of my boundries, how can you have strong boundaries when you don't know what is going to happen day to day. My year before was so exhausting because I released my boundaries and relinquished some of my control over the classroom in order to form safer relationships. Additionally, we had transitioned to a pretty fresh and new administration team and the 4 day of school we lost our Guiding light at the school. Father Ralph, the president of our school passed due to COVID. It was devastating and school altering. Nothing was the same since. It seemed as I was not the only one that lost my sense of boundaries... the new admin had relaxed too. I had put so much effort, love and broken barriers in the 20-21 school year, I couldn't sustain the energy and the intense and overwhelming behaviors and expectations. We were done with reno, our kids are sleeping at night, things are good and it felt like there was a huge let down. I realized I was distracting myself from all the things worrying me and my kidney health tanked.  

So I made a hard decision in December and submitted a letter of Resignation. It was releaving to lift that weight off my shoulders. I was angry and resentful about the way I was being treated by students and staff after the level of work I put into my job and my relationships. I was sad and stuck. I felt like I would for ever and ever be the freshman physics teacher till I died. I felt so trapped. Nothing I applied for was ever accepted and people were getting jobs that I didn't even know existed. I had fulfilled my doctorate, rewritten the physics curriculum and build so many strong relationships, supporting students and I felt gradually more and more ignored at work and that my contributions to the school were not important and relevant. People I thought were friends, started avoiding me. And to top it off I was turned into to all of my administrators for being racist. Which is really important for me to respect all people and I was reported for something that I didn't even understand. The report was important for me to hear, but it was an attack on my character that I didn't find out about until the email went to every supervisor I had. I was blindsided and surprised. I agree that my comment was probably brash and stated over a zoom call and it was something I would have said to any faculty's child in my silliness, but because I said it to a child of color it was construed as racist. And while I agree the comment could absolutely come off as a micro aggression, I just wish a face to face conversation would have been have been preferred to help repair the relationship and for me to provide apologies. But instead it was just strictly dealt with via email. From that point on I felt that I was on the defense and trying to hold up my credibility as a good person and open educator. I know the intensity of this interaction played a pretty big role in my anxiety and worry that I was being pushed out of my job. 

I had a co-worker that appeared to support me, but always trash talked the school and how the school was always gaslighting us and disrespecting it and that fed in to my personal narritive that the school wanted me as a female educator out. Additionally, Lauren got engaged and was moving at the end of the school year to Arizona and I no longer trusted that the admin would let me have a hand in helping pick out my new co-worker/that the negativity in the entire education field would lead to a really small field of applicants. I no longer had the emotional and motivational spirit to try to convince a new employee to work as closely with me as Lauren did to build a creative and innovated curriculum. In my infinate overthinking, I wonder if her trash talk was to push me to walk away because in reality she didn't want me there an knew that was all it would take to push me over the edge. Don't know, but my depression and anxiety amped up, my physical health declined and I just gave in. And at that point my students got more wild and less disciplined, probably a combination of lack of my lack of discipline and desire to keep working at it as well as the Admin's lack of support. 

Once I left, they all entirely stopped communicating with me, which confirms my suspicion that my "friends" were not actually friends and the admin was hoping to push me out. Only two people continued to reach out and one of them ended up getting burned by the Admin which in turned burned me. And then all communication from that one ceased.  Again, maybe my over active brain, or maybe not, but I visited once and the boys cause a ruckus so I believe that I have been ex-communicated from that school for good. Which is pretty hurtful as I spent so much time giving so much, but on the other hand, they taught me A LOT too. 

Positive Take Away's from School 2: 

- Ed.D

- More Grit and Resilliance

- Confidence to quite literally teach/take on most STEM type courses

- Huge growth

- Confidence as a teacher

- How to build boundries

- How to stand up for me. 

So I walked away... what now..... More on that in the next post this is already FAR too long. 

ps. It ties back to the butterfly post!