Let me just come out and apologize that it has taken me this long to come back to the computer screen to at least attempt putting into words what happened this past year. I remember attempting to stay still at my desk the first day of school starring at the clock waiting for it to hit 7:15 am. In case you were wondering, it surely did, and here I am almost a year later trying to even remember all that Jesus did, spoke, revived, redeemed, healed, and provided me with last year within my classroom.
They say your first year of teaching you fly by the seat of your pants, year two you start to get the swing of things, and by year three you are pretty much an expert. In my personal opinion, I don’t believe any of those statements for a second. For me, I have a hard time believing I will ever be an “expert”. Yes, I might have battle scars, horror stories, sob stories, and stories of encouragement- but I hope to never become a teacher that just knows it all. Because in the grand scheme of life, none of us truly know what we are doing. As a believer, I am confident in my gifts and abilities to reach children with special needs that I believe and proclaim Jesus has given me- but it also is not a “fly by the seat of my pants” adventure either. Each day I step into my classroom I have to consciously give myself fully to my students in order to meet them where they are. And that’s not an easy task.
So I attempted to do that each school day, but there were also days when I was exhausted, and many days they were exhausted. There were moments they would greet me at the door with a huge smile and sweet hug and there were days when they would stand at the door with a stare and look of, “Oh, it’s you again.” And to be honest, those moments filled my heart with laughter because no matter how much I love them,they still get annoyed of me. And that’s okay.
I went into my first year thinking and dreaming of all the things I wanted to teach my kids when I ended the year with the exact opposite. I went in focused on what I wanted to accomplish, implement, and maintain and was quickly corrected and forced to let it all go. And when I say that I don’t mean letting go of my classroom management, or my hopes and dreams of my students, but letting go of all the micromanaging and expectations of what a classroom “should” look like. Of course I have my strategies and guidelines I am given and required to implement, but the day by day encounters shouldn’t be put in a outlined box of we are doing this, this, and this, THIS way. I went into my classroom the first day maintaining my type A personality teacher and came out a type F personality teacher. By F I mean flexible. FYI, if you don’t or aren’t flexible as a teacher, you can go ahead and throw in your hat now cause it ain’t gonna work out for you. Trust me.
After 180 days of a new career, I learned that some lessons go longer than expected, some lessons fly by and you wonder how you even spent that much time planning it, some go absolutely horribly and end with everyone in tears, some make you question if you even had an education yourself, and some you just wish to never see again. And you know what my friends, all of these above are normal. It’s all part of the process of becoming the teacher not only you envision and hope to be, but being the teacher and giver of a much bigger picture for your students.
I started to picture this past year of my first lap being "checked off". I like to think that I am a runner but most of my family members would challenge that statement. Anyways, there is an abundance of names and types of track races. Each one with a different strategy and goal encompassed. As I was looking through each one, I came across Team Pursuit. The description of this type of race says this,
“The racers ride single file, known as a “pace line”, and take turns leading the team around the track. At each turn the lead rider moves up the embankment to slow down, allowing the other three riders to pass underneath, and then drops down the track to the back of the “pace line”. The lead rider is responsible for setting the pace while the other cyclists work inside the draft to keep their speed while recovering.”
I couldn’t help but think of my first year and my kids after reading that description. As a teacher, a lot of the times we believe we are the pace setters, we are the giver, we set the goals, we set the expectations, we teach the curriculum content, we teach the social skills, and the list could go on. While all of this is true, it is also true we are a team. Among our team, someone is going to be leading while someone else is ‘recovering’. We are all going to start in a single file line and cross the finish line together but not necessarily at the same time. There are going to be times when we need to drop back and times where we need to push forward. But at the end of the day, we are all on the same team. And as their teacher, I am honored to be their biggest advocate, cheerleader, motivator, and encourager. And I wouldn’t have it any other way.
So this might be my “entry for the year” as my second year of teaching is quickly approaching. But I felt that I at least owed it to myself, but more my students who gracefully accepted me on my first lap of being a teacher. My first year is something I will never forget and one of the best years of my life. And if I am taking away anything, it is the belief that Jesus does align passion with purpose. I fully believe that my purpose in life is to serve kids and families with special needs, and it just so happens that my passion aligns to those beliefs too. I consider myself one of the lucky ones because I get to do what I truly love. I get the opportunity and the blessing to be spoken into, pushed, encouraged, and loved by children who are often counted out. But man, the abundance of blessings they give people who count them in.
