Teaching: Not What I'd Thought it Would Be

I had a large chalk board to teach lessons to my sister and the neighborhood children. I had nonfiction books for them to read as textbooks. I passed out report cards. I was only in sixth grade, but I already knew I wanted to be a teacher. I loved "playing school."

When I got into high school, I baby sat my younger children and other children in the neighborhood. I worked with kindergarten children at Sunday School. I applied to a university known for it's education program and set out to be a kindergarten teacher. I wanted to shape young minds. To teach. To make a difference.

I entered the classroom as a pre-kindergarten teacher in 1999. I was so excited to have my first classroom. I carefully decorated it. I labeled everything with my students' name. I soaked in as much as I could during the staff development week so I could be the best teacher I could be. I was ready for my four year old students on the first day.

We were doing an activity in my morning class. One boy wanted his crayons out of his read cubby. I explained we were not using our crayons right now and attempted to redirect him to the activity the rest of the class was doing. He put up his middle finger and said, "Fuck you!" This is how I started my career as a teacher in public education.

I spent ten years in the classroom before I got burned out and took a hiatus. Kids got harder and harder to manage. Parents got less supportive of teachers and constantly insisted that their child WOULD NOT do anything wrong. Administration grew fearful of unhappy parents and backed them instead of their testing. State testing demands grew unreasonable for teachers and students. I was not the teacher I always dreamed of being. I was not even the teacher I went to college to be.

Over my ten years in the classroom, I tried out different grade levels. I even went up to middle school, which were the worst three years of my career. I still had some great students and some great moments, but the bad moments and experiences, outweighed the good ones. It was not the grade level. It was not the school. My passion was gone because teaching was not what it was supposed to be.

I returned to the public school classroom in August 2015 because I could not find a job that paid me enough to support me and my son. It took everything I could muster to return to the classroom. I tried to be positive. I was told to "fuck off" by a high school junior on the second day of school.  I pushed through that first year in the back in the classroom and survived to tell about it, but not without being reminded every day why I left. The students are more difficult to manage. They do not care. They have no accountability at home or school. Everything is the teacher's fault. The parents are still on their child's side when it comes to behavior and academic issues in the classroom ("My child would not do that." "You must have not explained the assignment correctly.")

I find it sad that public education is so broken. I think that should be priority number one for everyone. The students I have in high school right now are the future of our country. They will be making the decisions when my generation is too old to make the decisions. Good teachers leave every year to go to jobs outside the classroom that will be less stressful.

Drug Rehab

My mom got high in her closet every night. My sister and I would be sitting on her bedroom floor because back then we watched TV as a family, and she'd go into her closet and snort cocaine. I knew she was doing something bad in there, but when I was young, I was not sure what it was. I never went in her closet. I knew it was off limits, and I am a rule follower.

She went into rehab when I was in sixth grade. We lived in Alief, still on Huntington Field. I was ashamed to have a mom in drug rehab. I told one friend about it at school. We were changing in the girl's locker room and she kept asking about my mom. Another time, I was next door on my friend's swing set. I remember the warm sun in my face as my her mom asked a lot of questions about where my mom was. I did not lie back then either. I tried to answer her without lying or mentioning drug rehab. I do not remember how I satisfied her curiosity, but I remember the relief of her being satisfied with my answer and going back inside her house and me getting to swing with my friend and be a kid.

My dad was good to us while my mom was getting help. Monday nights we went to Pistol Pete's Pizza which was kind of like Chuck E Cheese. We'd eat dinner and get to play games. It was during this time that I perfected my skeeball game. My dad taught me to aim for the forty instead of the fifty. It was easier to sink the ball in the forty over and over and still get a high score. A high score equaled lots of tickets which meant lots of prizes.  Monday nights at Pistol Pete's continued ever after my mom came home because AA meetings were on Monday nights.

Rehab and AA for my mom meant therapy for us. We would go to therapy at the hospital. The kids, my sister and me along with the other children who had parents battling addictions, would meet in the small room with a male counselor. He wore glasses, had brown hair, and asked a lot of silly questions. I learned early on not to give silly answers because he would probe deeper trying to find the dark reason for my response when all it really was a silly answer from an eleven yer old girl who wanted to be home playing Barbie instead of in this room with him and these other kids.

West Oaks Hospital would have "family days" which were supposed to resemble BBQs and carefree times. I guess these days were created for patients to feel like they were having normal family time. To keep them connected to the family they left at home so they could get clean.  These never felt real to me in the sterile beige rooms with plastic blue furniture. It wasn't comfortable. It wasn't home.

After rehab, my mom was more physically present. Less nights were spent in the closet. She watched full tv shows and movies with us. We could depend on her to pick us up after school if we needed her to. Drugs still took my mom from me. She was not part of the early years like she should have been.