18 Years of Teaching

And just like that... my 18th year of teaching is complete! That is bonkers to me. I feel like my life is divided into Before Teaching and After Teaching, because that shift also coincided with the end of my first marriage and the beginning of my relationship with Bryce. LOTS of change, all at once. It was terrifying back when everything was a jumble of uncertainty and upheaval, but wow am I glad at how everything turned out. 

I met Bryce while I was finishing up my field work, and we were seriously dating while I was student teaching. We got married the year I had my first probationary position, and started infertility treatments that same year. 

I spent a lot of my early teaching days wondering what it would look like if I did get pregnant, and being a little nervous about it. How much leave could I take while not tenured? How could I balance motherhood and my burgeoning teaching career? That quickly turned to questions of how I could balance teaching and IVF treatments -- scheduling around the school calendar to try to minimize how much time I took off, knowing that I'd need sick time to get full pay during a 6 week maternity leave. 

All of this proved moot, of course.

I remember my first year split between my current middle school and the 9th grade building, and having to start a week into the year due to my ectopic pregnancy and surgical recovery (and boatloads of grief). I remember being nervous about that falling on my tenure year, until my principal at the middle school shared that he and his wife had endured an ectopic pregnancy as well once upon a time, and he understood. 

I remember years and years of painful beginning-of-the-year slideshows with everyone's family pictures and baby pictures and the feeling that we had a big hole where that should be for us. 

I also remember starting to make sure that my slideshow picture was silly, funny, and otherwise ridiculous to make up for that feeling of being less-than. 

One of my favorites

Thankfully, current administration doesn't do that godawful slideshow. Although, I feel like I no longer feel like there's a hole in my existence. Progress! 

I remember my school baby shower. I remember getting phone calls about adoption opportunities and being declined at school, and trying real hard to pretend to be a normal humanlike substance while feeling like this process was a vampire, sucking the life from me and leaving me a husk of myself. 

I remember telling everyone we were done. 

And now, I work with a whole lot of people who have NO IDEA that this was so entwined with my teaching existence. There are so many newer teachers (or new to our building) who don't at all know that I survived all that while being a new teacher, and as my teaching experience grew, so did my infertility and adoption trauma. 

I am immensely proud of my teaching career. I love my students, and I love finding ways to make learning challenging AND fun. I enjoy very much being the weird teacher. 

T-shirt to prove it!

I love that I can put my mothering energy into helping young humans become critical thinkers and better humans than when they first came through my door (most of the time). I also love that I can come home and recuperate from the stresses of the day, from the vicarious trauma that is a solid part of teaching (special education in particular), from the exhaustion of being "on" all day long. I have no one who depends on me for homework help, or who needs me to drive them to sports or dance. I also don't have the positives of raising my own children, but good gracious I am grateful that I can give everything in my school day and then come home to the couch, a book, a glass of wine, and decompress. 

I love that every school year is a little microcosm and I get to start over and do it again year after year after year. 

I love summers and having time to wind down and then gear up for that new year (and that, since I don't have children, summers are entirely for me and Bryce).

I have 12 more years of teaching ahead of me. I have more years in than I have left, which is a weird feeling. But also, I love that I've grown along with my teaching career. 18 years is a long time, and my life has changed significantly since the beginning. I love what I do. I love where my life has taken me so far, even if it is completely different than what I thought it was going to be at the very beginning of all the change.