Any job will tell you this.

Before I jump in, I adhere to the rules of FERPA: Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act. I will never reveal my students’ identities, their performance in my classes, or reveal anything about them that will make them identifiable in my posts. Gracias y con permiso 🙏🏻

You can’t do everything “perfectly,” as if humans were machines instead of animals. Do lions do things perfectly? What about plants? We grow just like them, but somehow our brains have developed a concept of perfection when it’s not even a measure we can hold ourselves to.

If humans were supposed to be perfect, then we would have one single aim everyday and we would know whether or not we fell short because it would be obvious. But we don’t have one single aim. We just decide what we want to be or do and then we figure out a way to do it. And then, one day, after we’ve learned a lot of lessons on how to make growing a little less painful and found a little more light, our bodies won’t keep up with the pace our souls are growing, and our souls will go elsewhere.

The amazing thing about some jobs, and maybe most, is that a lot of what you do for them are entirely optional, and those are the very things that make you good at them. Like decorating your room, or calling home at night or putting extra comments on essays. I am learning so much on how to teach but I don’t know how to do it. It’s like my students who are learning Spanish say, “I don’t speak Spanish, Miss!” like… like that’s why you’re in the class. But it seems weird to say that I am a teacher so I am learning how to teach.

But it’s the truth. I am not a teacher. I am just a person learning how to teach. I don’t know how to do it. The seasoned teachers don’t either, they have more tools than the newbies, but every year is a different group with different strengths and areas to grow.

I think I am boring myself. But everyday I wake up with the exhaustion of Friday on my shoulders. Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday… all day long. I plan 15 lessons a week (3 courses which meet 5 days a week is 15 unique lessons) and I am simply overwhelmed by all of it. I am tired. Some students make behavior changes and some are getting worse. A teacher said today: “it’s seeping under my door!” about some behavioral issues, and I feel absolutely the same. It’s like there is a toxic spell floating through the building and I am too tired to fight it.

A kid in 4th period asked: “you alright miss? You seem depressed over there.” I know that is the kid’s way of saying he cares about me (it’s amazing how quickly you learn to translate these things. This is the kid who said “I f***in hate this class” and logged off Zoom last year. We’ve come a long way). I wanted to say: “Nah, just the weight of society on my shoulders” or maybe the kid who walked out of the room cursing when I asked for a monitor to retrieve a cell phone during 2nd period might have contributed to the general haze.

I got an email to send a kid 3 weeks of make-up work. I……. teach with stories, pictures and repetition in class. I do not have makeup work.

I said: “No I’m good. I’m not depressed. I’m just tired.” And that’s the best, most honest answer I can come up with. If schools wanted teachers who weren’t exhausted and overwhelmed everyday, they would provide more support. But if they don’t, this is what the students get: a teacher who is trying their best and tired as hell in the process.

Some of the kids who slip through the cracks walk into my room. Kids who might have hardships and some who don’t. Sometimes there are 30 of them. Well, it’s rare that all 30 are present, but today 6th period had 29 kids present. That’s 68 pairs of eyes. That’s 30 hearts that pump organs through their bodies and into their brains and tell them if they are “smart” or “stupid” because just like “perfect,” something told us these were adequate labels for humans. That happened 4 other times that day, that souls walked in and out. I said “buenos días” or “buenas tardes” to each one of them because that’s the gig. I said “adiós” to each one of them, because you aren’t about to tell me that a Spanish class has classroom culture without proper saludos y despedidas.

As my former academic supervisor and Tucson mom said on Sunday said at coffee: “Natalie, you are really wound.”
I thought: “It’s Sunday! I’ve gotten good sleep and eaten! If this is wound, then you should see me on a school day!”

It’s going to be a long year. A long year. Is it fall break?

But, on the topic of being enough, I know that while I am falling short in many areas, I will get better in some but not in others. Education would have me improve in all the areas because I get evaluated in all areas, with the same rubric they use on seasoned teachers. But I am a human first. I don’t want to get burnt out, so that means that I will not even try to nail it every day. Because what even is nailing it?

There is no hammer, no nail, no bullseye. This is working with people about changing and growing and loving, starting with themselves. Not least of whom, me.