My Five Year Plan

Tomorrow marks the beginning of year five as a high school math teacher at Bronx Letters. I know in my head that this year is going to be awesome because so many important techniques have become muscle memory and that I should feel confident about this, but I've been a nervous wreck for about a week. There's something about the prospect of potentially messing with the lives of a hundred young people that still gets me uneasy. I never feel like I'm prepared enough or working well enough to be the kind of teacher I want to be. The crappy part of this is that it's true. The part I can take relief in is that nearly every teacher feels this way--it just comes with the territory. Five years in and the importance, the sanctity, of what I do hasn't diminished for me one bit. And I think that's ridiculously awesome.

This has the makings to be a great year. After a lot of upheaval, the school seems to be finding its way. There's a ton of new teachers and a palpable energy and enthusiasm. I feel like it's possible for me to strike that balance of being extraordinarily demanding while having a lot of fun at the same time. I think I've lost my sense of fun in the classroom over the past couple years as I've tried to be more "serious" as a teacher, and it's like throwing away my best weapon. I'm gonna let it all hang out this year AND provide the kind of structure and organization that let's the kids know that they're learning. That they're moving forward towards something important.

I think I must have a natural poker face because most people seem to think I have it together all the time. It's weird because often times (like over the past week) I feel like I'm falling apart at the seams and it's totally obvious. A big part of me worries that I'm just not good enough to do this job well. Even worse, I worry that I haven't done enough to get to that place. When I first moved out here and started teaching it was easy for me to forgive my shortcomings. I knew that I wasn't where I needed to be. It was part of why I chose to teach in the first place--I figured it would help me become the kind of person I wanted to be, and it has. But every year that passes it becomes more difficult for me to forgive my faults. I should be past these battles by now, no? I should be able to overcome the things that hold me back. I realize that the expectations are entirely my own, but I don't think they're unreasonable. So every misstep starts to feel like a failure of character. It becomes a heavy burden to bear (again, one that is entirely imposed by my own expectations).

That means I have to simultaneously forgive/not be so hard on myself/have FUN! while also being super hard on myself so I can push forward to becoming the kind of teacher/person that I'd like to be. I think it's a balancing act that we do all the time without thinking about it, but when it skews toward one side it becomes more apparent. I think writing about it is my attempt to get it out of my system so I can move on and not think about it so much.

So I'm super excited about (deathly afraid of screwing up!) this school year. I know I'm going to do great things in the classroom and learn a lot about myself and a group of incredible kids in the process (unless I don't...). And it's going to be a ton of fun along the way (until I start grading my first batch of papers). Hmmmmm. I thought this was supposed to get easier...