Dear Veteran Teacher Down the Hall,
I am the teacher you wrote about in your December blog for The Huffington Post Canada. I'm not sure how you saw me from a country away, rushing urgently down the hall with tense eyes and a creased forehead. I am a first-year teacher and it's Friday afternoon. School ended over an hour ago but I'm still sitting at my desk trying to organize stacks of papers before I attend the school-wide poetry competition I'm helping host tonight. I was here until 7 p.m. last night planning an intricate research unit and I won't leave until at least 9 p.m. tonight after I hear my students perform poems live.
I found your letter and while I'm a couple months late, it does not fall on deaf ears. In fact, it falls on desperate ears. I have made it into second semester, but I've fallen into the abyss of winter blues. I can't seem to remember the beginning or see the end, and your insight as a veteran teacher is what I need. I need you to tell me that they won't remember the typo on page one of the research document I wrote. I need you to tell me that while my lesson on literary analysis is brilliant and differentiated that it won't be the determining factor as to whether or not my students will succeed in analyzing literature for the remainder of their high school career. I need you to tell me that I can explain an assignment in three different, well-organized mediums that address all types of learners and that it's okay that there will still be a student who raises his hand and asks, "So what are we supposed to do?"
The perfectly placed desks and the intricate bulletin boards and the carefully chosen literature are things that I can control in the present. They make me feel put together in a career that, to be honest, can be complete chaos. But you are right; at the end of the day, I want my students to remember the individual comments I wrote in their writer's notebooks, or the books I hand picked and bought for them to read, or the fact that I know something unique about each of my 85 students. I want them to remember that I can't possibly love them anymore than I do.
This morning I didn't want to come to school. I woke up and for the first time I asked myself if this was what teachers mean when they say they "wanted to quit during their first year." I knew I would arrive today to face two of my hardest, low-level classes. I didn't know that within minutes of the 7:30 bell ringing I would have one student crying and that by second period drug-sniffing dogs would show up at my door during a school-wide lockdown. There are some days when I need you, that other teacher down the hall, to look at me, falling apart at the seams and tell me that there's more to teaching than holding it all together in the present.
My students make me laugh; they challenge me mentally and emotionally, and there are days when I feel they are able to both hold me up and break me down. I want so much for them to succeed that I carry their stories, energy, and frustrations on my back. They are pillars of potential, and they amaze me daily with their energy, vigor, and creativity.
In the end, I need you to remind me that all my love and passion is worth something and that at the end of the day, I can go to sleep, wake up, and try again tomorrow.
Fondly,
The Young Teacher Down the Hall
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