Dear Friends and Family,

 

            Some of you have commented on my very negative Facebook status updates, so I have attempted to reduce those. Not everything I experience is negative. Yet, today I am at the point of admitting how very discouraged I really am. I don’t feel like a good teacher or even like I’m helping my kids most days. The only thing that keeps me in this job is I know that if I quit they’ll be even worse off. God knows, though, that’s not really saying a whole lot.

            At 8:00am yesterday I happened upon two eleven-year-old students trying to strangle each other to death. They both appeared to be within seconds of passing out. I’m convinced that the first one to pass out would not have survived had I not walked up on the incident. The rage and expression I saw on their faces scared me more than almost anything I have ever seen. I realized they each fully intended to kill the other. Usually when I fight happens, kids get excited and circle around shouting, “Fight, fight, fight!” It was the first time where I saw little boys really scared saying things like, “Stop… no, really, guys… stop, you’re killing him… please stop!”

            That’s how I knew something was terribly wrong as I walked to my class, holding my freshly copied worksheets in my hand. Next thing I knew I was running, shoving myself between the two boys, shouting at the two, and shouting at the teachers for more help. One of the boys was my student, in fact the boy that I have worked with more than any other child and seem to spend every spare second of the day trying to imagine how to help him more. I love this child, and I am scared to death of the direction I see him going. Another special education teacher advised me to just count him “lost” in order to ease my own emotional stress levels. That teacher does not understand how deeply I love this boy already and how I can never give up on him, no matter the emotional cost.

            Most days I fantasize on the way to and from work of just driving off, of simply failing to stop until I am far, far from Louisiana. Sometimes I think how amusing it would be to just pass my school, keep going on the ferry across the Mississippi, and to keep going until I find myself 14 hours later in North Carolina, just to leave everything and not come back. I am not going to do this, because my heart remains somehow with my kids, but I will never deny how tempting it is. Sometimes, I just want to forget all of this and pretend I was never a teacher so I never have to feel guilty about leaving, but the reality is that even if I left today, you could never take the memories away. Life forevermore will be impacted by what I’ve seen in the last two months and what I will see in the rest of my two-year experience. I know that when I finish enduring this, I will be able to endure any future career. Graduate school will never be the emotional ride that teaching special education has been nor will teaching in a university. At the same time, every future career will be influenced by this experience.

            Meanwhile, I find myself “escaping” as often as possible. Sometimes I use the television, other times sleep. I realize how dysfunctional it is, but I see the stack of papers that need to be graded, think of all the parents I should probably call, and imagine the goals for upcoming IEPs that I should start writing, and I simply feel incapable, therefore I avoid.

            There are those really sweet moments, like when a child tells me he loves me, or when another child tells me he wants to become a writer because of me, or amusingly when all the students become convinced that I’m sisters with the Asian sixth grade math teacher at school, or even when the regular education kids beg me to take them to my class. I don’t want to ever forget those moments, because they keep me going… and, slowly, I do get around to the grading, the paperwork, and the phone calls. It’s just I’m not doing anything at my best, and there are always so many backwards steps. I wish there was a less painful way to make a difference in the academic lives (and overall lives) of these children. I wish they knew how much I am fighting for them and how much I hope for the best for them. I pray for them, and I love them. I’m scared for them, and I hope for them. I know they can do well; I just hope they realize this too, which is why I continue teaching them.

            So pray for me, because this is the hardest thing I have ever done in my life, and I am scared of failing, because, for the first time ever, my failure will not be my own. My failure will equally and unfairly become my kids’ failure.

 

Love,

Miss Kara

My heart sank when I saw handcuffs around the small wrists of one of my boys today. He's such a good kid... with some major issues. I care more deeply for him, however, than I ever thought possible. My heart soars when I see him making good choices and enjoying learning, and my heart sinks when I watch him make a bad choice. I don't even begin to know how to pray, but all my prayers are that I will watch him flourish this year. That would be amazing.

It's taken me a while to start writing about teaching, because it's taken me a while to even begin to process the world I have immersed myself in. Truthfully, it's extraordinarily rough. One of Sharona's friends made some comment about what I am doing now being really "cool." Actually, I can positively say that "cool" is the one word I would not use to describe what I am doing. I would not want to be anywhere else (at least I recognize this sentiment right now), but it's not cool. Young boys trying to be big, bad boys telling me to get out of their face as their morning greeting is not cool. Young boys about to lose it and already swinging their fists back to hit me is not cool. Young boys going up to young girls to molest them is not cool. Young boys who are *sooo* sweet but have not learned to what to do with their anger (and, truthfully, they have a lot to be legitimately angry about) is not cool. Young girls more concerned with flirting with the boy next to them than the opportunities that an education will provide is not cool. Young girls trying to impress the boy next to them by showing blatant disrespect is not cool. Being legally unable to discuss sex with my young girls or young boys is not cool.

What's frustrating is that I know so many of you will read the list I just wrote and still you will romanticize it. It's not romantic, and it's not cool. There are some very sweet "teacher" moments, but a lot of what I do feels more like surviving. I love my students, and I want the absolute best for them, and I think about them non-stop. But I haven't always figured out how to provide an excellent education. The only thing I know is that I won't give up. Maybe if there are just enough of us in their lives acting as these cheerleaders, they'll make it alright. Yet, sometimes, I'm terrified. I can't let my kids know it, but I don't always feel like I'm in control of my classroom at all. When a young boy throws a table across the room, I feel positively out of control. Yet, each day I find it less likely that yesterday's misbehavior will repeat itself. Maybe that's really what classroom management looks like--just learning to lessen yesterday's problems until there have been enough "yesterdays" to actually push learning ahead.

So tomorrow begins another week, and I hope and pray it's better than this last week. I need and appreciate all of your prayers. I am doing the positively most difficult thing I have ever done in my life. I just want my kids to learn.