Student Teaching

... where I worked under two great mentor teachers, Allison Lanter for freshman honors classes and Jo Ruddy for sophomore honors classes, and taught over 120 students. I fell in love with Berthoud High School as a smaller, rural high school that reminds me much of my own high school experience.  Throughout the semester, I have experienced many eye-opening moments: times that I’ve really messed up, other times where I’ve excelled and hadn’t anticipated it, wake-up calls that have had me seriously reconsider what it is I’m doing with my life. By taking a test drive in the role of a teacher, I have grown personally and realized that I do not want to be a K-12 teacher. That is not to say that my experiences throughout the semester have repulsed me or that the entire thing was “so bad” that I’ve been turned off entirely from it, but rather to express that I found out the reality of being a teacher and I simply do not want it.
     How did I get here? Well, I began college as an English, Creative Writing major. As I explored the English major at Colorado State University, I found the undergraduate curriculum for the English Education concentration enticing and added it to my degree. My mother was my science teacher from 9th to 11th grade, my aunt a history professor at our local community college back in Mississippi, her father and my grandfather also a history professor at that same college. My dad taught dentistry as a sort of “student teacher” also working towards his M.D. and then orthodontics as he worked towards his D.D.S., and his father taught psychology. It’s safe to say I grew up around teachers and always respected that role as a young person in the family and as a student. I figured I’d be the next teacher in a lineage chock-full of them, and my course-work for education at CSU affirmed that idea. I loved methods courses, Teaching Reading and Teaching Writing especially (Kelly Burns, you are a rockstar and I still adore you!), practicum courses that had me working with 6th all the way to 11th graders, and making wonderful friends that I’ve gotten to grow and develop from college students to student teachers with. I don’t regret any of it; I am so excited to be graduating this upcoming month with a B.A. in English degree with both Creative Writing and English Education concentrations, Cum Laude and in the Honors College. If anything, I’m grateful for all of it: if I’d done anything differently, I wouldn’t be the person I am today with the understandings about myself and the world around me that I’ve only been able to gain through experience. 
     Before this semester, teaching was a dream: a thing I did very occasionally and was being educated on in theory. Suddenly, theory became practice and now my entire life revolves around being in Berthoud: I’m here from 8:00 AM to 4:00 PM Monday through Friday, not taking into account the forty minute commute I must undertake either way, also not considering the hours upon hours outside of school I spend lesson-planning, grading, educating myself on what I’m teaching before I teach it. I get home every day around 5:00 PM and by the time I’m done getting ready for the next day, there’s no time to make or eat dinner and I typically go straight to bed before 9:00 PM. I have to, because I wake up at 4:00 AM every morning to shower and slather on makeup and do my hair and pick out something appropriate to wear, and all to leave before 7:00 AM. I don’t often eat breakfast, either. I have what feels like no free time: I’m always doing something for school, and if I’m not I typically have little-to-no energy to do anything else except try and catch up on sleep. I haven’t written fiction, my passion in life, in months. My friends barely hear from me and see me even less. My family’s worried about me, not having seen me since Christmas and cognizant of my tendencies to prioritize my work over my health and sanity. I seem to be suffering from a total loss of self. I don’t recognize this person I have become, and more than that, I do not like her. 
     Even as my sense of self was sacrificed in order to be the person I needed to be this semester, there were beautiful moments that uplifted and comforted me. I have become well-liked by many of my students, I have formed bonds with other teachers, I have gotten to create lessons and activities that I could have only wished for in my own education. I share my love for English Language Arts with everyone who meets me, and my passion is so evident it’s even rubbed off on others. If I had given any less of myself, it probably would not have been that way. But because I made this commitment and because I care so much, there was no alternative but to fully devote myself in giving 100% and fully adopting everything that comes along with this role. 
     There are elements of this profession that I love and will be sorry to miss. There’s also glaring injustices related to this profession that I simply cannot rectify with myself. The future of our American Department of Education is at risk. Teachers are not and haven’t been compensated fairly for not only the amount of effort that goes into this job, but for what the job actually entails: teaching the youth of America, our future leaders. You’d think that we would place emphasis on how important a role that is, the responsibility to educate the next generation, but instead we punish teachers for it. We say “those who can’t, teach” and diminish and defund public education at every opportunity. We’re the only first-world country that regularly experiences school shootings and regularly practices drills to prepare students and teachers in the very likely event we are the next targets in buildings that never should have become gun ranges. And as much as I do care about the kids, and I can see incredibly clearly the positive impact I would have on students if I were to continue teaching, I’m being selfish and know that I deserve better than this. We all do, my fellow teachers and students included. 
     Because of this semester, a career path I thought I’d jump right into after graduation has proven itself unsustainable, so now I don’t have a plan. It’s the first time in my life I haven’t known what I’ll do next, and I’m actually far more excited about that than I am scared. Everything I’ve learned, all the frustrations and elations, early mornings and scary Sundays, good and bad moments have led me to where I am today. There’s so much from these last few months that will stick with me forever, and I’m becoming nostalgic already thinking over my sole semester as an English teacher. It was a unique way to end my college experience, and I wouldn’t have had it any other way.