Heart on Fire

 We begin each day with instrumental music and a small assignment. I used to start the day in silence and project 5 review problems on the board. In fact, that’s what we did for the entirety of the first semester. But over time, I realized no one was happy with it. Some of my kids flew through the review problems, not needing them in the first place. For my kids who needed help, it was overwhelming and resulted in them starting their day with a sense of defeat, the numbers 1 to 5 written neatly in the margins, nothing beside them. To top it off, I had to go over the answers, and with a strict Zoom time at 8:30, I seemed to never make it through, always getting a comment of you’re three minutes late from my dear responsible online child who loves to keep me on my toes. 

And so, I scrapped it. And now? I give a small task in the morning. A little journal question, a simple reading activity, a picture where the kids list observations and inferences. And when they finish, they head to the bookshelves and carry a book to their desk. 

There are mornings this routine goes perfectly. I watch as they turn the page in and head straight to the bookshelves, soon returning to their desks with a book they get to lose themselves in until we head to the carpet for worship. And then there are mornings they’re all running around, declaring what animals they got in Adopt Me the previous night and taking their friends to their backpack to secretly show them what they brought for Show and Tell. I thought I’d be the teacher who’d have strict, unbendable routines. You walk in, you hang your backpack, you head straight to your desk. No talking. No whispering. No walking around. And yet, I find myself as curious as the kids in the daily lives of their classmates. Your little sister did what last night?! What happened to your cat? No I have no idea what animal you won or how the strange world of Adopt Me works, but I find so much joy in the fact you’ve waited anxiously all morning to tell me about it. I love when they come to me with their, “Miss Seals, guess what…” stories. Of course, I must admit there are times I have a hard time keeping up, as I make it a point to greet every kid when they walk in, and I’m also in charge of watching the other 4th grade teacher’s room during arrival, and if one kid has something to say undoubtedly another one does, too. But nonetheless, I like the way we start our day. Slowly, with room for conversation and asking each other about the lives we live outside of our little room.

Some days, I stand in the doorway, one foot in my classroom and one in the hall, and I stare at my little children. I watch their little legs sway to the music of the Hillsong instrumentals they’re probably starting to tire of as much as I am, yet the familiarity of it puts us in the mindset to start another day. I watch their little silhouettes - heads bent down as they move along their little pencils, or the way they walk determinedly to my desk to turn the assignment in, or the way they crane their necks to see who it is each time someone walks in. Sometimes, in these moments, I smile to myself, thinking about how I absolutely love them. I love these kids I have grown to know and adore. I love their ridiculous ways, their silly comments, their sweet gestures, their curiosity. I love how excited they get about the littlest things. I love their sensitive hearts, their inquisitive minds, their stubborness. I love - more than I ever knew possible - how I get to watch them grow. Sometimes I look at them and I can’t believe how much taller they’ve gotten, how much their hair has grown or how many new haircuts I’ve seen. I can’t believe how much older they seem now, on the brink of fifth grade. These kids and I have spent almost every day of the past seven months together, and I can’t say how lucky I feel to spend every day in a room with these little lights who I swear would brighten up the darkest place.

And there have been moments this year that have been dark.

I never wavered in my decision to be a teacher. In fact, I kept my feet planted firm in my decision while everyone else around me made me question. Don’t you want to make money? You realize you are going to work all the time, right? Make sure you set really good boundaries.

I’ve known in my heart since I was twelve years old, spending my time making pretend lesson plans and seating arrangements, that this is what I wanted to do, what I’m meant to do, what I was made for.

And then I became a teacher. I took a job teaching 4th grade across the country from where I’d spent the past seven years. And I truly don’t know if I can put into words the sense of overwhelm I felt last semester. There were nights I came home and sat on my bathroom floor and just cried and cried, the stress making my shoulders stoop low. I carry stress in my neck, and there were days I had a hard time holding my head up straight. I remember waking up one time in the middle of the night. Immediate panic seized my body. I tensed up as I realized I was about to face another day. When I realized it was Saturday morning, I was flooded with indescribable relief.

It was like a mountain of stress that never ended. I would do all I could to make it through the day, managing my online kids and my in-person kids, cleaning the bathrooms anytime a child used them, trying to remember to tell them to wash their hands again, yes dear a second time, when they returned. Rushing to school to make videos to post on Seesaw before the day began, and then teaching my kids in person, and then teaching my kids at home on Zoom. I was teaching every lesson three times, and all three times I felt I was teaching it poorly. 

I don’t really consider myself a perfectionist - if you knew me you’d know I fly by the seat of my pants in pretty much every aspect of my life. Ask me my summer plans and I’ll tell you my life tends to work itself out and I’m riding the wave. But when it comes to something I care about - something I’m passionate about - I’m ruthless on myself. And the space I create in my classroom and the year I create for my kids falls neatly into that category.

And so I had a constant narration in my head of how it was never, how I was never, enough.

That child just came up to me and had a conversation with me and I couldn’t tell you a word they said. I didn’t listen enough.

They needed help on that problem and I didn’t know how to explain it so I more or less just gave them the answer. I didn’t explain it enough.

That lesson was a total flop and made no sense. I didn’t prepare enough.

That assignment went longer than I thought and so they went out late to recess so I brought them in early. I don’t give them enough time to play.

That assignment went longer than I thought and so they went out late to recess so I brought them in late and was late to my Zoom and my online kid was upset. I don’t give my kid at home enough attention.

I have an obsessive mind and I could spiral indefinitely on one little mistake, and my entire day felt like a slew of them.

And then, by the time 3 o’clock came around and my kids finally exited my room, I was left with a pile of papers to grade, an ever-growing stack of assignments to respond to online, and the ever-daunting reality of What am I going to do tomorrow?

I can’t tell you how many nights I walked home with an overflowing bag stuffed with my planner and stacks of papers and my laptop, just so it could sit in the corner of my apartment while I sat on the couch, eating my supper alone.

And I hated it. I hated my job. I hated the way I was never done. I hated bringing work home, bringing stress home. I hated teaching.

I remember last year, while I was in the second year of getting my Master’s in School Counseling, I was an intern for a school counselor in her late sixties who had completely lost her sight. She used a seeing-eye dog, and for my time at that school, I was her eyes for the kids. 

I was up front one time, giving a guidance lesson on career choice. Afterward, I remember her saying to me Darian, I can’t decide where you fit better. I can see you being an amazing school counselor. But you have a gift for teaching.

I remember thinking long and hard about that. My ultimate career goal was to be a school counselor, but in those moments when I was in front of the classroom- giving guidance lessons, turning PowerPoints that were outdated into engaging lessons, creating meaningful conversations with the kids, I knew I was where I belonged. It sets my heart on fire, I remember saying. I couldn’t find more accurate words. There was something that lit up, something that burned within me, when I was up front teaching.

And I remember this year, walking up to the front of the room, feeling nothing more than a sense of dread. 

There was nothing fun, nothing redeeming, nothing “lighting me up” about it. I remember calling my mom one day, sobbing to her, telling her I hated my job. I remember telling her that one of my students was talking to me about how she’s so confused in math, and saying I always give her those giant assignments with lots of problems that she doesn’t understand. Honey, you’re being WAY too hard on yourself, I remember my mom saying.

But I couldn’t look past it. It went so much deeper than that. Because the reality was, I’m not the teacher to give those giant work pages. I love the new outlook of teaching, the draw toward engaging, hands-on activities instead of repetitive worksheets. The way the learning is conceptual, far more about understanding bigger concepts than spitting back memorized facts or formulas. In addition, math is my jam. I love math. I’ve always loved math. It’s the subject I feel most confident in my ability to teach.

And I was failing.

But I felt stuck. I gave the kids those giant workbook pages because that’s what I had. That’s the only math book I was given. To do anything else, anything more, would mean either searching endlessly on TPT or creating something myself. And I still hadn’t planned next week. I didn’t have the Learning Materials ready for my online kid. I hadn’t graded the assignments on Seesaw or the ever-growing pile at my desk. I’d been winging my reading groups and winging my lessons and the list goes on and on and on…

The truth of the matter is, your first year of teaching is just plain hard - at times, seemingly impossible. And I started my first year in the middle of a pandemic, finding out two days beforehand that I’d be getting them in person instead of online, my first instructions being, You’re getting your kids in two days, but it’s chidcare, not school, so you’re not allowed to teach them.

I don’t really know what more contradicting directions I could get, being hired as a 4th grade teacher and then directed not to teach.

And now here I am, over seven months later. Standing in the doorway, watching their little legs swing back and forth to the familiar sound of music coming from the speakers on my computer. I had a sub for a couple days, and when I came back, one of my students said Miss Seals! You’re back! I missed you! I need a hug! When you were gone and there was a sub I thought, who is this imposter teacher? But I didn’t say that to her of course.

The other day I was telling one of my girls how much taller she’s gotten since the beginning of the year. When I first met you you were this tall, I said, putting my hand over dramatically a couple inches off the ground, And now look at you! 

She laughed awkwardly, looked at me, and ran over to me, wrapping her arms around me in a hug. Then she ran off to play. Today, while we walked back to the classroom after a fire drill, she wrapped her little arms around me the entire time. 

I have two students in my classroom who came to me as “striving readers,” sounding out nearly every word letter by letter, having difficulty with sight words kids memorize in kindergarten. Almost every day I’m holding back tears as I listen to them read. Their growth in fluency, quite literally, blows my mind.

Today, in fact, I was grading papers where the kids wrote a few sentences identifying the theme of a paragraph. I barely even look at the name on the assignments now, as I can instantly tell you whose it is based on the handwriting, their personality flowing into the shape of their little letters. Today I read a response and knew who it was but flipped the page to double check, and when I realized it was not who I thought it was but rather a student from that reading group, I gasped. There, written neatly, were three sentences with almost all perfectly spelled words. To the average person, it would like an average fourth grader’s work. But I know how much time she spent on those words. I know how she sounded them out letter by letter. I know how she used to tell me she’s stupid because she can’t read. How she used to not write because she didn’t know how to spell. And now she is creating work she is proud of, work she has worked hard for, work she has earned.

This year has been hard, in some ways more than it should have been, in my opinion. It has felt as if the world has forgotten about educators, asking us to enforce rules with no thought as to how they affect us or, far more importantly, the kids within our walls. Millions upon millions of kids have spent their days at home alone, looking forward to the Zoom meetings where they can feel just a little less isolated, experience a sense of belonging.

This year, I’ve felt like I’ve been in the trenches, sometimes so deep down I’m not able to see anything but walls around me - strict rules and expectations that make what I want to do, what I love to do, what I went to college to do, seem impossible. But there is light, no matter how dim. In fact, in the beginning of the year, it was so dim I truly didn’t see it at all. I thought I’d made the wrong choice when I chose to become a teacher. Maybe everyone was right, I’d think. I was good at school - maybe I should have done something else. But now, I see light all over. And do you know where I see that light? It’s not in the fact I’m taking less work home, or in the fact my lessons are actually pretty fun nowadays. It’s not even in the reality we are merely two months away from the long awaited and much anticipated summer vacation. It’s in the little feet swinging from their desks in the morning. Those little feet of the kids who I have a front seat in watching grow up this year. Those feet that have carried them in and out of my classroom on countless days, hauling their backpacks, their lunches, their burdens that are far too heavy for their little shoulders. They are my lights. They’re what I see when I feel scared or blinded or overwhelmed. It’s like watching little fireflies light up the night sky - my kids bring me color. They bring me purpose. They keep me going. They set my heart on fire.