First years and changing my mind...

I just left a meeting with H, where she encouraged me to think about the what I believed when I came here and how that has changed.  I came to the coffee shop to do as I was told.  I've been thinking a lot about how my definition of "grammar" has changed since I came here, and I remembered that when I was a Bear, I wrote a paper on just that thing.  So I went digging around my old emails, and I found someone I'd forgotten.

First-year teacher Sarah.  I have forgotten so much about that year--probably because my sub-conscious thinks it best.  My incredible best friend in TX apparently forwarded me a set of emails that we sent back and forth during the days when I was so tired I forgot to brush my teeth in the morning (happened more than once.  I also kept deodorant in my desk drawer.).  The emails reflect how overwhelmed I was.  I was teaching full time and going to graduate school full time, and the small school where I taught need a theatre director, an academic team supervisor, and a librarian.  I did it all.  Not well, mind you, but I made the attempt.  Jess and I exchanged short emails during our breaks and in those moments when we thought we might lose our sanity.  The tone of these emails is sardonic, but there's an undertone of genuine affection for my friend and hope that someday I might get a handle on this teaching thing.  I really loved my students, that is clear.  They lived in the middle of nowhere, with limited access to libraries, the Internet, and cell phone reception.  But they were bright-eyed (for the most part), and though I expressed frustration at the lack of effort I perceived from many of them (at one point I lament how my standards have slipped and wish I could go back to my pre-teaching ideas of the kind of teacher I'd be), it's clear in my emails that they were my reason for getting up every morning and going to work.  Right now, I wish I was the kind of teacher my first-year students encountered.  One who, despite her failings, believed deeply and passionately that every one of them could be better tomorrow.  One who, despite the constant loneliness and exhaustion, believed she could be better tomorrow.  I need more of that kind of hope, even if it's cloaked in sarcasm and more than a little sadness.

This July, I received my first-ever college graduation invitation from a student.  I was incredibly anxious my first year of teaching that I'd ruin my students' educational lives with my lack of experience.  I'm so proud of all of my former students.  The ones who have contacted me since I left the classroom seem to be literate citizens.  More importantly, many of them are rejecting the limitations I heard people place on them.  I just wish their English teacher had been a little better prepared.  I'm afraid I reproduced many of the negative beliefs I was handed by my own teachers--the ones my own education did not challenge.  Maybe that's where this kernel of an idea for my research really comes from--a desire to give future Southern students a better view of their language than what I got, and to give Southern teachers more resources to teach language and grammar than what I was given.  The constant theme of those emails is that I believed I could be a better teacher.  Maybe I haven't changed so much after all, now that I think about it.

Moving forward.

I have spent much of this summer fretting.  I've fretted over whether or not I'll ever finish the first year paper ("exam").  I've fretted over whether I'm actually any good at this "scholar" thing. I've very seriously contemplated quitting.  I thought carefully about my other options--teaching in Texas for my wonderful mentor, going back to the school district I came from, teaching overseas for a year, teaching at the community college level.  I sat on our couch and sobbed while my roommate offered the only advice she could.

I decided to go back to my roots.  To remember why I do what I do.  To listen to the words, the stories of my past and somehow connect them to my mission to give rural Southern students every possible resource they might need.  To remember that I'm driven not by some abstract intellectual goal but by the faces of my students, the voices of my family, and the stories of who I am and where I come from.

So I went home, ostensibly for a week-long visit with my parents and grandparents.  I had a good visit, then I left on a Tuesday, made it 8 hours into an 11 hour drive back north, and got a call that changed my present reality.  My grandfather was dying.  I made a U-turn and pointed my nose back South.

I spent an emotionally draining day at my grandfather's deathbed, and another six days trying in vain to pick up the pieces he left behind.  I am sorely grieved, there is no doubt about that.  My PaPa ran the race. He fought the fight.  But he leaves behind shoes no one else can fill and a void in our family's tapestry.  I'm looking down the barrel of a long, hard year with more to do than feels strictly do-able.  But I'm going to move forward as best I can.  I'm probably also going to write about my PaPa, who was so proud to have a future PhD in the family he could hardly stand it.  This is for you, Pop.