on relationships.

Four o’clock on a Tuesday and I’m home.  H.O.M.E.  Home and chilling.  I didn’t used to be like this.  I used to be a workaholic.  Depending on my job role, my students or my teachers came first.  I mean, they were human beings, not products, how dare I live any other way?  After college, I left Michigan to teach abroad and since then, I’ve lived and fought the good fight all over the country in the charter school world, until I met my now husband.  Late nights in hotel rooms in Fort Myers prepping PD so as to be engaging, yet purposeful, yet cram in a bunch of PD objectives into three hundred minutes.   Hours on end at the round table in South Bend, analyzing benchmark scores and comparing line graphs and bar graphs and scatterplots.   Choreographing dance rap battles to teach fractions in Chicago.  Writing song lyrics to Drake’s Once Dance, to teach central idea in New Orleans. Vetting classroom environment walkthru checklists in Los Angeles.  (Yeah, I said classroom environment checklists.)  Lesson planning parties over wine.  Grading parties over huevos rancheros, pinterest parties over Gossip Girl marathons, report card party potlucks, you name it.  Eat, sleep, breathe, education.  And if I ever questioned it all, I would throw myself into guilty educator mode.  “Don’t be selfish.  Your students need you..or..your teachers need you. No excuses.  You are young, this is education, change takes sacrifice.”

Everything changed recently.  Maybe the change happened the moment she was born, or maybe it happened gradually after nights I slept exactly ninety minutes following a baby sleep regression, but it happened.  The fact that it took 34 years for me to realize that the people in my life are what matter most, or that maybe I knew that, but didn’t act on it, either way, was now a reality.  Suddenly writing a whole paragraph feedback response on my student’s persuasive essay seemed irrelevant.  Making sure my anchor charts were pinterest perfect and color coded seemed like a waste of time.  Racking my brain over recent student test data and why so and so performed this way and how the essay question wasn’t fair, blah, blah, blah, appeared to be a worry of my past self.  

Did I still care about education?  Of course.  Did I care about my students?  Of course.  Am I selfish? Maybe a little, but that’s okay.  Did I still stay up late at night, breastfeeding my little girl in one arm, while researching the most engaging text to teach author’s claim in another?  Yes.  But did I also think that as my husband slept soundly next to me and my baby let out a precious baby sneeze, that my life was bigger than the classroom?  Yes.  It was time to let go a little.  I was left wondering, though, why did it take having a child to put relationships first?  Furthermore, did I ever put myself first?  

Culture shock set in after recently returning to the classroom after seven years of leadership. I chose my school wisely and am blessed to have a principal that gets it.  Other than the anticipated struggles of classroom management and feelings of crazy spent energy as I eased back in, I was quickly reminded of the lack of teacher sustainability in this profession.  It is a profession, let me remind you, a career, a job, a slice of the pie chart next to family, friends, health and leisure.  Somewhere along the education reform ride, we forgot that teachers are human beings and not robots.  Students first, yes, but teachers are burning out fast and the really good ones are leaving the profession in droves because they are smart enough to realize that this life isn’t sustainable.  Grading and planning and attending sporting events and parent conferences and IEP meetings and filling out paperwork and paperwork and paperwork.  The charter world’s no excuses mentality.  Eight hours with kids.  Amazing kids that change lives, and teach you more than you teach them, but still.  Not worth your sanity.  I may have survived this long because I sidetracked to leadership or because I had great mentors that motivated me to persevere, but either way...something has to change, people.  

And for now, I say...Teachers...care less.  Don’t wait to be a mother to put relationships in your life first.  Hell, put you first.  Go to yoga and tell your boss you can’t make that data meeting this Tuesday at 5:30 because there’s only hot yoga scheduled once a week.  And you are G.O.I.N.G.