on finding ourselves.

My grandmother was a badass.  She paved the way for the women in my family and many more to come.  A 1960’s Detroit school teacher with places to go and people to teach.  Steady as she goes.  

By the 1980’s she ran a school of her own, a no-nonsense principal with a purpose, with her feet up on her desk and a cigarette in her hand, she was a badass on a mission to ed-u-cate.

If my grandmother were here today, she would likely read my blog and thank heaven for being retired.

Despite the challenges we teachers face today, somehow I know Grandma Ann would’ve maneuvered her way into modern-day badass.  She was obviously more than that, but she sure as hell was sure of herself and her educational values.

A teacher’s teacher identity is ever-evolving, and in the start of our own careers, feels pretty much like a blank slate.

You envision what kind of teacher you want to be, maybe mirroring Mrs. Brandenburg Brown’s maternal warmth, or Freedom Writers’ Ms. G’s deep dedication or Stand and Deliver’s Mr. Escalante’s tough love.  

Welcoming your first real teaching job,  you begin to realize no one cares about what kind of teacher you want to be.

Your coach firmly encourages you follow the Pintersty color-coded behavior ladder and pretty much transfers all of his/her personally tried and true best practices on to you. Your principal firmly encourages you to sit in and observe a coworker who you could  “learn a lot from.”

Your students throw pencils during your ever-so “teach like a champion” embedded math lessons you spent triple the time planning than actually executing. On Friday evenings, your significant other shakes you awake in ten minute increments as you snore on the couch, reminding you that this was “supposed to be a date night.”  

You ask yourself..Wait, didn’t I go to college so I could make my own decisions in life? Maybe I could be a yoga teacher and travel and blog or something...take a gap year as a twenty-three year old.  Maybe I should choose a profession that actually pays.

Overtime you grow. You take more risks, gain experience-based opinions on what works for kids, perhaps even try on a few different schools or grades for size all while defining then refining then redefining your teaching style.

You wake up one day and realize being confident in your teaching self is ev-er-y-thing.

Come to think of it, you now regret buying into the aphorism of fake it till you make it. The wasted days of trying to be someone you’re not, are lost forever...floating in a watered down cup of past realities and superficial spring evals.  

Security in our teacher identity allows for us to just be. Emotional energy is preserved, time commitments are intentional and our daily flow feels ever more fluid than days past.  

Of course we reflect constantly and embrace new ideas and innovative research (we are teachers aren’t we), but we become less wishwashy and more inclined to say no when we’re secure in our values and know who we are.   

For me, I’ve mastered the nod and smile while happily going to battle against things that don’t actually benefit my students. This kind of confident flow saves so much energy in an otherwise demanding day-to-day.   

To be completely transparent, reminding myself of my teacher identity is what keeps me grounded in dark times.  It’s like a moral compass, guiding me to make tough decisions about my students or shrug off teacher-blaming comments that could otherwise derail me for a week.  

It’s not our jobs to advertise our teacher identity or shout it from the desktops at staff meetings, but once others get what kind of a teacher we are-the universe feels a bit more aligned.

All of this to say that I want to be a badass educator like my grandmother.

Teachers should be respected for their own badass identities and supported so that they can inspire students to develop into their own badass selves one day.  

The first step, though is knowing ourselves…

Power to the teacher!