In undergrad I was determined to do Teach for America. I got in and they based me in Phoenix, Arizona. I quit after six months. People had been pretty nice to me throughout my first 22 years of life and then I was in a position where I was bullied by my co-workers, the veteran teachers. I had no defenses for it. I moved back to my hometown of Seattle, got into marketing, and put my teaching dreams on hold. When I moved to New York, I had a social media marketing job already lined up. I was good at marketing and found a lot of success in the career and enjoyed my co-workers a lot. But I always missed what could’ve happened had I been able to stay in that classroom and really see it through.
After 5 years in New York I decided to give teaching another try. I wanted to be able to tell right away if this was what I wanted to do. The clinically rich education program puts you immediately in a classroom, whereas most programs wait till the final year. There’s no better way to know if this is what I wanted than doing actual fieldwork. One thing I learned at Teach for America was that every teacher’s experience is not just different, but it’s wildly different. Every combination of 25-30 kids is going to create a totally different culture and dynamic. Then you add the community, the school, and yourself into that mix, and the challenges become wildly unique. So I knew that the only way to get those teacher reflexes was to actually be in a classroom. In New York City, I didn’t have a lot interactions with children. My friends don’t have kids, and you forget that kids are just as deep, complex, interesting humans as adults. They’re just smaller. I’m not good at giving clear directions. When kids aren’t doing what they’re supposed to do, I tend to offer this passive observation in which I’ll describe what they’re doing and hope they’ll take that description to mean that they’re supposed to be doing something else, instead of actually telling them what they need to be doing. It’s so Seattle of me. That’s a huge thing I’m excited about with this profession, is being forced to become an incredibly clear communicator. The stakes now are much higher than they felt in my previous career. The fact that I have two years of my life where I consistently focus on how to communicate very clearly is something that I know will ripple into all parts of my life. My advisor’s told me to find something that works for me within my own personality, because kids can smell inauthenticity very, very easily, and then you lose them. And they want you to succeed as much as you do yourself. Just on Wednesday, a cooperating teacher announced that I would be teaching the whole next day, and two kids that were sitting nearby turned to me and immediately gave a pep talk. “You’re going to be really nervous and I understand that, but what you have to do is just calm yourself down, have a goal in mind, and work towards it.” I was blown away. Kids are awesome.