Thoughts on Thirty

Thirty was so strange for me. I've reall

y had to come to terms with the fact that I am now a walking and talking adult. --C.S. Lewis

Today is my last day in my twenties.  Lots of people have had all sorts of helpful things to say about turning thirty lately.  I’ve heard everything from “Well, the alternative is being dead, so I’d be okay with turning thirty,” to “I bet Jesus wasn’t stressed about turning thirty” (to which I responded “So 33 is the year I need to worry about?”) to even just a simple question, “How are you feeling about it?”

Honestly, I feel pretty great.  Tomorrow I’m going to spend the day with people I love who I’ve chosen to be my family, and Sunday after I’m going to spend the day with the family I was blessed to be given from the very beginning.   Life looks pretty different than it did at twenty-five—and that’s a really good thing.

My twenty-fifth birthday was not a banner moment for me, for several reasons.   I’ve talked to several people who have a birthday like this—people don’t make a point of celebrating with you, and in general you don’t feel loved.  It’s not so much that people don’t love you, it’s that for some reason your birthday goes almost unnoticed by most people.  And let’s be honest, that kind of sucks, even though intellectually you know that people do in fact care about you, it seems like they might not.  I have a distinct memory of having only spent the day with my parents and some crying being involved.

But the more important part of what happened that year was that I made a list of things that I didn’t have in my life which I wanted to have.  Things like friends who weren’t teachers, to be more actively involved in my community, to feel good about my body, to have a Master’s Degree.   I found that list the other day in an old notebook and I realized that without actively looking at that list, I had accomplished almost all of the things I’d written down.

It’s funny when people ask me about how I feel leaving my twenties behind I have a sense that one thing they’re asking me is how I feel about still being single and turning 30. Getting married is one of those things that’s supposed to happen while you’re in your twenties.   Certainly when I was 22 and leaving Grove City and about 70% of the people I knew were already engaged to be married, I thought that by the time I was 30, I too would be married.  And I’m not.  And I feel pretty great about that part of turning 30 too.   Because the thing is, when I look back at my twenties, especially the last five years since that awful 25^th birthday, there isn’t a time that I would trade.  There isn’t a roommate I would trade in order to have lived with a husband instead.  I wouldn’t give back my tumultuous fourth year teaching where I understood exactly what I was made of and how weak others around me were.  I wouldn’t give back the classes I took for two years or the Master’s Degree I earned, or the friends I’ve made in northern Virginia.   

But there’s something more.  The story of my life, the story of anyone’s life, is not about how many things I’ve checked off of a to-do list.  It’s not about listing things out and saying that I’ve done enough to feel good about thirty.  It’s about moments and about people and about trying to live the life I’m called to live.   Deciding to commit the entire rest of my life to another person is a huge deal and I’m so grateful that I didn’t do that at 22 or even 27 because I’m not the same person I was then.  I’ve learned too much about myself, about the lies I was believing at 25 and even 27 to go back to the person I was at 22.  Or to think that the person who would’ve been right for me at 22 would be right for the almost 30 year old I am today.

And one last thing—I’ve also come to realize that if I wanted to be discontent with where my life was at 30, I could be.  Even if I was married.  If I was married I could be discontent about not having kids.  Or not having enough kids.  Or having too many kids.  Or not having a Master’s.  Or with having or not having a job.  There’s always something I could find to be discontent about if I wanted to, but instead deciding to be content and secure in the knowledge that I’m exactly where Jesus wants me to be right now is so much easier.  It’s a lot less stressful that I can stop worrying about life and just live it.  When I can focus on loving on the people I’ve been given and enjoying them loving on me. 

Are there things I want to do in my thirties—absolutely.  I might even make a list of thirty things I want to do.  But if they aren’t things that happen for any reason, I’m going to try to realize that it’s because God has something better for me that I never would’ve even dreamed of putting on my list.  And I’m good with God’s plan over mine at 29 or 30.  Hopefully even at 35 or 40.  

Got It. You're That One.

“All students can learn.” –Christopher Morley

You know that student.  You’ve had them in class beside you, you’ve been one, you’ve taught them.  They come in a many different forms—the student who sleeps through class, even though his eyes are open. The student who just can’t manage to not get suspended.  The one who refuses to try.  The one who just doesn’t care. 

This year mine is a girl, but some years that student is a boy.  Some years I’ve had more than one, but I’ve always had at least one.  That student who I want to succeed so badly, who I want to teach something meaningful to, and, who, for some reason, just won’t learn.  That student that you bring home with you in your heart, who makes you wonder, “What am I going to do?”

This year, she’s the student who so desperately needs attention of any kind, whose main goal is to distract, who is adamant I do not understand her.  

She is not totally wrong.  I don’t understand what it’s like to grow up in a single parent home.  I don’t know what it’s like to live with barely enough money to survive or to feel like you’re not smart enough to have anybody think you could possibly have the right answer. 

But she is not totally right either, because I know her well enough after two weeks to see beyond the behavior.  But the reason that I can’t leave her at school some days, why I can’t always just turn it off and worry about her tomorrow is because I don’t know how to treat the root cause of her behavior.  What’s even worse is that I doubt I’d be able to even if I tried.

I sit in my house, thinking about the situation with her, thinking about her ridiculousness, about her outbursts, her defiance, and her excuses, and I just don’t know.  I don’t know how to help her, I don’t know how to fix her, I don’t know how to make her learn. 

That’s what it comes down to in the end.  She is that student that I want to learn in my class almost more than all the other students, because I believe that learning, that education, that knowledge, could actually change her life.  And she is the one for whom I just can’t seem to figure out how to do that.

This isn’t a story of how by loving her and accepting her I’ve come to change her life.  I’ve known her for two weeks and mostly in the moment she drives me crazy.  I was sort of excited for the rest of my students today when I thought she was absent.  Instead she was just ten minutes tardy to my fifty-minute class.    This is the story of me and of so many teachers who have just looked at a kid and thought, “I just don’t know.”

What really makes me just shake my head is that I’m sure she has no idea how much I think about and wonder what I should do about this whole thing.  If you asked her, I’m sure she’d say either, “Ms. Short hates me,” or “I hate Ms. Short,” depending on her mood and how much of my frustration seeped into my voice during class.  Obviously I don’t hate her, and I doubt she actually hates me.  Honestly, it’s tough to come in and love someone who wants you to grow and change and stretch and expand your mind.  Especially when you’re 13.  In fact, as I remember it, most people sort of hate themselves and lots of other people at 13.  It’s kind of a terrible age. 

I want this to have an answer, a resolution, a neat hopeful ending about the power of a teacher to change a life.  And one thing I’ve learned is that resolutions are never as neat as they are in books.  Even good books.  Right now the answer is I don’t know.  The only resolution is that I’m going to teach her again tomorrow, and the hope is that she’ll remember something from what I taught her today.   

First Day Feelings

"Well, obviously, she's feeling very sad, because of Cedric dying.  Then I expect she's feeling confused because she liked Cedric and now she likes Harry, and she can't work out who she likes best. Then she'll be feeling guilty...and she'll be worrying about what everyone else might say...Oh, and she's afraid she's going to be thrown off the Ravenclaw Quidditch team because she's been flying so poorly." 

A slight stunned silence greeted the end of this speech, then Ron said, "One person can't feel all that at once, they'd explode." 

"Just because you have the emotional range of a teaspoon doesn't mean we all have," said Hermione. --Harry Potter and Order of the Phoenix, on Cho Chang and Ron's emotions. 

Teaching is all I’ve ever known as a real, adult-life job, so in some ways I’m ready for the school year to start.  The rhythms of the school year—summer break, beginning a new year, Thanksgiving, Winter, and Spring Breaks, projects and tests, planning and grading—all feel as normal to me as they did when I was in middle school myself.  But at the same time I feel nervous, underprepared, and in general overwhelmed by what’s starting tomorrow.

I don’t have quite as many intense emotions swirling around as Cho did, but there is an awful lot going on in the back of my mind as I make final preparations like seating charts, wall posters, and outfit choices.  I’m excited to actually meet my kids, I’m interested to see what it’s like teaching middle school, I’m ready to get back into the swing of things and to have the halls filled with kids (schools are strangely too big and empty when teachers are there but students are not). I’m also intimidated by the idea that I’m teaching for Fairfax County Public Schools which has Very Definite Expectations for student success, and I’m uncertain about teaching in a “barbell” school—one which has a substantial amount of upper class kids, and a substantial amount of lower class kids, but without many middle class kids at all—and how that dynamic will play into the year.  I’m seriously underwhelmed about the fact that my students will all have to take not only a reading SOL but also a writing SOL in the spring—something I’ve never had to deal with so directly. 

In the back of my mind—you could say all of the above is swirling around the middle—are two more intense things: 1. I believe I’ve been called into this profession, and that calling was not a way of being set up to fail, and 2. It’s feels like a very long time since I’ve done this.   Number 1 I need to just focus on, relax in.  But it’s number 2 that I can’t seem to fully shut out.  

In reality, it’s only been two years since I was teaching, but it was a vastly different situation.   By the time I left Shenandoah County I had been teaching ninth grade for five years and knew the curriculum and the type of population I would be getting—knew it like the back of my hand.  Eighth grade? I haven’t done that since I was in Big Spring Middle School in 1999.

One of the advantages to teaching for FCPS is the vast amount of resources and support available to teachers—my department already has an awful lot on the calendar for me, ready to go, to tell me what to teach.  There’s still a good amount of freedom—I get to choose what books/stories/poems I use to teach the concept, but I know that on Thursday, I’m going to teach author’s purpose (totally doable in like an hour, right?).  Part of this greatly relieves the anxiety I feel about not knowing this curriculum very well, but part of me wonders how I will feel about it next year.  When I came to ShenCo, I had some help from other teachers, but in some ways I felt (and we all felt in our own specific grade level I think) like I was re-inventing the wheel.  And that sucked for the first semester I taught (which is the only reason I taught the really awful book Summer of My German Soldier).  But then every semester after that, it was great.  Yeah, I had worked really hard to reinvent that wheel, but now the one that I was pushing uphill everyday? It was my wheel.  It was designed exactly the way I wanted it and while I was continuing to hone it and smooth it out and strength it, it was something I had really made.  Here, I’m being given the wheel, mostly formed, which right at the moment feels pretty helpful, but I can’t help but wonder what it will be like—if it will in fact feel like—I’m pushing someone else’s wheel up the hill each day. (I guess in truth, all of us are really just refining the wheel the state puts out anyway.  Also, I think I need to not use the word “wheel” in the post anymore.)

I hope going back to teaching is like riding a bike—I can handle it taking a few minutes before I feel really in the swing of things.  And I know that once I’m in that classroom and I’ve met my kids, I will probably realize the same thing that I realized last year in the elementary school:  Kids are just kids.  They come from different places, they have different challenges, and they are taught different things at different ages.  But all of those differences don’t take away the fact that kids are all basically the same. 

It just might be a long day from now until the end of school tomorrow for me, working through all the different things I feel before (hopefully!) coming to that sort of realization.   In the meantime, I’m remembering that I am a teacher.  It’s part of who I am, and tomorrow I will officially be one again—and that’s pretty exciting.  One more emotion to add to the list.