This story begins with a grocery cart...
I’ve been thinking of writing a post about my day job for a little while now, since the morning a few weeks ago when I found myself pushing a banged up grocery cart through the ice and slush down the sidewalk.
It was 8:45 a.m and I’d just confiscated this “Go-Cart” from a group of boys who knew, from the moment they saw me approaching, their fun had run out. One of them, the blond with mischief tattooed on his eyeballs, had hauled it out of a nearby alley and began racing it around the school yard, more or less with two wheels touching the ground as it swerved around the basketball nets.
It looked pretty awesome.
If I were eight years old, I’d be lining up for a turn, too. But I’m almost 38, and even though I was wearing my civilian mom/stay-at-home writer disguise that day, the kids on this particular school yard know that at any moment I could put on the authority of a fluorescent vest and find my teacher voice. Which, despite not being on the payroll that day, I did. Safety first, etc, etc.
“Heh, les gars! Ca s’arrête là!”
They froze at the sound of my hollering.
There were two or three of them squished into this metal contraption; they looked like sardines with snowpants. I stifled a laugh.
“Come on, get out there, boys.”
“Ah, Madaaaaammmee!”
They skulked away to kick around some ice-balls, looking longingly over their shoulders as I marched away with their short-lived joyride. Other parents, who’d studiously ignored the show, eyed me curiously. I kind of looked like a bag lady – but wasn’t I their kid’s teacher the day before? Yep, I was. And maybe tomorrow I would be again. And now, where should I put this stupid cart?
A few years earlier, I traded teaching high school full-time for various part-time gigs, and now I’ve landed mostly teaching French-immersion to grades 1-5 on a casual basis, to help pay the bills while I pursue this writing dream. In spite of weird schizophrenic moments where I ask myself who am I today – Mom? Teacher? Writer? Friend? – I’ve found a rhythm to do what I love and to do it with love.
It wasn’t always this way.
I’m fascinated to discover other writers in the city and find out how/when/where they write. One works at a popular bakery, one is a landscaper; another is a cleaner. Many are educators and one super promising future Barbara Kingsolver/ Miriam Toews drives a Zamboni for city arenas. I cannot wait to read the characters imagined in these places.
Words matter.
Stories matter.
Paying the bills matters.
Paying attention – to my dreams, to the people around me – matters.
As a high school kid in the guidance counselor’s office, I’m not sure I was paying attention to my dreams. “Writer” wasn’t a career choice I saw modeled. Even though reading and writing were my favourite things to do, I never considered them as viable job options. I didn’t make the connection between teachers saying, “you write well”, to, “you could be a writer.”
Teachers held the books I grew to love and the stories I was encouraged to write, so I concluded, I should teach, because in my world, mothers and teachers were the keepers of story.
My first teaching job was high school French, a subject I quickly learned would offer years of steady employment because it was everyone else’s least favourite subject. I remember parents perspiring in interviews as they reminisced about their own days of slogging through grade nine French. I felt the need to reassure them it was over, and their kid would probably survive it, too.
Some time ago, a woman asked me point blank if I was any good, as a teacher. (I’m used to more nuanced questions, such as, “did you like teaching? Do you miss teaching?”) I was taken aback by her bluntness and the lack of an escape route around the question. It took me a bit to come up with an answer, even though I’d be ruminating about precisely that for a couple of years. I’d been kept awake at night, insecure and troubled by the very thought that maybe I wasn’t very good at all.
I used to like teaching, and sometimes I even liked the students.
Now, I like being with kids in a classroom, and sometimes I like teaching.
Having my own children softened many of my sharp corners. It opened my eyes to see students as someone else’s baby. I felt protective of them. But in other ways becoming a mother paralyzed me. I thought more deeply about the good of society, the world I wanted for my children. Character development mattered a lot to me. The cell phones that entered the classroom circa 2008 became the bane of my existence.
The old Lena used to stride into a classroom with an agenda: “This is what we shall learn today.” I wasn’t completely rigid and inflexible, but I had a plan.
Yet I began noticing that other people’s babies had sad eyes behind those blue screens. Somewhere between le passé composé and le futur, something in le présent was amiss.
French grammar doesn’t really matter to a kid who is cutting, or who has sent a nudie pic that’s gone viral or whose parents are divorcing. Grades don’t matter then either.
Was I a good teacher? My lessons seemed pretty irrelevant to the chaos simmering in the virtual world where my students actually lived.
I began to wonder if I would have been a good teacher in 1960 or some other imagined era when educators and parents were on the same team, but as a chronic nostalgic, I realize that every era has its pitfalls.
Only in our imagination do the good ‘ole days exist. N’est ce pas?
In my last years of full-time teaching, I was limping. When I started teaching, I was only a few years older than my grade twelve students. When kids were way out-of-line, I’d send them to the office. By the time I admitted I wanted to try something different (and forfeit my dental plan to do it – dumb move!), I was the one in the principal’s office routinely getting a dressing down.
“Lena, you must figure out a way to care less.”
“Lena, this mark is really low, don’t you want them to go to university?”
“Lena, this parent wants…”
“Lena, yes this student is plagiarizing, but let’s look at the big picture…”
It felt like upside down world, where what used to be right was now wrong. I was definitely questioning whether I was a good teacher, and I was so absent from my family during this time, I knew for certain I was not a good mom/partner because I was totally emotionally drained. I’m not sure I was teaching anything, but I learned a lesson. Sometimes you’re pulled, sometimes you’re pushed and sometimes you die in place. It was time to go. Fast forward to the present...
Yesterday I taught a grade ¾ split class in a portable. I love teaching in portables because with a group of kids you create your own world and there are few interruptions. (Also, in the winter they’re warm and in the summer they’re cool.) It was Friday, the kids were a bit wired and we laughed a lot. When I re-directed (disciplined) some of them, they giggled at my “strategies”. Space is tight in a portable and they needed to get to work, so I turned a few chairs/desks around to help them ignore one another (i.e.focus). This isn’t an advanced technique you learn in teacher’s college; this is basic ‘conquer and divide’ common sense. And we finished the work. Weirdly, I didn’t go into the day with an agenda to get the work done. My job as a casual teacher is to follow someone else’s plan, keep the kids alive and…
And what?
I hadn’t given too much thought to what else, but somewhere along the way I started loving teaching again.
Later that night, as I picked my son Peter up from his friend’s house feeling somewhere in between teacher and mom, I quizzed Peter’s buddy about his day.
It was fine, he replied glumly.
How was Madame? Was she happy it was Friday?
She’s never happy, he said quietly.
I exchanged a frown with his mother. This was interesting/disturbing.
Did she smile about anything today? I prodded.
Nope, I think she’s only smiled twice this year.
I chuckle and his mother does, too. That can’t be right, we both think.
But I ate lunch with that teacher yesterday, and she actually doesn’t smile very often, even though I know she cares deeply about the students. That’s almost all she talks about. Sadly, her students don’t realize that.
Am I a good teacher?
I have opinions about public education, unions and equity but I don’t let college application cut-off marks or success plans consume me anymore. I show up, I follow a plan, I look at the kids and I smile. They’re all someone else’s baby.
My job today is to be in a good mood for your kid.
Sometimes, this means I need to be an actress. Sometimes this means I need to be a comedian. It always requires me to pack my patience. (Especially on the days your kids wonder about things like, "what would happen if I flung this bag of dog poo"?)
I don’t get paid to care about your kid every day, and that’s probably a good thing, because I need space to get my writing done. But, if I see them careening down the sidewalk in a grocery cart, I’ll gently haul them out and they’ll listen to me, because I smiled at them yesterday, and maybe we’ll laugh again together on Monday.
I don’t know what I’m teaching, but I know that I’m learning. Thanks, kids. xoxo
Thanks to the amazing students at this school, close to my heart, for giving me something to write about. You are the best.