Though this blog is now mostly dedicated to chronicling my stories and advice from substitute teaching and motherhood, my roots reach all the way back to classroom teaching.
If we pan back far enough, we witness an energetic teacher Charmaine muscling through some tough (but also memorable and fun!) years of teaching.
I’ve seen some things. I’ve had some experiences. I’ve pushed a fake life-sized witch on a wheelchair out into the safe zone during a fire drill.
So I thought it finally appropriate to type them out, in a bird’s-eye-view type of summary. It’ll be cathartic for me, and–I believe— educational for the reader. Let’s get started.
Teaching era 1: First-Grade, First Years
My teaching career is definitively split into two eras: When I taught primary grades (1st, to be exact) and when I taught intermediate grades (3rd and 4th). The two epochs are spliced by an intervening two years of soul-searching, traveling and substitute teaching. Because of this, these differing teaching memories stand out in my mind.
Newbie on the block: First-year teacher probs
Does any teacher ever forget her first year teaching?
The memories may be blurry and coated in layers of struggle, but for me, a certain feeling-memory remains.
My first year teaching was marked by being in a constant state of survival mode. I worked after school and on weekends from the beginning of the school year to Thanksgiving, just to have a fuzzy idea about what I was going to teach the next day.
Eventually, all of the doggy paddling got me to a sandbar.
After that first major break from school, I had room to breathe and time to actually plan. Instead of taking each day as it came, I could plan the next few days, even a week in advance. This momentum helped me establish a rhythm.
I remember that first year I had a crier. (If one teaches first grade, it’s likely they’ll either get a pee-er, a crier, a biter or a non-food eater in their classroom.)
He would get sobby when we played games. Or during activities. Or during work.
I don’t even fully remember how I resolved this– or if he grew up a little, and I did, too.
I remember having support staff that was helpful and would let me send him to their room to help calm him down.
By spring, both the student and I were a lot less weepy. For Christmas, he spent his school holiday shop money on a mug for me that was emblazoned with the title of “Best Grandma.”
These challenging kids often make their way into our memories and hearts– this student was no exception. It was like his story that year served as a greater metaphor for my first year– it’s okay to cry, and the tears will stop flowing… eventually.
My second and third year teaching
My subsequent years of teaching finally gave me the experience and the rhythms I needed to sustain myself in the career a little longer.
I spent the summers immersed in learning how to be a better teacher. I’d show up at the beach or a dinner out with “The Daily 5” or a Donalyn Miller book. Hungry to refine my craft and finally given the time to do so, I was able to make leaping strides in my pedagogical skills.
A common subject of my teaching studies revolved around early reading instruction. I couldn’t get enough information on it, though I’d taken all of the requisite college course work what seemed to centuries previous. There’s just something shockingly driving, like an explosion of urgency, when you have your own students that struggle to learn to read.
These years were characterized by a ton of experimentation– different strategies were tried to coax forward better results. I remember getting panicky and tutoring students during lunch and after school for free. I couldn’t sit with the fact that these students wouldn’t make the progress they needed to– even if they had come to my classroom that year already desperately behind.
I suppose in these years, I learned how crushingly lonely it can feel trying to fill an expansive gap between where a child is and where he should be. Like trying to plug the holes in a sailboat with new leaks springing every second.
During the second and third year, I also got very into making reading “come alive” for the students. Before room transformations were widely celebrated on Instagram, I mustered up all of my creative skills in attempts to create scenes, to invite my students into the stories, to show them the wonder of cracking open a good book.
My classroom dressed in several iterations: there was the Magic Tree House room, the Paddington Bear room (think London, the Tube, etc.), the Wizard of Oz room.
I managed to get smarter and more efficient in all of this. A key component in getting these scenes set was that I learned to ask for help.
My students’ parents really came through to transform the room into Oz, for example. I had one volunteer to cover and decorate our door, giving us a pretty yellow brick road for others to glance at from the hallway. Parents crafted signs and other decor– even a realistically sized Emerald City set design made by a grandparent!
I couldn’t believe the generosity and the help I had in making the learning real for these kids. To this day, I hold onto it as one of my fondest teaching memories.
By my third year of teaching first grade, I was getting antsy. I got more comfortable and in a groove, but I think I was slowly getting a full picture of the job of teaching and not completely loving it. I had a great class and loved the creative side of teaching, but I was also starting to feel a bit jaded.
A two-year hiatus from teaching
I mentioned I was getting jaded with teaching by my third year.
The longer I taught, the more glaring the gap became between what I wanted to accomplish for the students and what I felt I could actually accomplish. Much of my optimism was chiseled away by the realities of time constraints and energy shortages, staffing inconsistencies and lack of resources.
I wanted to give these kids the world– but could I, really?
And what was the point of all this martyrdom if I couldn’t even gain the results I wanted?
So after my third year of teaching, I didn’t renew my contract. I didn’t want to slam the door shut on teaching forever, I just wanted time. Time to answer some crucial questions, such as: What is my purpose? Will I find love? and Can I make money doing something else?
I spent some time working on answering those questions. You can read about my soul-searching teaching break in this post.
Teaching era 2: Intermediate grades, pandemics, etc.
After spending two years of my teaching break actually teaching quite a bit (substitute teaching, including two long-term sub assignments), I was itching for a classroom to call my own.
I returned to my old school, with a new principal, teaching a new grade– third grade.
There is a pretty sizeable difference between teaching primary (K-2) and intermediate grades (3-5). As an elementary teacher, I’m technically qualified to teach all of those grades. But it was a noticeable difference making the switch to the older grade because of:
a. state standardized testing
b. older kid things (so long teeth-losing, shoe-tying, occasional toilet accident drama. Hello, friend drama)
c. curriculum materials made for older kids and state standardized tests
It was a wobbly experiment of a first time teaching third grade. Like entering a marathon all decked out in the gear of a potato sack race. But we fumbled through.
I had a fantastic teaching partner and– dare I say– well-established rhythms by the spring.
(By the spring of 2020 I should say..)
Ah, yes. When I finally felt a surge of confidence and relative ease in teaching this new grade level, a pandemic happened.
We left for spring break when the pandemic was merely edge-of-the-radar news talk. Just in case, I sent my students off for the break with a gallon Ziploc bag of books. (I was that teacher always shoving books into kids’ hands, but in this case, I harbored a gut feeling about the importance of sending the students home with things to read just in case things started to get real viral and whatnot.)
We didn’t come back on campus after spring break. The school was officially running but “shut down,” and we all had to pivot suddenly to online teaching and learning.
Teaching those last few months of the school year online became interesting, frustrating, and even a bit fun. I recorded myself reading a chapter book each day for read aloud time. I created online quizzes and slides and videos. I trouble shooted with parents, even traveling to a student home to get her tech all set up, and I let the kids show me their chicken coops and skateboard moves after class on the video calls.
I remember finally signing off of our last Zoom class fully expecting to back in a real classroom the next school year. Even though I’d get to loop with the same class up to fourth grade, I felt an empty incompleteness. I hadn’t actually gotten to see the students in person before setting off for the summer, and we didn’t participate in any of the usual fun end-of-the-year activities. It was kind of like we didn’t get a real good-bye.
My last year teaching
I was excited to move with my third-grade class to fourth. None of the other teachers were looping, and I felt so fortunate to get this last chance to connect with the same group of students.
It would be my last year teaching, and I didn’t really know it until early spring. A few factors went into the decision. But first, let me set the stage…
Per our state/district/school regulations, our campus was open for business to any students who opted for in-person instruction. But it wouldn’t look the same as any other school year– there’d be extensive safety protocols– masking, shielding, sanitizing and even illness-tracking.
We had to figure out how to teach well with all of these new rules in place. Add to this one other exciting feature: Families could also choose online instruction as well.
That’s right, while we taught students right before us, we also had to fire up a video call and teach online all day.
My roster started with an almost even split of online and in-person students. I strove to make the online instruction just as valuable and engaging as learning in a real classroom with other people, but it was like trying to catch a gust of wind.
Between all of the screen sharing, modifying assignments to fit both online/in-person, developing new techniques for teaching online, and printing materials for the online students to pick up outside the school in labeled bins, it became too much. I was crumbling.
Still, I persisted in trying to create a meaningful experience for both parties. I had this nagging sense that it was totally up to me to make the virtual experience impactful.
Transmitting all of that through a screen, while simultaneously managing an in-person class felt nearly impossible. I contantly felt like an undercaffeinated dancing monkey. I often felt like a failure.
I don’t think I ever intended to end my teaching career that early (after five years of full-time teaching) but the tiny, shining speck of a thought that I could escape it all became my obsession until it became the actual plan. By the end of the year, I wouldn’t be renewing my contract.
Looking back, I know it was the best time to make my exit. I had gotten married that December. I was filled with renewed hopes/dreams/optimism that I hadn’t felt in a while.
And though the hardest part of leaving was saying good-bye to my favorite class and to co-workers and to the job itself, it was time to leave, at least in that capacity.
Since then, I’ve found ways to fulfill my desire to teach and make a difference in children’s lives that doesn’t involve having my own classroom. I’ve been able to have and care for my daughter. And I’ve been able to write this blog.
That’s the history. Will I ever go back? Probably not in that role, but there would be some positions that would definitely tempt me!
Thanks for reading.
