Dear Thirteen: Cool Girls Teach
Honesty Hour: lately teaching has felt (pardon my french mommy) fucking awful.
This year has been nothing short of the worst. I feel bad like 99% of the time. I raise my voice more than ever, the demands are insane, I’m getting beat up by a six year old. It’s been rough.
I wake up and I feel like there's no way I can do this for another 4 weeks let alone 40 years. And that feels so shitty.
Because teaching is all I ever wanted.
Of course I had other aspirations along the way. Singer, actress, president. But it always came back to teaching. When other kids had Barbie and Ken getting married, I taught them long division. I would go to my moms school and beg to help out in the kindergarten and first grade. The people at my school literally call me Ms.Frizzle because I am so in love with teaching. For as long as I have had dreams, this has been my dream. So it’s hard to reconcile the dreams of baby Jailyn with teacher Jailyn’s reality.
While expressing how hard things have been my therapist presented me with a two questions:
1. What feels good about teaching?
2. How can I find softness in the day to day?
I’ve spent quite a bit of time thinking about these things and what they mean. What does it mean to feel good? What is a soft moment? Lately my brain has felt like applesauce so it’s been really hard to think of things. But I’m trying. I’m trying to feel different. To feel better.
So I’ve come up with 4 random bright spots to carry me through. I'll be honest, I don’t know if these things will be enough for long…but they’re enough for right now. And right now is enough for me.
A good snuggle will fix anything
I love being the other Ms.Bridgeforth. Teaching is the Bridgeforth family business. My mom is an educator, my older brother and his wife are teachers, and my grandmother ran a daycare. We are bred to love children. It feels good to be carrying the torch that has been passed on from Bridgeforth to Bridgeforth. I love being one of 3 Ms.B’s. I love being mad about something in my classroom and turning to my mom and sister in law for advice.
I love my classroom. I love being the place where no matter what grade you’re in, you can come and know you’ll be fed and safe. Middle schoolers come for a chance to relax and get a peppermint, third graders come in for a tight squeeze or to help rearrange a book shelf, the kinder-joys get a glimpse into their bright future. Ms.Bridgeforth’s room is a place where you can go and know that even if it doesn’t feel like it, everything will be ok.
I love learning. There is nothing in this world that feels as good as watching a light bulb go off in someone's head. When we’re talking about sounds and a student remembers digraphs are two letters that make one sound my heart grows three sizes. Knowledge is power and providing kids with a little power makes the hard things feel a bit easier. Not everyone can teach effectively but at the risk of sounding prideful, I would like to think I’m damn good at it.
I love my kids. The weirdos in first grade are some of my favorite people. They get on my last nerve and I’m always overstimulated but I also love them so much it makes me sick. I love when they want to snuggle or when Z puts his head on my shoulder during small group. I love that T learned to take pictures and now if I leave my phone out for a split second when I come back to it there are 5 random pictures of first graders and someone's thumb. I love wearing matching outfits, warm hugs, and laughing so hard our tummies hurt. I love opening snacks and stealing a bite. I love hearing my name in a little voice and kissing booboos. I love my wall of love notes written throughout the years. Proof that if I have done nothing else right, I loved my kids.
I can’t lie… things are really hard and really scary and I don’t know how to move forward. But I also know that I love being Ms.Bridgeforth. I love taking my class photo, and teaching kids to read, and sunshine on a playground. In this really hard season of my career I want to honor the part of me that is so in love with teaching I put myself into insane debt in order to chase this dream. But I also need to feel different. To feel new. I want to feel like Ms.Frizzle. I want to be a cool girl that teaches. And I know I’m not the only person that feels this way.
