Dear First Year Teacher,
Lately I’ve been seeing some
incredibly thoughtful and beautiful letters and examples of outreach to kindergarteners, 5th graders, high school seniors, and support for teachers in general (this last
one has the grace we all need). Every time I see one come across my news feeds,
I read them, share them, and appreciate the love and care that went into each
one.
But lately I’ve been thinking
about you, first year educator. What must you be feeling and thinking right
now? I mean, in our wildest nightmares we couldn’t have imagined this. Everyone
says your first year is hard, but come ON. This is excessive. Teaching actual
live children right in front of you is challenging enough, and now you have to
figure out how to teach them from your apartment/house? And on top of that, you’re
trying to connect with kids who may have no access to technology, are feeling
lost or confused or angry, or maybe just don’t feel like connecting with their
teachers? It’s a lot to ask for us veterans, let alone for you, just starting
out on this path.
So I found myself thinking back
to my first year as a 23 year old high school teacher in 1998.
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"My people" after our Homecoming assembly "through the decades" lip-sync dance in the fall of 1998 at Rochester High School. My head is poking through in the second row, and yes, I AM wearing a wedding veil. |
I taught world history and
language arts 10, and I remember constantly vacillating between feeling like I sort of had it under control, and
feeling like a complete idiot who knew nothing. I cried a LOT that year. In my
car, in my apartment, in my tiny little basement/storage room hunched over my
Apple Macintosh desktop computer late into the night…ahh, the memories. I was
also lucky enough to be hired in at around the same time as more than a dozen
other new (or new-ish) teachers, and they quickly became my people. In fact, I
married one and still consider two others among my very best friends, but I
digress.
On April 20, 1999, I had
probably spent the day doing my best to teach my kids (while also leaning on
those friends of mine for advice and laughs) when we heard about the mass
shooting in Colorado at Columbine High School. Our country had never experienced
anything like this before, and as a very young teacher I had no idea what to
do, or what to say to my students. How could this have happened? Could it
happen here? So I did what I had learned to do, and I went to my people. We
talked to each other about how to talk to the kids. We leaned on each other,
and we made it through that together.
A month later one of those
incredible people, my co-worker and friend—a talented, brilliant, generous,
funny, young teacher—was killed in a tragic car crash. And again, that little
band of brand new baby teachers is what got me through those months of shock
and loss and grief. They steadied me and had strength when I did not, and I
returned the favor for them. We still miss her.
I want to tell you that what
you are feeling right now—what we are all feeling—is grief. We have LOST
things. We have lost opportunities to teach, to help our kids, to attend their
graduations, go on their field trips, and see them accomplish their goals—and
those are just all of the work related things. Many are also struggling with
the loss of friends or family. And YOU have lost a lot, as well. All of the
learning and growing you’ve done this year was just starting to pay off. Spring
is when you start to feel like maybe you’ve got this. You know your students,
you’ve found your people, and you can even fix the copy machine. All of that
counts as loss and it is ok to grieve it. Loss is loss, and the most important
loss is always your own. Brené Brown talks about this idea of “comparative suffering,” which
is the idea that one loss is worse than another, so those of us suffering a
“lesser” loss should stay quiet and just be thankful we aren’t suffering more.
Don’t do this to yourself. You have lost out on a lot and I, for one, am deeply
sorry for that loss.
I hope, at the very least, you have taken some small measure of comfort from finding yourself in the same boat as people who have been teaching for years. Very few of us know what to do or how to do it in this new remote learning world, so we really are right here with you, fumbling through awkward Zoom meetings, calming parent and student fears, managing emails and assembling packets. But more than that, I hope that you—like I did all those years ago, and still do today—have leaned on each other during this time. I encourage you to stay connected to other new teachers—lift each other up, and make each other laugh. Ask questions when things don’t seem right, and reassure each other when someone is struggling. Acknowledge each other’s grief and loss and sadness and confusion through this. Borrow ideas from people you trust, and try your very hardest not to compare yourself to others.
You may feel alone sometimes,
but my hope for you is that you find solidarity and comfort in knowing there is
a community of educators out there feeling what you’re feeling. Because in many
ways, as the 2019 Montana Teacher of the Year
points out, we are all first year teachers now.
