Meaningful Moments

[Editor's note: Ms. Flecha is the pseudonym of a second-year teacher in an elementary school in Queens. She blogs at My Life Untranslated where this post originally appeared.]

There is a high that comes from meaningful, purposeful self-exertion. Call it adrenaline, a runner’s high — whatever you want. It is found in that moment, whether at 3 a.m. or 1 p.m., when you are simultaneously exhausted and exhilarated; eyes are demanding to be closed while the mind is yelling, “Yes! Keep going!” It is in these moments when I am most glad to be a new teacher; when all the tension and stress I experience feels meaningful and purposeful. I am driven to live in those moments.

And yet there are moments when stress is all but meaningful or compelling. I recently experienced one of those moments when I was on the verge of my very first “teacher cry.” I had expected that time to come as a result of being aggravated over a child’s behavior, or because of those ever-frequent, life-clarifying moments when you starkly see your inadequacies. Nope. I was blind-sided — it was because of another teacher.

During my first year of teaching, last year, I was a push-in, so now, as a classroom teacher, I try to make as many accommodations as I can for all my push-ins. Of course, compared to me, they are all veterans and clearly know how to make themselves comfortable in any room.

One of these teachers, we’ll call her Ms. Gina, comes to my classroom a few times a week to work with a group of students on basic math skills while I work with my students on writing or social studies, or through a read aloud. (It’s sort of like a push-in-out model, if you will.)

Right away it became clear she has a very different style than me and she asked me to give her students who “speak English” (I have an ESL class). She is quick to anger and yell, never asking a child to “please stop” doing something — always demanding and loud. At first, I was upset with the children because I felt that her having to yell at them reflected my inexperience and their taking advantage of it. Plenty of other teachers in September would tell me my students talk too much, or call out a lot. So, I tried, as I do with all teachers, to learn and see what she was noticing and what she expected of my students and if this was something I ought to be addressing.

However, it soon became clear that this was not simply a case of “new teacheritis.”

Recently she came to my class and took her students to a group of student desks, as always. One of those desks belonged to Julio, a small, seven-year-old whose voice rarely raises above a whisper, who was working with me and the rest of the class in writing. He told me he had not had a chance to get his writer’s notebook, so I went over and asked Ms. Gina if he could get it, and she obliged.

After working with a group of students, I went back to Julio and realized I needed to see the graphic organizer he had been using last week to organize his information.

It was in his folder. In his desk. Where Ms. Gina was sitting.

The moment Julio went over to his desk, Ms. Gina’s bellicose voice roared, filling the classroom. I can barely remember her words. “WHAT? THIS IS RIDICULOUS,” her torrent began. Twenty-two pairs of eyes flitted, silently, between her and me.

“It’s not his fault. I asked him to get a paper that he didn’t realize he was going to need,” I said, urged to reply by Julio’s reddening face.

Grudgingly and with angry mumbles, she shifted and let Julio get his paper.

As he returned to me, sobbing, I said — loud enough for Ms. Gina to hear — “It’s not your fault, Julio. You did nothing wrong. I told you to go over there. You did nothing wrong.”

I felt my own face grow red and I had to fight back tears. Children at Julio’s table quickly volunteered to help him combine his graphic organizer notes into coherent sentences in his story, and get his mind off what had just happened.

I may be a new classroom teacher. I may not have two full years of experience, nevermind 40 years. But in the starkness of this moment, I learned something valuable. It doesn’t make me weak that I say, “please,” or that, in everything I do, I make it clear to my students that I respect them. That mistakes and questions are okay — especially if we learn from them. That my authority is not arbitrary, even if it may be imposed on them.

Yes, I am strict. Yes, I yell. I probably even embarrass them when I do. But, like the stress and pain and exhaustion I live through day in and day out, it is meaningful. It is always something we all must learn from. Yelling, like everything else in the classroom, has to serve an educational purpose.

Tagged: elementary school, Queens

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