On Being a Classroom Teacher, Part One: My Crayon Skies

I bought another piece of art from my new friend, Daniel, a recovering alcoholic about whom I wrote in a previous post.

.

{Crayon Skies}

A fist full of Crayolas pressed hard.

A waxy cacophony of swirls and zigzags. 

With colors that stick but don't blend. 

Filling space until it transforms.

Daniel's expression of recovery got me thinking about my own "crayon sky" - the beautiful dissonance that has been my teaching career over the last ten years. 

Teaching has been, and probably always will be, my one great love.

This is what I know for sure: Over the last ten years, I benefited much, much more from knowing my students than they benefited from knowing me.

Even though I got damn good at creating engaging activities. Even though I implemented BEST practices and utilized backward design.

When I first started teaching, I thought (like every naive new teacher) that I would be the one to affect change - that I would inspire, move, alter and ultimately impress my students with wit and intellect.

My early lessons were poorly received and returned with hearty "fuck you."

Sometimes, they'd even say that. Especially at the beginning. And I deserved it.

What I slowly learned with each class I had was that it wasn't/isn't/shouldn't be about me.

Not life.

Nor teaching.

So this is what happened: I began to let my students in.

Their brokenness.

Their damaged hearts.

Their chaotic, discordant lives.

Their sense of humor.

Their candor.

And for the last ten years, their color, brilliantly inconsistent and beautifully variant, has filled my own empty spaces.

Transforming me.

{My Favorite Class Ever: Second Block Honors 9, 2008}

My crayon skies.