Labor of Love
I am proud of myself today. I feel like I have accomplished good for a Monday. I worked out at my gym and ate relatively decent food today. With the exception of the bagel & cream cheese for breakfast, I think I did ok. I came home exhausted this evening. I didn't sleep well last night. I never do on Sundays. I have always had that challenge. My mom used to say that she suffered from the same dilemma. I'm not sure what really causes the sleep deprivation. I don't know if the hype of what may or may not occur on that following day, Monday, that feels me with so much dread that I just can not get a restful sleep. It could be that my sleep schedule is thrown off since the weekend was used to catch up on those lost hours of sleep from the prior week. Or maybe its the fact that I'm disappointed that the weekend has come and gone with little if any pomp and circumstance. Whatever the case may be, I have never been able to sleep comfortably on Sunday nights.
Needlesstosay, I am exhausted. Physically and mentally. My title, "Labor of Love," is due in part to the fact that I consider myself a really good teacher. As a good teacher, even without enough sleep, I go to work, prepared to lead a classroom. As a substitute teacher, I can honestly say that I AM THE PROVERBIAL BOMB! As a substitute teacher, I have to have the ability to jump in anywhere, any subject, at any school, and at any grade level sometimes with or without the "net" of lesson plans and assignments. I have even led Special Education classes. Interestingly enough, those students have an excuse to misbehave, but many of them really aren't as bad as everyone in general makes them out to be.
Today, I had a first grade class in a northern suburb of Detroit. You would have thought that those students were seriously lacking mentally. I mean really, really challenged. I can't imagine what that teacher goes through on a daily basis. Both mentally and emotionally, one can note that they were possibly developmentally challenged. Those children are literally damaged. An example of this could be summed up in the fact that for one of the students, there was a note. It indicated that she was "not" to be picked up after school by her father. This same note listed who could retrieve the child: two names and something about "XXXX staff must show id." I honestly could not read what the XXXX was. I kept re-reading the note and then it finally dawned on me: the XXXX was a local battered women's shelter. I had remembered that when my mother worked for the state department of social services, she often had clients who had to be placed in shelters due to physical, emotional or sexual violence against them. It clicked and I thought, "oh my God! This poor child." And my responsibility is to not let who pick her up and who could? Her life was defined by some scribble on a sticky note? Maybe she had not been physically, emotionally or mentally abused but someone in her life had given evidence of a desire to want to hurt her or her family in some way and to protect themselves, they were now living in a shelter.
In this first grade class, there were around 13 students, mostly African American. There were a couple of Caucasian and mixed race children also. I would ask them questions and they would just stare blankly at me. Some of them looked at me like I was an alien speaking in some strange alien language. Others, were like one female student, who when I said the class assignment was to think of words that begin with the letter "A," asked me, "how do you spell alligator?" Then she said, "I wanted to use astronaut but I don't know how to spell that either." WOW! Other students had trouble with the basic "what's the first thing we do when we get a paper?" Most chimed in,"we write our names!" However, there were several that I had to keep reminding to write their names. One student's handwriting of his name was so poor that I couldn't even make out his name. By first grade, shouldn't they at least know their names? Shouldn't they know in what month they were born? Most of them didn't know the answer to that last question.
Thus, my title is apropos. I invoked God's name and that of His son more than once today. It was a personal petition for patience because I recognize that my level of patience was stretched today. Being with those students today was like being in labor. Painful, wrenching, long contractions. However, once the day was over, there was much joy and satisfaction on my part. Just like when a woman has a long, hard delivery and then finally gives birth to that wonderful bouncing baby. I had done the best I could. During my labor I had covered pretty much all of the lesson plans that the teacher had left and I turned them all over to their responsible patrons for their end of day pick up.
Tonight, I should be able to sleep, of course, since I crashed earlier and took a nap, I'm not certain of this. But since I have no subbing assignments for tomorrow, I should sleep like that terribly tired, terribly worn out new born bouncing baby.
Needlesstosay, I am exhausted. Physically and mentally. My title, "Labor of Love," is due in part to the fact that I consider myself a really good teacher. As a good teacher, even without enough sleep, I go to work, prepared to lead a classroom. As a substitute teacher, I can honestly say that I AM THE PROVERBIAL BOMB! As a substitute teacher, I have to have the ability to jump in anywhere, any subject, at any school, and at any grade level sometimes with or without the "net" of lesson plans and assignments. I have even led Special Education classes. Interestingly enough, those students have an excuse to misbehave, but many of them really aren't as bad as everyone in general makes them out to be.
Today, I had a first grade class in a northern suburb of Detroit. You would have thought that those students were seriously lacking mentally. I mean really, really challenged. I can't imagine what that teacher goes through on a daily basis. Both mentally and emotionally, one can note that they were possibly developmentally challenged. Those children are literally damaged. An example of this could be summed up in the fact that for one of the students, there was a note. It indicated that she was "not" to be picked up after school by her father. This same note listed who could retrieve the child: two names and something about "XXXX staff must show id." I honestly could not read what the XXXX was. I kept re-reading the note and then it finally dawned on me: the XXXX was a local battered women's shelter. I had remembered that when my mother worked for the state department of social services, she often had clients who had to be placed in shelters due to physical, emotional or sexual violence against them. It clicked and I thought, "oh my God! This poor child." And my responsibility is to not let who pick her up and who could? Her life was defined by some scribble on a sticky note? Maybe she had not been physically, emotionally or mentally abused but someone in her life had given evidence of a desire to want to hurt her or her family in some way and to protect themselves, they were now living in a shelter.
In this first grade class, there were around 13 students, mostly African American. There were a couple of Caucasian and mixed race children also. I would ask them questions and they would just stare blankly at me. Some of them looked at me like I was an alien speaking in some strange alien language. Others, were like one female student, who when I said the class assignment was to think of words that begin with the letter "A," asked me, "how do you spell alligator?" Then she said, "I wanted to use astronaut but I don't know how to spell that either." WOW! Other students had trouble with the basic "what's the first thing we do when we get a paper?" Most chimed in,"we write our names!" However, there were several that I had to keep reminding to write their names. One student's handwriting of his name was so poor that I couldn't even make out his name. By first grade, shouldn't they at least know their names? Shouldn't they know in what month they were born? Most of them didn't know the answer to that last question.
Thus, my title is apropos. I invoked God's name and that of His son more than once today. It was a personal petition for patience because I recognize that my level of patience was stretched today. Being with those students today was like being in labor. Painful, wrenching, long contractions. However, once the day was over, there was much joy and satisfaction on my part. Just like when a woman has a long, hard delivery and then finally gives birth to that wonderful bouncing baby. I had done the best I could. During my labor I had covered pretty much all of the lesson plans that the teacher had left and I turned them all over to their responsible patrons for their end of day pick up.
Tonight, I should be able to sleep, of course, since I crashed earlier and took a nap, I'm not certain of this. But since I have no subbing assignments for tomorrow, I should sleep like that terribly tired, terribly worn out new born bouncing baby.
First of all, kudos to you for perseverence in teaching these kids. It's very hard to teach children/adults who have such challenged lives, who have to keep one eye on whatever may be coming at them at any time--angry parent or spouse, hunger, bills but no money, substance abuse, etc. As a college professor, I'm finding that more and more of my freshman writing students have no awareness of the world, much less basic writing skills.
ReplyDeleteAgain, kudos to you. We have to do good in small places.