I have 10 kiddos running around my classroom, glue and papers on the floor, and I have a sneaking suspicion that there's blue paint slowly drying on my carpet. I still have a head cold and I stopped being paid an hour and a half ago. Yet, eight little paper scarecrows on my desk tell me this is all worth it.
It hit me how much I love my job today. I got a bit blue during my lunch break while thinking about how much I miss my boyfriend, who is living abroad this year. I started sinking in my chair and I could feel the tingle of tears around my eyes. But then who crashes through my classroom door, but “Elmer”, my student with cognitive impairment and physical disabilities. He is a sheep herder and a Navajo cowboy and sometimes he can be so, so naughty.
And I'd never been happier to see him. You see, without realizing it, he forced me to refocus my wallowing thoughts on my own life to think about his life and his needs and why the heck he was in my room when he was supposed to still be at lunch. I mention this, because it's so, so important, for me at least, to have inspiration outside of myself. It’s easy to wallow and lose focus about what is truly important. It’s harder when you have someone refusing to leave your classroom to go to lunch.
I’ll be honest: I wanted an environmental club. I wanted to sponsor an after-school club on water conservation and air pollution. I pictured myself gathering school children on sunny afternoons to learn about climate change. We could hook up with Jane Goodall’s Roots and Shoots program and invite Navajo environmentalists to lead talks; we could have started recycling. It would have been grand.
Enthusiastically, I described my elaborate dreams to some fifth and eighth graders on the first day of school. They were kind enough to let me finish illustrating how we would pick up litter around the lake and discuss alternative energy sources. But after painting my spectacular plans, luckily I had the sense to ask them if anyone would join the club.
“Nope.”
“No.”
“Uhh…. no.”
And so, my dream was killed.
I was heartbroken, but only for a minute. I ventured to ask these students, this collection of loners and athletes and rockers, what they actually liked to do. And I wasn’t surprised by the majority of their responses.
“Drawing on paper.”
“Art.”
“Crafts and stuff is OK.”
And so that was that. Our Art Club was born.
The only problem is I hate crafts. I don’t like art. I have a hard time even writing straight on the blackboard. I go to far lengths to avoid doing crafty things and bless my artsy colleague who patiently, magically transforms magazines and construction paper into delicately arched roses and carnations that drape from the classroom door. Did I mention I hate arts and crafts? I have patience with children; not with scissors and glue.
But as I’ve quickly learned from my fellow teachers, many of whom double as my surrogate mothers out in the Southwest, it’s not about what the grown up wants to do— it’s about what the kids need. And according to our kids, they need art.
Art isn’t offered as a class at our school this year, but it doesn’t mean we can’t make it happen ourselves. Especially when the kids bring their own enthusiasm. Last week, we had our first Art Club meeting. Two teachers and I supervised the students between 3rd to 7th grades as they rolled colored clay and drew portraits of one another. I now have a collection of clay roses drying on my desk.
While I had no idea how to entertain the students at first, I should have known that they’d be the ones fueling the club’s energy. When asked what they wanted to do, the ideas wouldn’t stop pouring in. Sock puppets. Holiday cards. Halloween decorations. Oil painting. More clay. Even the other teachers got in on the fun. What about decoupage?
Our club meets weekly in my classroom. It isn’t fancy. It probably isn’t educational. And it most definitely doesn’t revolve around climate changes and alternative fuel sources. But the kids are happy. And for now, that is enough.
It’s not in the state standards, but it’s one of those life skills all teachers must teach. And so, in the first week of school this year, my students and I found ourselves abandoning reading class for 15 minutes to walk around the classroom with our shoulders thrown back and heads proud in the air to practice looking “cool.”
“Cool” is to be proud and comfortable with who you are, I explained after two girls snuck into the resource room 15 minutes late because they were too embarrassed to be seen entering the special education classroom. “Cool” is to not pretend to be like someone else. Otherwise you’re just a poser. (And no one, not even the most desperate of 13-year-olds, wants to be labeled a poser.) If you stay unaffected by the taunts, you’re really just proving to folks that you’re too cool to care. You’ll know you’ve really reached the height of cool when folks like you for being you.
Now, I’m not entirely certain, but I think over the past year, I have sort of, kind of become cool at school.
And it’s not just because those eighth grade girls say good-morning to me now and kids tell me my gold sequined shoes are “neat.” It’s because last year’s parents are still coming around, but now to give me a hug. It’s because I know what I’ll be teaching in math tomorrow and the next day and the day after. It’s because I finally figured out how to best run those Individualized Education Plan (IEP) meetings and it’s because my 60-year-old Navajo colleagues are still asking me when I’m going to finally get married.
As I start my second-year at a K-8 school on the Navajo Nation in New Mexico, I think I’m finally finding my own niche. As a 23-year-old Asian-American teacher from the East Coast, I’ll never quite blend in with the staff that is about 90 percent Native American and past 40-years-old. Even the click-clack of my high-heeled sandals seems out of place on this mesa. Yet, this profession and land are feeling more familiar. Teaching is still the hardest thing I’ve ever tried, but at least I’m more confident with myself as an educator and as an outsider in this rural community.
When I first joined the school last August, I was new to the region, new to the job and new to the field of education. I studied journalism and worked in the media throughout college. Then, just months before my graduation, I decided to apply to Teach For America, a service program that trains and supports college grads to become teachers in underresourced communities around the country. That autumn, I found myself on a mesa on the Navajo reservation in New Mexico, teaching 7th and 8th grade Special Ed. There were two gas stations in town. I drove an hour to buy groceries. It was a far-cry from the urban-suburban confines of the Washington, D.C.-region where I had grown up.
Then again, teaching wasn’t what I had planned for either. Who would have guessed that I would spend my evenings writing lesson plans, cutting out manipulatives and making phone calls to parents? But the more I do it, the more it all makes sense.
It’s the second month of school, and I’m brimming with hope and confidence. I haven’t even shed a tear yet. Now, all I have to worry about is keeping this cool until May.
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