Year Five: Brokenness

Well, I made it! These past two weeks have been l...o...n...g...

I wasn't sure June 11th was ever going to get here! But, it did and my 5th year of teaching is officially over.

5 years...just doesn't seem real.

Looking back, this year might have been one of my hardest years yet...

There were a lot of things that made it tough like having colleagues throughout the school who don't do a great job and leave extra weight for others to carry, or a team mate who had some serious medical issues she had to deal with, knowing as her friend how important it was for her to have time off and being really worried about her vs. being her colleague and having to absorb all of her students again and dealing with the stress and frustration that comes with that.

But, as I reflect on this year, I think the thing that made it the toughest was the brokenness of my students this year.

I always heard before entering the teaching world "leave school at school...don't take the worries home with you." I always thought I did a good job with that. Each year I've had several students with really sad stories, but the weight of those stories this year was so heavy and I learned what people meant when they shared that advice with me.

About two years ago another middle school in Durham shut down after they built a new one. This middle school was in the northern part of the county so zoning changed some and Carrington inherited some of their population. In conjunction with a charter school that opened several years ago, Carrington has experienced a pretty significant demographic change over the past few years. These changes have led to several higher socioeconomic families leaving for the charter school while we inherited a greater lower socioeconomic population from the rezoning. It's no secret, numerous surveys report the positive correlation between low socioeconomic status and broken homes. With these changes came a lot of students into our classrooms from broken homes and really sad stories.

I have developed a deep love and connection to these students throughout my years at Carrington. To be honest, assumptions and fear about students "like that" was what once made me say I would never teach in Durham. Man am I glad God pushed me way out of my comfort zone when he planted me right where I said I would never go. They really are some of my favorites!

Students from broken homes, with such sad stories are not the easiest to teach. They can actually be quite a terror in a classroom full of 30 students, but I love them.

I think about my favorite one of my students (I don't have favorites ;) ;) ) this year in my biggest, loudest, worst, and unfortunately last class. He's loud. And, if you don't respond to him right away, he pitches a fit...like a 2 year old and gets louder. Screams, stomps his feet, pounds his desk, follows you around the room. He was so hungry and needy for attention, it was exhausting to daily try to meet his social, emotional, and cognitive needs in a room with 29 other students. He is such a sweet a kid, I couldn't help but grow to love him despite the chaos he added to an already chaotic class. I would often get emails from his step-mom checking in on him. One night while Stephen and I were out to eat, I ran into his dad and the lady I assumed was his step-mom. I stopped and chatted with his dad, thinking the whole time it was odd she wasn't acknowledging that we email back and forth; she wouldn't even look at me while I stood there and spoke with them. I thought maybe she just wasn't in a talking mood, so I went on my way. At school the next day, I asked my student if his dad told him he saw me. He told me his dad didn't come home last night. I was so confused and started asking him questions. Come to find out the lady he lives with, his "step-mom," is dad's old girlfriend who he never married so she's not technically his step-mom. The lady I saw his dad with was his dad's current girlfriend. My student told me his dad sometimes stays with his new girlfriend and sometimes stays with them. His biological mom is not in the picture at all. His dad's old girlfriend, his care taker, has her own son who is in 7th grade at another school who never gets in trouble and gets As and Bs so she constantly compares my student to her son and makes him feel worse about himself because my student does get in trouble and he doesn't make great grades. So he is living with a lady who is stuck raising some guy's kid who I assume broke her heart. She clearly has enough of a heart to not abandon him and refuse him care, but I can only imagine how tough that must be for her raising this unwanted kid of a guy who ditched her for another lady. And how confusing must all of this be for my student? Oh how my heart broke...still breaks...for this sweet sweet child who would hang out with me and the Language Arts teacher on my team instead of his peers any chance he got.  His need for attention makes so much sense in light of all of that! I didn't even get defensive when another student described this student as my best friend the last week of school.

Or, another student in this same class who came into the class the day of his birthday crying uncontrollably. I finally got him to write down what was wrong and pass me the note. He wrote, "It's my birthday and I won't get to see my dad." (insert broken heart) Fathers are so important to a child's development, but especially at the middle school age. This kid has a great, supportive mom who is doing her best, but dad not being around is hurting this child more than he'll probably ever admit.

I could fill pages on this blog about my students this year:
Like the young lady who's mom can't or won't care for her. Who lived with her grandma until her grandma died suddenly when she was in 6th grade. She went back with mom until that failed again. And now she is living with her aunt who's doing her best, but never asked to suddenly be responsible for raising a young adolescent.

Or one of my other favorites students who's mom and dad are still married (that is so rare these days), they both work full time to support their family, his older brother and sister are left to help care for him in the afternoons, but they are hanging out with wrong crowd, are very disrespectful to their parents, and dragging their younger brother, my student, into it all leading to his behavior getting out of control at school, claiming he does not care. Thankfully we saw significant improvement with him throughout the year as we built a relationship with him, but what a reminder that a non-broken home doesn't guarantee perfect behavior.

All of this brokenness leads to a lot of poor behavior. Some of these students who act out often are easy to still like. However, not all of them are and I have to be intentional about remembering where the ones who aren't so easy to like are coming from too...

Like the student who was removed from home because of abuse who makes up the most elaborate lies to his friends about his life as he stretches reality to make it fit and sound like what he thinks a "normal" life is.  When that doesn't work, he is one of the most conniving, mean students I've ever taught.

Or another student who just makes the worse decisions and then lies about it. Ten people could be eye witnesses to it and he will go to his grave swearing he didn't do it. He gets so angry whenever he is accused of anything. His anger often leads to him cussing people out and then lying about that too...

...some are so hard to like.

When you stop and think about the lives these children go home to each day, no wonder they aren't doing their math homework. Who has time to worry about a math problem with all of this mess going on?

I've learned over the years and had it reinforced so well this year the importance of relationships. I am proud of the relationships I build with students and I speak often to others about how vital it is for teachers and students to have positive relationships. Two great famous quotes that were so true for my classroom experience this year are:

"Children won't care how much you know until they know how much you care."

"Rules without relationship equals rebellion."

I learned a little too late in the school year the power of me sitting with a group of all the bad kids in my last class as they worked through a problem set. Yes, only 4 of them had my attention for the majority of the class and not all of the other groups were on task, but those 4 did a lot of work, understood math a little better, and got some one-on-one adult conversation, which was great for everyone!

I don't have any major success story about how any of these students turned it around, aced their EOG tests, and are thriving despite these terrible situations.

Only 25 of my students demonstrated proficiency on their math EOG so I'm no super teacher,

BUT 100 of my students know I care.

I diligently prepared and taught my students each day, but focused more on the relationships I was building with them in and out of the classroom. Hallway conversations and chats at lunch became more important than solving equations and adding fractions...oh fractions...

So no, unfortunately I don't have some miracle story about how much math my students left my classroom knowing this year. I'm not perfect at figuring out how to navigate a room full of broken children. I left frustrated and angry at my students often this year struggling to show grace again and again because my 5th period was so bad and chaotic. I was often hurt and angry hearing their stories, wishing I could fix it, wanting to scream at their parents and sometimes them. But, in the end, all I could do was advocate for them and let them know someone cares. I didn't always get it right. I often fussed at the students I've talked about in this post in anger and frustration...

...But, I tried...
...I tried my best...
...And we all learned together this year.

This is a great article I found that speaks into these situations a lot. The author is exactly right, figuring out what the problem is is so hard! Imagine trying to figure out a lot of the "problems" at once as they all interact together...

Yes, it was tough, but it wasn't terrible...most days. I grew closer with my colleagues, had amazing administrative support, still got to serve in multiple leadership roles, and walked away a little more seasoned, and much more confident that teaching middle school isn't for everyone, but confident it is for me; I've found my niche, my groove, and plan to thrive there a while longer Lord willing!

I walk away each year with a little more wisdom and a lot more lessons learned.
Year One Review or Year One: Lessons Learned
Year Two
Year Three: Contentment
Year Four: I Got This!

Now, summer!