First year as a teacher & first year as a mama
STORY #1
I’m so excited to finally try and put into words some of the magic that happened during my time at one of the places I call home (my first school–as a teacher)
My first teaching assignment was at a school that forever has my heart. So many great things happened and so many strong relationships were built. I’ve made lifelong connections and bonds with students and families and this place is where I truly feel like I understood the idea of belonging.
Flashback to the fall of 2015….only a few months (if that) into my very first year of teaching, I found out we were expecting our first kid! So on top of being a first year teacher, teaching a subject I was unfamiliar with AND finishing graduate school… yep.. I was also preparing to enter into another walk of life.. .motherhood. I won’t pretend this wasn’t overwhelming.. It definitely was.. But here.. I never felt as though I had to separate parts of my identity …(I think this is HUGE because how many of us can actually say we feel like we fully BELONG in our work spaces?)
Preparing for momhood while also teaching.. here at this place, where I belonged.. went hand and hand. Not only was I expecting a baby.. all of my students and teammates were too! People were genuinely ecstatic — Especially my homeroom class (a group of WILD and crazy 6th graders- that are all actually seniors and embarking on high school graduation as I type this out) I remember vividly the day that I announced I was expecting to my class. We were in our Spanish block and I decided it would be fun to play a round of hangman.. in Spanish..
E S T O Y E M B A R A Z A D A
was written out on the white board and my homeroom babies LOST IT!!!!! They were screaming, squealing, jumping up and down, out of their seats, clapping… CELEBRATING! They were celebrating that I was going to be a mom! How freaking sweet.
TALK ABOUT BELONGING? My gosh. I held back tears (this was when I still believed that teachers shouldn’t cry in front of their students.. Ha.. you’ll see how that shifted as these stories continue to surface.)
My time with my kids at this school taught me some things:
Everyone kid has a strength. As a teacher, it is my job to give kids opportunities to lean into their strengths. To give them opportunities to be leaders and to define leadership and success through their own lenses. (This is belonging)
LISTEN. Pause and listen to LISTEN… not to respond. If you are always listening to respond–you may miss what kids are saying.
LAUGH. It is appropriate to giggle and to be yourself as a teacher. (This is belonging)
My kids have taught me to be the teacher that I want for my sons.
Although I am now in my 7th year as an educator.. And some of the the stories I will share are not recent, these lessons still take up space in my head. They are what lead to my success as a teacher and will continue to push me further into my career as an educator. Impact with kids is not easy. It’s complex. It’s context specific and requires deep commitments from adults. But it is necessary. For my kids, your kids, OUR kids.
For quite some time I thought my students needed me. I thought they needed some loud, annoying and passionate teacher...Welp, that’s me. Done. Mission accomplished right? …Not exactly. Because what I’ve come to realize is that I also needed them. They needed someone to push them to their potential, someone to believe in them. That happened AND they pushed me— they believed in me. I would not have wanted to begin my teaching journey and step into motherhood with any other group of kids.
This idea of belonging is a mindset. We can say it, we can hang posters that say “you belong here,” we can even wear a t-shirt that says it. But what matters is what we are doing in practice. What we do, what we say and how we make people feel… those are the things that matter.
