“Everything I’ve ever let go of has claw marks on it”

– David Foster Wallace, American author.

Teaching is My Gift

I pressed the ding-dong doorbell hanging from my lanyard. At the signal, they all raced to my kidney-shaped table. Who can grab the stool closest to me? Who can pick their favorite color erasable pen first? As I pull out the stack of folders and little printed books I lovingly stapled for each child each week, I ask “Do you know what day it is?” The kids all joyously shout “Vocabulary Wednesday!” in unison, with ear-to-ear smiles. They eagerly flip through the pages of their books, underlining unfamiliar words. They take turns choosing what words to discuss and illustrate. We read the sentence the word is in, the sentence before, the sentence after. They love using context clues to uncover their own meanings, create their own lexicon. We add our own pictures to our handmade dictionaries, as we laugh, chat, and share, then tuck the folders away for next week.

I’ve taught every grade, preschool-age students through graduate students… in special education center schools, self-contained special education classrooms, resource rooms, general education classrooms, universities… public schools, private school, charter school. There is nothing in this entire world I enjoy doing more than teaching, and I’m an incredibly talented educator with over 20 years of teaching experience and a doctorate in special education. And one of the saddest realities of my life is that I can no longer be a teacher, not in a traditional sense anyway.

I left public K-12 education in 2023. I was earning just over $50,000/year with all my years of education and experience. Educators have a way of justifying intense disrespect and being severely underpaid by saying “These are the sacrifices we make to do the ‘good work’.” We learn to navigate the bureaucracy; the systems we know are intended to fail our future. We imagine we are making things better, and maybe we are in the sheltered microcosm that only lives within our individual classrooms, but the crushing nature of a society that does more harm than good exists the moment that bell rings at the end of the day.

Pandemic Era Teaching

I thought the pandemic had the power to impact global change. To bring us closer to humanity. Strengthen our connections and purpose for existing. During the 2020-2021 school year, I taught second graders whose parents opted to keep their children at home, keep them safe. We met online daily, from 7:30 – 2:30, and just like in brick-and-mortar schools, I taught reading, science, math, and social studies, differentiated for all learners. And we were able to get wildly creative because they had access to different types of materials at home than we had at school. We could cook together in home kitchens and go outside together to do activities. We could show off our pets (the students liked seeing my dogs and chickens) and share this beautiful safe learning space in a way we hadn’t before. March 2021, I returned to teach the remainder of the year using a hybrid model: half of the students were with me in-person, the other half at home. It was amazing!

At the end of the 2020-2021 school year, my students’ parents and I asked my school administrators if we could loop together as a class for the following school year, since the children never got to develop “in real life” relationships with one another. I thought that would be an incredible opportunity to share the same space as we continued this educational journey together. We were all denied this opportunity.

Video of my Digital Academy Teaching Experience

So I continued to teach a new group of second graders the following year, and to my very unfortunate surprise, teachers were no longer the great saviors who kept everyone afloat during unprecedented pandemic times; we had transitioned into ‘communist indoctrinators’ and ‘groomers’ by right wing extremist groups like Moms for Liberty. By the end of the school year, they were showing up to local school board meetings with books they proposed banning. We had to remove all signs of ‘safe spaces’ being created. Teachers had to take down photos of their same-sex partners. No pride flags could be displayed. In March 2022, I stood alone as the only public school educator on stage at my local protest, speaking out in front of a large audience against the “Parental Rights in Education” bill. You can watch the news clip I was in and read about the “Don’t Say Gay Bill” rally.

Leaving Public Education

I tried to exist in this moment in time, be the educator I knew I was despite the harsh realities of an ever-changing (for the worse) political climate aimed at destroying public education at its very core. I just could not do it any longer. So I weighed my options and applied for a position as assistant principal at a local charter school, with a mission of cultivating “a dynamic learning community based on innovation, social justice, and environmental stewardship.” I would have to write a whole other article to explain how awful this experience was for me, but just five months after accepting that position, I resigned. It felt like my last chance at being an educator… and I failed.

My brain often feels like a beautiful, messy hoard. Like all the world’s nicest collectibles live together, but they are inaccessible because they are crammed into a tight space for ‘safe keeping’. I long for a time when I could once again display all the ideas and strategies and methodologies that are currently hidden from the world. Where I could educate current and future teachers on the best ways to get young children to love to learn – by creating high-interest, differentiated learning opportunities. By showing learners the empathy and kindness they deserve while navigating educational spaces that are not always supportive, especially for certain groups of people who have been historically silenced. But I fear that knowledge I hold will collect dust eternally.

For now, my last students’ folders are tucked into a drawer in my home in a piece of furniture that once held craft supplies used to create engaging projects in my classroom. I looked at them just a few weeks ago, saw all the students’ names written in permanent marker. I ran my hands across the place that once held the assignments I lovingly created for them, and with tears streaming down my face, I decided I could not bear to part with them yet.