10 Year Reflection

It's been 10 years for me in the classroom.  It's a small feat.  I have colleagues in my building who have been at it for 20+ years.  My high school teachers are seeing children of the students they taught years before.  So really, 10 years is just a small fraction of the amount of time that many teachers I know have already put in the system.  But for me, it's a pretty big milestone.  In my years as an undergrad, and then even the first few years of teaching, it was always stressed to us that most "new" teachers don't make it past 5 years.  And then this article about teachers resigning from my school district made quite a few of us mad; mostly because we're tired of being lumped into one big negative group of people.  And really?  I'm not ready to resign.  Yes, there have been changes.  We've gone through curriculum revision after curriculum revision.  I've seen MSCs, VSCs, CLGs, BCRs, ECRs, the CCSS, SLOs, PARCC, PBAs, MYAs, EOYs, PLDs, PCRs, and EBSRs.  And I'm pretty sure that's not all of them.  And if you think keeping those acronyms straight is confusing... well... you'd be 100% correct.  But you're 100% an idiot if you get into this profession thinking that it's going to be easy.  Or thinking that the public ISN'T going to give you a hard time about what you do.  Or thinking that the kids you see walk into your classroom are going to be the attentive little angels you see in books and tv and movies.  The reality of it is that it's hard work.  Work that doesn't end at the dismissal bell.  Work that doesn't end on Friday and pick up again on Monday.  It's a job that is under a microscope.  You're preparing the nation's future, so the nation is going to get involved.  The kids you see in your classroom are coming from different places.  Different ethnicities.  Different races.  Different economic backgrounds.  Different family structures.  Different academic abilities.  Just different all around.  There is standardized testing, but not standardized students.

So it's been 10 years.  I've changed schools.  I've found my home.  I've found my best friends, who also just happen to work with me.  I've seen a lot of students in those 10 years... students go to college... students come home from college... students enlist in the military... students get married... students have babies... students become teachers... students make mistakes... students make things right... students laugh... students cry... students fight... students think... students wonder... students get stumped... students feel pride... students feel ashamed... students fail... students succeed... I've seen about 100 students in each of those 10 years.  Holy crap, that's a lot of students.  I've gotten married.  I've had my own baby.  But each one of those students was, and still will be, my kid.  

I get frustrated.  We all do.  But I'm ready to go for 10 more years.  And then maybe 10 more after that.  And then...?  Well, we'll see.

My classroom at the very beginning to now -- with some years missing in-between...