The Here and Now

“Perhaps we never appreciate the here and now until it is challenged...”

Anne Morrow Lindbergh Gift from the Sea

   If I’m honest, I would say I wasn’t enjoying the last few years of my teaching career the way I had.  The first year or two were exhausting.  I was teaching with an emergency credential, which means I’d teach during the day and take classes at night to earn my full credential.  I was learning how to teach as I was doing it.  And objectively speaking, I know I was a better teacher at the end of my career than I was at the beginning of my career.

   But teaching had changed.  I was being judged by test scores.  Not by the fact that previously violent students were no longer violent.  Not by the fact that non-readers were now readers.  Not by the fact that kids were taking an interest in their school, cleaning up messes they hadn’t made.  No, my worth as a teacher was being based on how well my students bubbled in a multiple-choice test.

   Yet, I never would have left my teaching career if I didn’t have to.  I would have stuck it out.  Because that’s what I thought I was supposed to do.  I asked for this career.  I signed up voluntarily, and there were parts I absolutely loved and whole-heartedly miss.  

   But, not working has provided me with the opportunity to have another way of spending my days.  For instance, most Friday mornings I volunteer in my son’s first grade classroom.  It’s a slightly odd, uncomfortable feeling, being on the other side of the desk.  I do it for my son who asked me to volunteer like some of the other parents.  I do it for his teacher because I know how exhausting this job is.  

   On one recent Friday, I volunteered, and then took myself to a nearby park.  I drank a coffee, read a book, did some writing.  I breathed deeply, marveled at the trees, listened to the nearby fountain.  I walked a few laps.  I felt peaceful.  

   It was then that I realized how I used to spend my Friday mornings with my fifth-grade students.  Testing them on their week’s spelling and vocabulary words.  Testing them on the week’s reading selection.  Testing them on the states and capitals they were learning.  A lot of testing for them, a lot of papers to grade for me. 

   When I was teaching, my energies went to my students, my son, my husband, and myself (in that order).  I didn’t value myself enough to slow down, to do things that made me happy, to stop putting everyone else’s well-being before my own.

   But now, I spend my Fridays at a different pace.  It’s not so clear-cut as to say that one way is better than another.  My new lifestyle also involves a lot of physical pain -- it’s the price I pay for less stressful days, and the only reason I am no longer teaching.

   But at the same time, this new schedule has given me the opportunity to re-invent myself in a way and take care of myself and my family in a way I couldn’t have done before.

“We are now ready for a true appreciation of the value of the here and the now and the individual.”

Anne Morrow Lindbergh Gift from the Sea