long overdue

Part of learning to become an adult means learning to face different challenges, and as I’ve stated while more often than not we have the opportunity to celebrate the mighty triumphs, life also presents us with a number of potholes along the way. You can dodge them, maneuver around them, hit them at 100 miles per hour in hopes of speeding right over them, but eventually we all end up with a flat tire at some stage. You can either ride with a flat tire and pray that your wheels don’t fly off, OR you can change the flat and continue in life with a brand new set of wheels. That being said, here I am changing my flat.

Newcastle High School has offered me a job placement for a year. I am not even half way through my practice teaching and it’s come as one of the biggest shocks and most wonderful compliments I’ve ever received. However, when I stop and really reflect on my needs, I know my need for adventure and perhaps even a bit of rebellion has been met, and my passion for teaching still remains. The comfort of knowing my passion for teaching still burns as brightly as before regardless of where I choose to do it is a relief, and I know deep down in my heart that although my love for Australia may have previously exceeded many desires, being away from home has made me appreciate home perhaps a little more. That’s not to say I don’t passionately adore this country to my very core, because I do, and these last 2 months and the next two months to come have pushed me so far out of my comfort zone and into a world of accomplishments I never dreamed of being capable of, but sometimes it’s human to just want to be comfortable with the familiar. Until then, I’ll see if I can get everyone up to base with my life and work.

A week ago during fourth period with my 11th graders, I stood at the board with my back to the class, writing out the plan for the next week or two leading up to the student’s exam period. As I turned around I noticed a little beam of light coming from the right hand corner of the classroom and then it dawned on me that a 17 year old boy was actually filming me.

“Miss looking good today” the boy filming me on his phone called out
“Yeah Miss, next time it would be sexier if you wore heels with that skirt.”
“Yeah miss, and you have a run in your stocking, it looks good though leave it.” I did have a hole in my stocking, a small one right on my knee cap. As one by one my year 11 boys began to make comments on my body and outfit(which was a below the knees black skirt, black stockings, a blue button up polo, and a black blazer...I assure you nothing provocative) I turned around, walked over to my desk, and sat down. I took the camera phone from the boy who had been taping me and said “This is unacceptable behavior. I am a professional, I work very hard for you guys, and you are treating me with more disrespect than I have ever been treated in my life. For the rest of the class period, we will sit here in silence. If you want to leave, I won’t stop you. I won’t even report you. I’m done for the day.” Nobody left, and we sat in silence.

That evening a staff member called me to see if I was okay, and I was. I was just frustrated. I felt like a joke. A bunch of 17 year old boys had not only been harassing me during class period, but it was the group of boys I’ve been working so hard for, and my feelings were not hurt, but I felt like they had completely insulted my intelligence.

The next day I walked into class and waited at my desk for the boys to come boisterously pouring into the room as they usually did, but one by one they came in and took their seats. I stood up in front of the board, shoulders back, head high, and began speaking.

“If I am going to work this hard to make sure you all pass your assessments, we need to set a few ground rules. What happened yesterday was sexual harassment, and I will NOT tolerate it. I have already passed high school English, I have already graduated from college, and I do NOT need to put up with that kind of disrespect. You are not here to comment on my body, you are not here to comment on my clothing, and you are not here to video tape me or ask for my phone number. You are here to learn, and I am here to teach you, and there will be zero tolerance for any other type of behavior. Do you all understand?”

The boys all nodded, and I began the lesson.
I want the boys to start thinking about their lives more deeply. They are more than bodies in seats, and while some of you may think I am absolutely crazy to want to hear anything they have to say after being treated that way, I am still here to do my job and I will do it to the fullest. I wrote the words “what is your biggest fear” and “what is the greatest lesson you’ve learned in life” on the board and gave the boys 30 minutes to free write. Many of them have never been given a writing prompt before, and many of them didn’t even know what free writing was, but many of them wrote their hearts on the paper. One boy wrote about losing his aunt who had only been given a short time to live, another wrote about being scared of not being a good boyfriend and husband some day and always wanting to be there for the person he loved. Another boy wrote about bees, but he wrote about bees in a way that was comical, yet made everyone listening shiver at the sting of a bee. It was a wonderful follow up to the previous shaky class.

I took their class notebooks home with me that night and read them, making comments where I thought they could elaborate and noting grammar and spelling errors. The next day we worked on revision because again, most of these boys have been asked to hand in paragraphs instead of papers, been given a pass or fail, and the boys have never done anything further  with their writing, perhaps because nobody ever thought they had anything worth writing about. I didn’t expect the boys to be interested in rewriting and editing their own work, but sure enough after I went through what revising and editing meant, almost every hand shot up for help, and the more they revised their own work, the more they sought my approval that they were doing a good job. I gave them the feedback I felt they needed and deserved and a few of the boys even said they really liked revising their own creative writing and they hoped we would get to do more of it.

There have definitely been struggles, they say your student teaching year is one of your hardest years of teaching, and being here alone means I often times have to encourage and support myself. It has been a long and tumultuous week or two, reliving the day my brother died, followed by my dog being put down, some discouragements at the school, and even personal difficulties occurring in my life, have all seemed troubling. Just when support seems like all I need, I realize I may be a little more alone than I thought I was.

I know that sometimes we think that by being heroes and doing what seems to be “the right thing” it logistically should make everything easier, but in doing so what we forget is often times what is comfortable and familiar IS exactly what we need. Whether that’s two arms thrown around you from the person you care about, encouraging words from a parent, funny video clips from a friend, or a job offer that makes you realize that home really is where the heart is, even if it scares us, we fight back against what we know to be comfortable, against all reason, because we're scared settling. I know at the end of all of this my growth, development, and leaps and bounds I will have made will be all worth it, and I will be ready to return to the United States confidently with a smile on my face, a fire in my heart, and a new set of tires.

After bending over backwards, a number of my lunch times given up, and my breaks spent working on trying to get disorganized students re focused, the final assessments in my year 11 class have all been handed in to me and the results are astounding. A boy who has never handed in a single assessment and just returned from suspension came and saw me at lunch on Thursday, and we worked through his assessment together piece by piece. He also told me that my class is the only class he doesn't "wopp" (an Aussie term for skipping class) and that I'm the only one who has ever made him feel like he could do something.

I also realized one of the main offenders who had been giving me a hard time, was struggling with his writing, and couldn't figure out what his greatest lesson in life was. Finally he figured out that his greatest lesson was to be a hard worker, because it taught him things other than just making money. When I asked him what kinds of other things he said "I don't know miss, like you have a lot of patience for teaching this class. We're hard. Nobody else would do this for us." He later apologized for acting the way he had last Friday, and we moved on from there, because I still believe in him.

Sometimes when people push you away, like my students for example, it's only because they've never really had anyone go to that length and effort to show them they are cared about. All you can really do is be there for people and hope they will also be there for you. Sometimes they might fight against you like my students did, but at some point they'll realize that you might actually be the one they need to get through it all.