“We screw up royally by making people feel they don’t have a mighty important role in contributing to their children’s education,” she says. “Don’t do it by assimilating children into a language in such a way that they’ve got to put aside their native language to succeed in school. We do that at our peril.”

“What do teachers need to know?” she asks. “They need to know how a language is learned, what role they’ve got to play in supporting it, how languages work and how they differ. It’s akin to a school of medicine turning out doctors who’ve never had a course in anatomy. You just wouldn’t do that.”

-Lily Wong Fillmore, San Francisco Chronicle (July 18, 2004)

There is a high that comes from meaningful, purposeful self-exertion. Call it adrenaline, a runner’s high – whatever you want. It is found in that moment, whether at 3AM or 1PM, when you are simultaneously exhausted and exhilarated; eyes are demanding to be closed while the mind is saying, “Yes! Keep going!” It is in these moments when I am most glad to be a new teacher; when all the tension and stress I experience feels meaningful and purposeful. I am driven to live in those moments.

And yet there are times when stress is all but meaningful and compelling. I recently experienced this when I was on the verge of my very first “teacher cry”. I had expected that time to come as a result of being aggravated over a child’s behavior, or because of those ever-frequent, gut-sinking moments when you see your inadequacies. Nope. I was blind-sided — It was because of another teacher.

During my first year teaching, last year, I was a push-in, so now, as a classroom teacher, I try to make as many accommodations as I can for all my push-ins. Of course, compared to me, they are all veterans and clearly know how to make themselves comfortable in any room.

One of these teachers, we’ll call her Gina, comes to my classroom a few times a week to work with a group of students on basic skills in math while I work with my students on writing or social studies, or through a read aloud. (It’s sort of like a push-in-out model, if you will.) Right away it became clear she has a very different style than mine from the moment that she asked to be given students who “speak English” (I have an ESL class). She is quick to anger and quick to yell, never asking a child to “please stop” doing something. At first, I was uncomfortable with this and was upset with the children because I felt her having to yell at them reflected my inexperience and their taking advantage of it. Plenty of other teachers in September, would tell me my students talk too much, or call out a lot. So, I tried, as I do with all teachers, to learn and see what she was noticing and what she expected of my students and if this was something I ought to be doing.

However, it soon became clear that this was not simply a case of new teacheritis.

She had come to my class, as always, and took her students to a group of student desks. One of those desks belonged to Julio, a small, 7-year-old whose voice rarely raises above a whisper, who was working with me and the rest of the class in writing. He told me he had not had a chance to get his writers notebook, so I went over and asked Gina if he could get it, and she obliged.

After working with a group of students, I went back to Julio and realized I needed to see the graphic organizer he had been using last week to organize his information.

It was in his folder. In his desk. Where Gina was.

The moment Julio went over to his desk, Gina’s bellicose voice roared, filling the classroom. I can barely remember her words. “WHAT? THIS IS RIDICULOUS,” her torrent began. Twenty-two pairs of eyes flitted, silently, between she and I.

“It’s not his fault. I asked him to get a paper that he didn’t realize he was going to need,” I said, urged to reply by Julio’s reddening, wet face.

Grudgingly and with angry mumbles, she shifted and let Julio get his paper.

As he returned to me, sobbing, I said — loud enough to her if she tried — “It’s not your fault, Julio. You did nothing wrong. I told you to go over there. You did nothing wrong.”

I felt my own face grow red and I had to fight back tears. Children at Julio’s table quickly volunteered to help him combine his graphic organizer notes into coherent sentences in his story — and get his mind off what had just happened.

I may be a new classroom teacher. I may not have two full years of experience, never mind 40 years. But in the starkness of this moment, I learned something valuable. It doesn’t make me weak that I say, “please,” or that, in everything I do, I make it clear to my students that I respect them. That mistakes and questions are okay – especially if we learn from them.  That my authority is not arbitrary, even if it may be imposed on them.

Yes, I am strict. Yes, I yell. I probably even embarrass them when I do. But, like the stress and pain and exhaustion I live through day in and day out, it is meaningful. It is always something we all must learn from. Yelling, like everything else, has to serve an educational purpose.

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Epilogue

As I fought back tears and gritted my teeth, the period ended and I realized it was time for me to go meet with my supervisor for my post-observation meeting (I was observed last week). My first one as a classroom teacher. I was terrified and, now, already on the verge of falling apart, crying. So I gathered my things and quickly walked over to her office, trying to cool down.

I won’t recount every part of this meeting – except for the most meaningful and relevant moment.

Overall, she made it clear that I am a new teacher, that I am learning and many of my weaknesses or mistakes will come from time and experience and she said she had no doubt I would master many of those things.

Then she commented on how she doesn’t see management problems; I have a lot of routines and such in place that she likes (I know this, too, because she has encouraged other teachers to incorporate them!). She complimented how I have control over the students at the meeting area, and she noticed how, from how they participated during and after the lesson, that it is okay in our class to take chances, make mistakes and ask questions.

Then, she said she liked how I got right down on the floor, or right next to the students, when working with them. She said this was a subtle strength many teachers lack. My mind went still. She added how too many teachers don’t like getting close to the children. This, she said, showed I have a great rapport with the kids and this was a real strength.

A real strength. Something that comes naturally to me is actually useful to my profession. Wow.

Until she said that, I was simply angry at Gina, and at her ever-condescending, anti-child demeanor.  And a part of me had blamed my inexperience because it had given room to her “taking control”. But, in listening to my supervisor, I realized that it wasn’t so simple as me being inexperienced. While that is true, and I make plenty of mistakes, I am creating a certain atmosphere and culture in my room that is a key part — indeed strength! – of how I teach.

This has given me the courage to try to respectfully make clear the boundaries in my room for how other teachers will be expected to talk to my students.