Struggle

I taught my first college class today. Freshman Composition at Kingsborough Community College, a charming little campus facing the water at the end of Brooklyn. I have had a lot of anxiety about my new job and the switch to teaching college even though I know I am very qualified and capable of doing so. Transitions simply do not come easy for me, and I have been trying to process why I have felt slightly weepy all week. Today I figured it out.

Today went like this:

In the hour before class I ran into FIVE students from Cobble Hill (the high school where I had taught for the last 10 years). That was reassuring--like I was still home in some way--and made me feel grounded. Good start.

Then I went to my classroom to set up. The smartboard worked. The kids came (mostly) on time. They were sweet, engaged, and responded to my sense of humor. I could not believe how diverse they were; it was a Noah's Ark slice of New York City: a few Black kids, a few White kids, a few Asian kids, one kid back from Bangladesh, some tan supermodel-looking girl who went to a female military school (what?), a girl in hijab...It was like the United Nations in my classroom. They were all lovely. And intriguing. I am so excited to teach them.

I taught for 2 hours. Easily.

Then I got in my car and cried.

Why?

Because it was easy. Because I felt so appreciated, respected, and given the benefit that I knew what I was doing by these students. And I realized that I have been on the verge of tears all week while starting this new job because everyone--students, colleagues, the IT guy--just expect that I am competent. I have received more compliments on my resume, my interviewing process, and my work in the last couple of weeks than I had ever heard in my ten years of teaching. I have been told how certain individuals at the New Community College fought to get me an interview because they knew I was the "perfect" fit for the job although others doubted me due to my lack of college teaching experience. I was given a computer of choice, a bag of office supplies (although I had my own, which all have my name on them written hugely in white-out in case anyone ever tried to steal them from my classroom), and a warm welcome. It has been mind-blowing.

And it's so hard to explain how much these gestures hurt me. I didn't realize how much I had been broken by the lack of appreciation I was constantly fed while teaching in such a hard school for so many years. You simply get used to being treated like shit, even when you are considered one of the "good" teachers by the administration, the Network, and other higher-up individuals. There's such a deficit approach to teachers right now--they are seen as all lacking in myriad ways and that's why kids are failing--but I hadn't realized how much I had internalized it and how much it had really destroyed me as a person. I feel like I have been grieving all week in some strange way.

The struggles that teachers in inner city schools face are impossible to describe to anyone who hasn't walked in their shoes. Every small thing becomes a struggle in that environment, and while the successes feel even greater when they are surrounded by such insurmountable struggle, they day-to-day of the system that created that environment does eat away at you. I am only just realizing that.

Which makes this new job very bittersweet.