Feeling down (but not out) in the last week of school.
Well, it is the last week of school, and I am not finishing the year on a high note. We did a literacy test for all the SK students last week. (It is mandated by the government of Ontario.) The results came back, and they don’t make me look very good as a teacher. Also last week, one of my SK students showed me a card that she made for her mom. The few words that she had written were misspelled, and some of the letters were backwards. It made me think that I failed her as a teacher.
I could blame my circumstances. I have 9 SKs and 18 JKs. I spend a lot of time breaking up fights, mopping up pee, and acting as a mediator for kids who don’t speak English. The JKs took up a lot of my time and attention this year. And even among the SK students there were some kids who were very hard to manage.
But I can’t deny responsibility. It is on me. I didn’t do as well as I had hoped to this year. The paradox is that I was more confident than I have ever been as a teacher. I felt like I was more in control. I thought that I knew what I was doing. But the results didn’t reflect that. It isn’t hard for me to realize why: being more confident meant that I didn’t ask for as much help. In my first year of teaching kindergarten, I literally had no idea what I was doing. But I prayed a lot and spent a lot of time quietly reflecting on things. In my second year, also, I prayed all the time for help. This year my ego started growing and I no longer felt so clueless. So, I rarely prayed to God to help me as a teacher. I didn’t pray as much, in general. And the results weren’t good.
But I am not sad. It is humbling, but it doesn’t hurt. God doesn’t need to hurt us to teach us lessons. We usually hurt ourselves. God’s lessons are blessings.
Sure, I wallowed in self-pity for an hour or two after I got the literacy results. But then, instead of thinking of my failures, I started to think about the times when things did go well for me. And, it was easy to see the pattern: when I prayed for help, things went well. When I tried to take everything onto myself, things did not.
It is hard to find pointers on what to do as a kindergarten teacher. The internet is full of ideas, but very few of them work. Most of the stuff I find online is from people who no longer teach, but instead just try to sell worksheets online. One day while sifting through the crap online I realized something profound: God is the greatest kindergarten teacher. He has to be. God knows everything that every kindergarten teacher has ever done, and he knows how well it has worked or not worked. Every idea that a kindergarten teacher has ever had exists in the mind of God. He is the perfect kindergarten teacher. So, why do I need to try to be perfect? Why would I try to learn and master all of that myself? I am so limited in what I can do. God is unlimited. Why not just hand the reins over to him?
One day I realized, halfway through the day, that I had nothing planned for a 40 minute period after lunch recess. I was sick, busy, and I couldn’t keep up with planning. So, I prayed to God for help. He didn’t drop a lesson plan out of the sky. I didn’t see any writing in the clouds. Nor did he whisper anything into my ear. But when we got back into the classroom I went into autopilot. I went to a math resource website and pulled up a lesson and it worked very well. And, while I was showing it to the kids, I saw some items in our class that would work as a hands-on learning experience. It all came together as if I had carefully planned everything out.
God doesn’t need us to be great at anything. He is the best. He doesn’t need us. Our goal in life is not to succeed at worldly tasks. We are here to grow, learn, and let go. We are children of God. We are sparks of his flame. He wants us to be whole again, in him, and with him. He is our other half.
Our school went to Mass last week. Everyone was there. My class looked like a stormy sea. The little kids couldn’t sit still. It was funny to see. The priest read the Gospel passage where Jesus tells us that we need to be humble like children. Children are dependent. They need their adults for everything. And that is how God tells us to be. We want to be the adults, the ones in power. But that is not what we are here for. It is a paradox. I have a wife and a baby on the way. I take care of 28 kids during the day. I need to be strong. I need to be in control. But the truth is that if I want to be good at what I do, I need to consider myself incapable of doing it well. I need to be humble enough to let God help me. I am really a child of God. That is my real job. That is my purpose. And only with his help can I be good at my other jobs, like teaching and being a husband.
There is more that I’d like to write. But I will keep it short this week because I am out of gas. Three more days of school and then I can relax. Next year I must remember to work with God each and every day. And for right now, I need to remember all the good that happened this year. I probably did better than I thought.