A New Voice
In her poem “The Journey,” Mary Oliver begins with:
“One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice —
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles. . .”
“What We Can Become” is a group of teachers with hope. We have a shared passion for education. We are exhausted, but we persist. We know there is a great deal to learn from our past, and we continue to move toward a better future. There are many people to listen to along the way, and many people to ignore. If we listened to all the negative noise about teachers and education, we would drown. We must value our own humanity, and in turn, value the humanity in our students. One of WWCB’s design principles is: “Curriculum engages students and educators in a belief in their own humanity and the humanity of others.” If we put humanity in the forefront of all our classroom practices, a healthy community can be formed to engage in both culturally relevant pedagogies and youth-adult partnerships.
I am currently taking some time away from teaching to pursue my master’s degree. My plan, and hope, is that by taking this time for myself to build on my education, observe, listen, and reflect, I’ll be ready to return to the classroom with a renewed sense of purpose and energy.
The more time I spend away from the classroom, and the more I read, observe, listen, discuss, and reflect, the more I remember that along with the role of teacher comes the role of advocate. It’s time to speak up, and call things out. It’s been time.
Who am I advocating for? My students, of course. Who I else am I advocating for? The teachers. My friends. To be fully present, we need shared humanity. We need support. We need love. I hear countless examples these past few months of administrators telling teachers “and remember to take of yourselves.” These words often come along with a list of 17 new initiatives to add onto their plates. It’s infuriating. As a result, teachers are left exhausted, frustrated, and defeated. . . and then they are told to practice self-care, and it makes them bitter.
The middle of Mary Oliver’s “The Journey” gives imagery to this type of exhaustion. She writes:
“. . .It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.”
Some teachers skip lunch, either because they’re busy with work, or their stomachs are tied in knots with the overwhelm of the day. Some teachers are sleep-deprived, because they stay up late planning or grading, or they wake up at 4:00 am worried and anxious about school. I’m not judging those behaviors. I’ve been there, more times than I can count.
The truth is, we know self-care is essential if we are going to survive in this profession. I’m not talking about the surface-level, toxically positive types of self-care like treating yourself to a pumpkin spice latte. I mean real self-care. A run, maybe, if that’s your thing. I’m a new runner, and I’ve surprised myself each time I run with what I’ve accomplished, creating a new sense of self. It’s real self-care. In his book, What I Talk About When I Talk About Running, Haruki Murakami writes: “Running every day is a kind of lifeline for me, so I’m not going to lay off or quit because I’m busy. If I used being busy as an excuse not to run, I’d never run again. I have only a few reasons to keep on running, and a truckload of them to quit. All I can do is keep those few reasons nicely polished” (73). What is that thing for you, that you know is good for you but you “don’t have time.” What is it? Is it a long conversation with a friend over beer, or coffee? Is it art? Is it music?
One of my things is the Writing Project. It was first introduced to me as a “professional home,” and that’s what I’ve felt from day one. We write. We think. We talk. We listen. We advocate for our students, each other, and ourselves.
As Mary Oliver says so beautifully at the end of “The Journey”:
“. . .little by little,
as you left their voice behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world. . .”
