A Year in Review: Part 2

Well, this post is now approximately a month overdue, which may be a little indicative of how my life is going this year. I have already had my first week and a half of "school days" (minus students) of the upcoming school year, so before all of my limited brain space for remembering things fills up to the brim, I wanted to take a moment to reflect on the unexpected blessings of the past school year -- because, in the midst of the chaos, there were a lot of them.

1) Living in the city: This was not completely unexpected, but the influence of the city over my emotions definitely caught me a little off-guard. I think prior to this year, I would have said that I didn't care where I lived -- city, suburb, a more rural area -- as long as I was near close friends. The people were much more important than the location. And, while I still believe the previous statement, I think location did just get bumped up a couple of notches in my esteem. (As my brother would say, moving me slowly in the direction of misanthropy.) I love living in the city. I love being around people all the time. I love the easy access to all sorts of variety. I love the noise; it soothes me. I love the lights. I know this is nutty, but I caught myself, on a recent night-time drive out to the country to visit a friend, actually frightened because there weren't enough lights and people. I'm talking legitimately shaking, had to turn on my GPS so I felt like I had a friend in the car (hey, at least it talks to me!) kind of frightened. The thing that pulled me out of it was laughing at how, when most people talk about scary night-time driving, they're talking about driving into a crowded, urban area.

For the sake of full disclosure, I do need to admit that I still love my car and am scared of the bus system, which some of my friends maintain makes me still a suburbanite at heart. Fine, I'll admit I might be a late-comer to this love affair with the city, and I may not be fully a city-dweller yet, but I'm in the process of converting. Give me a few years. I'll catch up.

2) Middle schoolers: I wish I had a dollar for every time I've said, "I would love to teach elementary school or high school, but not middle school. I cannot love middle schoolers." Not only would I now be independently wealthy, but I'd also have visible proof (in the form of rooms full of dollar bills) of how unexpected my affection for my job has been. I hated middle school -- and I know you're saying, "Who didn't?," but I think I had more cause than most. In addition to my general awkwardness that remains my close companion to this day, middle-school-Sarah was also graced with glasses, braces, and thick bangs that I had no idea how to handle. Oh, and I wore pink stretch pants and teddy bear sweaters in a school where the uniform of choice was baggy pants and Fubu t-shirts. And don't even get me started on how I dealt with boys. I'm telling you, it was bad.

I wish, after that ridiculous tangent, that I could say I now get to relive middle school as a "cool kid." But, sadly, as my students remind me daily, I am still a huge dork. I am relatively convinced that, if I were one of their classmates, we would not be friends. But that's ok. My job is not to be their best friend. My job is to be a consistent adult in their life guiding them. And, while I did not fit with the baggy-jeans crowd, I fit into that role. I never imagined how much I would love talking to middle schoolers: they are at the point in their lives where they're starting to imagine who they will be as adults, and it's exciting to hear where they see themselves going. At the same point, they are just reaching that juncture; as we remind them on a regular basis, they are starting to make decisions (about education, money, relationships) that will inevitably and, in some cases, irrevocably change the course of their life, but they have not made all of those decisions yet. I get to talk to them about education, before they've made choices that limit their ability to go to college. I get to explain to them how credit card debt works before they're in it. I get to talk to them (gulp) about sex and relationships while they're still deciding what sex means and affirm to them that it's ok to wait. I also get to remind them, every day, that none of them are Romeo or Juliet (which they appreciate). :) One of my students said to me last year, "Ms. Stuntz, I gotta be honest, I don't know why you all [the teachers] do this job, because you don't get paid enough, and we have attitudes." Just in case some public policy official is reading this, she was right about the first part, and, for the record, the second part too, but I drove home that day incredibly thankful for the opportunity to hang out with her and be part of her life at this time.

There was a great quote from a middle school teacher in the New York Times a few years ago: "Middle school is like Scotch. At first you try to get it down. Then you get used to it. Then it’s all you order." I still don't like Scotch, but I get the sentiment, and I'm actually thankful that God plopped me back down in an environment that I vowed never to revisit again; funny how that works.

3) Struggling with my job: Lest I get too sentimental about last year, however, I need to acknowledge that I struggled more than I ever imagined I would with teaching. It was (and is) hard. Especially coming straight from college, I imagined that if I had been able to conquer graduate seminars and a senior thesis, I could surely conquer an 8th grade curriculum. Which left me in for a big surprise when, well, I couldn't. I struggled. I came into school early and left late; I graded and planned all day every Saturday; I am probably personally responsible for taking years off my mentor teacher's life with all my questions; and yet I could not get my class to be the engaging, inspiring, intellectually-stimulating place I wanted it to be. A lot of days, it felt more like a 50-minute holding cell where I tried to keep the kids from rebelling before the (much more engaging, inspiring, and intellectually-stimulating) math teacher came to take over for next period. I probably cried myself to sleep once a week for the first few months of school. I was convinced that I must just not have what it takes.

At first, I couldn't admit this to anyone (apart from my roommates, who, unfortuantely, witnessed the crying-fests). It was too humiliating: I had been saying for years that I felt "called" to be an inner-city school teacher. I had prayed for and received this amazing job offer at an incredible school. I had said that I wanted to be involved in inner-city education for the rest of my life. My identity was at stake.

And that, of course, was the problem. I finally broke down in October and admitted all this to my pastor and his wife, and asked, between snotty sobs (sorry, but you needed the full effect), if it was time for me to quit. All along, of course, I was secretly hoping that they'd either say, "Yes, because you are obviously so gifted in x other area that there's no reason to waste your talents suffering here," or, "No, we are sure that you're the most phenomenal teacher ever, and we secretly contacted your students and found out that your class is their favorite!" Shockingly, they said neither. Instead, they looked me in the eye, and said, "Maybe." In that moment, they forced me to deal with the fact that, well, I might not be good at my job. And that would be ok. After they said this to me -- and the world did not, spontaneously, implode -- I was forced to begin realizing how much of my identity was wrapped up in being successful, and especially being perceived as being successful. I was forced to start repenting of my desire to use service to others to glorify myself, as opposed to humbly acknowledging that I don't always serve others well and praying that God would work through my weakness. I was forced to begin realizing that Jesus' grace to me has nothing to do with my own innate wonderfulness; it is pure mercy.

I am still dealing with all of these things; in fact, I'd be lying to say they're still not significant struggles. But I'm thankful to have come out of this year having seen those things, having wrestled with them, and having stayed. I saw myself grow a lot as a teacher, and I'm excited to go back and be better. I know I will be better -- but I also will not be the best. And I think God has me there for a reason; as my pastor went on to say to me, "The fact that you're struggling is not in itself a reason to quit. It may be a reason to stay, because this is where God is showing you that you can't be self-reliant." It's a painful lesson, but it is absolutely true, and I'm thankful that God loves me enough to put me in a place where I'm learning it as opposed to allowing me to continue to be self-deceived about my own capabilities.

4) Singleness: Speaking of painful lessons...just kidding. :) I never imagined, growing up, that I would be single after college. Now, mind you, there was no phenomenal history of dating success in my life that would lead any outside observer to draw the same conclusion, but I was basing my plans on an older history. My parents had married very young, as had both of their parents, as had most of the adults I'd looked up to my whole life. I just figured I'd continue the trend.

And then, I haven't. I didn't get married straight out of college, nor was I in any position to. While I dated (at times pretty seriously) during college, I haven't dated much this year. I live with 2 (soon to be 4) other young single women in a city that is not exactly known as the mecca of single Christian men (the numbers in my church directory confirm that), and I work in a profession dominated by women. Not only am I off the beaten path; some days, I feel like I'm in a different universe.

There are many, many more complicated emotions that go along with this than I care to go into right now. But what's important, for the sake of this post, is that in the midst of grappling with the loss of my plan, I really have been thankful for the gifts God's given me by giving me this time. I love living with a bunch of girls. I never had a sister (and reminded my parents frequently of how detrimental this was to my development), and so I've loved both in college and now getting lots of time to spend with other women and seeing how much they have grown and shaped me. (Not just in teaching me to pluck my eyebrows, although that involved some significant shaping as well!) I've also been thankful for the time and flexibility that being single has allowed me; I got to travel a lot this year--to Honduras to visit my brother, to London and Paris with Shelley, to North Carolina and Virginia to see friends--and I would not necessarily have been able to take all of those trips if I were married now. I've also grown up a lot in the last few years, and while I know I could have learned some of these lessons alongside someone else, there are days when I'm grateful that whoever it is will not have to suffer quite as much of my insanity when he comes along as he would have had to if he'd appeared a few years earlier. There would be and are other blessings for my married friends, and I am excited for them, but I also have just been thankful for God's reminders of his provisions for me here and now, even if here and now is not where I wanted or expected to end up.

My high school math teacher told me once that I was destined to write a book; I think that might have been his gentle way of suggesting that my explanations for word problems were a tad too lengthy, but nevertheless I think I'm already half there with this blog post! :) Thanks if you made it all the way down here. Even if no one else reads this, it's helpful for me to take time to reflect like this.

Particularly when tomorrow is Monday...and we just discovered we're out of coffee. I am thankful. I'm just going to read everything I wrote above to remind myself of that.