The Educator

In August of 2009, after having been a stay-at-home mom and a part-time job hopper for 18 years, I applied for a full-time job within the public school system. I had been told that the position involved working with children who struggled with reading, and as I loved books, I was excited about this new prospect. During the interview, I was informed that I had been misinformed. The principal who was conducting the interview said that they were looking for someone to work with students who needed help with math. Thankfully, my poker face did not let me down. I smiled enthusiastically despite memories of hearing the distinct sound of a nun’s ruler hitting the top of a desk.

To say it was a challenge being back among people who were dressed for success is an enormous understatement. I had spent nearly two decades feeding my children with fresh food from our garden, making sure they had nice clothes to wear and, on most days, listening to them with empathy when they felt that the world was unfair. Consequently, with my attention directed elsewhere, I had become a back-burner project dressed in second-hand clothing. I had no idea what the cool kids of my own generation were wearing now.

Without a college degree and the means to earn more than the cost of daycare, returning to work made little sense in the earliest years. As my children grew and started school, it was wonderful having the flexibility to chaperone field trips and volunteer in the classroom. I had spent a full decade at my former job listening to sleep-deprived mothers cry when they had to leave their sick children with whoever was available because they were out of sick time and had no other choice. Life was dictating that they be at work, but their hearts were telling them that  they were needed elsewhere. It was hard to watch the struggle and sadness they felt, and their heartache influenced my priorities. Fast-forward to me buying my clothes at thrift stores and driving cars that needed praying over before we left the driveway. Admittedly life was challenging, but I have always been thankful that fate dealt me this particular hand because, as isolating as being a stay-at-home mom felt at times, I truly loved those years.

In my new job as a paraprofessional, I was able to start over with learning about numbers. Having been a child who struggled with math, I had the kind of empathy and patience that I never would’ve had teaching struggling readers. The district I worked in had an excellent math specialist who taught me how to identify gaps in knowledge and showed me various techniques that I could use to bridge those gaps. Unlike a small handful of teachers who liked to remind me that I did not have a degree, he never talked down to me. He instilled confidence in me, and he was the first person who helped me see that even without a college education, I could make a difference in a student’s life. As I applied these new concepts while working with students for whom numbers did not make sense, I also began thinking about numbers differently. My own early struggles made me realize how necessary it was to find unique ways to present a concept whenever information refused to stick for students. Every part of what I was learning fascinated me. I asked for recommendations and devoured books on teaching early math skills, finally realizing that contrary to what I had always believed, I was not stupid. Like the students that I was working with, I just needed to be taught in a different way.

As it turns out, you can teach an old dog new tricks. At the age of 50, learning better strategies created new pathways in my own brain and I began thinking about numbers in new ways. I had always hated being the person who handled the money at our family garage sales. Inevitably, someone would dump a pile of things on the table, announce the total owed, and stare at me as my brain stayed stuck in neutral. They would then tap the table impatiently as I wrote down each item and began the arduous task of tallying up their purchases. It was sweat-inducing misery that was hardly worth the twenty bucks. I will never forget the first garage sale we had after I started helping children with math. I now understood mental math and could calculate things quickly and accurately. It felt like that moment in the movie The Karate Kid when Daniel LaRusso realized that all of the tasks his teacher Mr. Miyagi had given him had an actual purpose, and everything he had learned fell brilliantly into place. The garage sale shopper’s items went into a bag in record time and, like Daniel, I felt the pieces align as if they had been meant to fit this way all along.

As someone who did not have the confidence to go to college, I have spent most of my life feeling less-than. Negative attitudes about higher education were part of a family dynamic that slowly and adeptly diminished my self-worth. During my 20s and 30s, meeting new people frequently involved a question I dreaded. Where did you go to college? The answer was always an awkward litany of excuses. I became an expert at changing the subject. Ironically, from age 19 to 28, I had the opportunity through my employer to take free college classes at the local university. My boss at the time repeatedly tried to convince me to sign up for classes. Even though I could not see that my potential went far beyond operating a switchboard and greeting clients, he could see that I was capable of so much more. What he did not realize, however, was how foreign academia was to me. University language – Provost, Registrar, Dean, syllabus, transcript – was outside of my understanding. I was too proud, and too embarrassed, to be honest with him. He would have literally had to drive me to the appropriate offices and sign me up. He would have had to take me to my first class and shove me in the door. Even then, I’m not sure that would have been enough.

In 2009, at my daughter’s high school Honors Night, I spoke with her English teacher after the awards ceremony. Despite my daughter having just received the English Award, I asked her teacher if she thought Justine would be successful in college. It was a sincere question. I knew my daughter was smart, but I did not understand how smart someone needed to be to do well in college. She smiled and said, reassuringly, “Justine belongs in academia.” I don’t think anyone has ever spoken more beautiful words to me about my daughter. I stood there fighting back tears that were a mixture of relief and elation. Her words were confirmation that I had not passed on my idiot genes to her. Two years later, when my son was presented with the English Award, I again breathed a sigh of relief that said more about what I’d always believed about myself than it did about either of them.

One of the interview questions I was asked when I applied for my first post-motherhood job was one that I had not expected. “Tell me about something you’re proud of that does not involve your family or children.” At that point, only my daughter had won the English Award, but I was not willing to accept that I’d had no part in her success. I am convinced that nature plays a greater part than nurture in terms of who we become. I am not willing, however, to dismiss my or any other person’s contributions as having been instrumental in the development of a child. I sat up a little straighter and told the principal that my daughter had just won the English Award. I told him that I had spent years reading to her daily, telling her stories well beyond the age that it was necessary because she could read fluently on her own. I told him that instilling a love of reading and an appreciation for literature in my children was my greatest accomplishment. I’m not sure what kind of an answer he was expecting, but his qualifier of not including my children in something I was proud of seemed dismissive of all the times I could have said ‘just read to yourself’ but did not. There were numerous times when my children had to wake me up mid-story when my semi-conscious brain had leapt from whatever I was reading to reciting a list of grocery items I needed to buy the following day. I was dead tired, but I was not about to let this bedtime ritual go. It felt important because it was important.

As I write this, we are two weeks away from seeing the familiar yellow school buses back out on the roads. Once again, educators with and without advanced degrees will be returning to the classroom after a much-deserved break to recharge their batteries and to take on the incredibly taxing job of educating the next generation. I applaud their resolve to continue in a career that no longer garners the respect that it should. And now, with Artificial Intelligence creating even greater challenges for educators, I’m convinced that the children’s story Pinocchio should be made part of every curriculum. The world seems to have forgotten what can happen when we devalue actual work and follow along blindly. AI has become an invisible boat that is headed to Pleasure Island, waiting for children who will make great donkeys if they would just climb aboard instead of doing the hard work of thinking. I truly don’t know how educators persevere under these thankless conditions. They do the heavy lifting so that the rest of us will, hopefully, not have to live in a world filled with people who cannot reason or think critically.

So, here’s to all of the educators who make it their life’s work to teach not only the academic lessons, but the equally important lessons of honesty, integrity, and accountability. No matter what degrees you do or do not hold, each of you have an important role to play whether you’re on the playground or in the science lab. From Pre-K to the halls of our best universities, the village is needed now more than ever.