The Centered Teacher

Preface As adults, we are expected to know how to cope with what comes our way, but what teachers face is very different from other professions. I never intended to become a monster who yelled at children and threw adult versions of temper tantrums, but it became a way of life. I despised who I was becoming and who I was. After four years of teaching, my heart and my desire to educate the next generation were completely shattered. My illusion of being an amazing educator disappeared into the abyss. I felt defeated and wounded. It has taken me years to heal the wounds that surfaced while I was a teacher. Crying every day should not be a rite of passage for new teachers. Feeling centered and empowered can be, though. How Inauthenticity Backfires After graduating from Stony Brook University with my bachelor’s degree and my teaching certificate, I obtained a position at a middle school in Park Slope, Brooklyn. I was assigned to teach sixth, seventh, and eighth grade humanities and creative writing, and oversee the school newspaper. I was up at five o’clock every morning and went to sleep around midnight in order to keep up with the grading and lesson planning, which took over the weekends as well. Self-care didn’t exist. I didn’t even know what that was back then. One of the math teachers would walk by my classroom door almost every morning and warn me that I was going to burn out. I refused to believe her, but after the third-year mark, I was burnt out. Luckily, my mentor helped me to attain a position as an English teacher at a high school in Long Island, and I saw this as an opportunity to start over. But the politics and realization that high school students were just middle school students in bigger bodies, and not necessarily more responsible, added to my disillusionment, sense of inadequacy, and feeling of incompetency. I ended up isolating myself because I was ashamed of my inability to be an engaging educator, and my lack of confidence and skills made me feel smaller and smaller. After my undergraduate studies, I was not prepared for the realities of teaching. I almost didn’t even go into teaching because of my dismal student teaching experiences. Sitting in a classroom and observing a teacher for hours upon hours did not help me to build by practice and prepare me for my own classroom. But after I enrolled in the English Education program at Teachers College, Columbia University for my master’s degree, while I was teaching full-time in Brooklyn, I was able to implement the curriculum I created in my graduate courses directly in my classroom, and I felt a sense of aliveness again. But that was short-lived because of behavior problems. But something shifted in my third year of teaching. The students were actually listening and responding to me instead of ignoring me. And I think it was because I let aspects of my personality come through. I went into teaching with the idea that I had to be a strict disciplinarian and that I had to exert my power in the classroom; I did not know that being inauthentic would backfire. When teachers go into the classroom centered, grounded, and focused, students pick up on this energy. But when they go in feeling doubtful, insecure, and scattered, the students pick up on this too. It’s crucial that teachers enter the classroom centered. Healing Teaching Wounds I eventually became certified as a meditation teacher and found that meditation and going inward are powerful ways to heal the heart. I feel like I have healed many of the wounds that surfaced while I was teaching, and my hope is to prevent future teachers from feeling such wounds and help current teachers feel more empowered.