My First Real Job

It was my first real job. I was working in an inner city high school in the very-far-from-South-Dakota-and-all-of-my-family-and-friends town of Bakersfield, California. It was a far cry from the school I am in now. We didn't have enough textbooks. I had to buy all of my own supplies, often providing paper and pencils for the students from my own pocketbook. We didn't even have enough desks. For a period of a couple of months the teacher next door to myself and I actually had to ferry a desk back and forth between our classes. One period I had more students, the next period he needed the desk.

We had our own security detail. Every day the security guards in their black polo shirts rode around on their mountain bikes or drove around in their little golf carts making sure that the students weren't up to no good. The campus of the high school was 45 acres, and we had 2500 students in grades 9-12. If a student wanted to go to the bathroom we had to phone the security office and ask for a guard to escort said child to and from the restroom, as they were always kept locked. The school had a high chicken wire fence all the way around it. No, we didn't have barb-wire on the top, but our little inmates were going to find it hard to escape between the locked gates and the security guards roaming about. It was a very interesting first job for the little farm girl from South Dakota. My eyes were opened up pretty wide that year.

We had a knifing, and I will never, ever forget the day that two boys broke into a major fight in my classroom. Silly me, at first I tried to get into the middle of it and then became afraid for my own life and had a student call the security guards to come and break it up. I am sure that I made it through the rest of that day on adrenaline alone, for that night I remember sitting in my living room sort of in a daze, shaking.

Those kids took so much energy. The first year of teaching is always tiring anyway. Figuring out lesson plans, deciding how to deliver those lesson plans, marking, second-guessing yourself...they all add up to make for very late nights and long days on your feet. Each day was different, depending on the mood of the kids. At first, they didn't trust me. They figured I didn't care about them, because not many people in their lives did. I was coaching grade 9 girls volleyball and I remember being horrified at the back talk they gave me and the language that I heard.

Slowly, things began to change. The girls on my team started to realize that I cared about them. I took a hard line with them, and didn't let them get away with the back talk. I didn't allow them to run the schedule, and I made strict rules for the team. At first, there was rebellion, but then they started to enjoy it. Kids crave boundaries. The more I teach, the more I realize that this is an absolute. Many of those same girls were in my classes, and I began to become their "homegirl" as they affectionately called me on the volleyball court. That transferred into the classrooms, and they began to show me respect there as well and it spread to the other students. It was like a virus, but a good one.

The classes began to settle down. Kids actually started to do their homework. I remember one project that I did with the kids for a novel study. We made up a whole chart that included number of pages read, how many students did their homework, marks received on tests and quizzes. Each category was worth a certain number of points and the class that had the most points at the end won a pizza party. It was amazing to watch the transformation. As they left the classroom they would be reminding each other to do their homework and they would get so excited to get their quizzes back to see how they had done. They began to feel pride in themselves.

It was a year that truly transformed my life. I learned what I was capable of. I went beyond the limits that I had set for myself so many years before. I learned that I could make a difference, even in the short span of a year.

I never meant to stay for just a year. Falling in love can change plans though. At the end of that year, I made a very difficult decision. I had to walk away. I knew that I needed to be closer to Kevin, so I moved. I moved thousands of miles away. I thought it would be easy to leave; it had been such a rough year. I will never forget the looks on my kids' faces when I told them. Some of my volleyball girls wouldn't even talk to me for awhile. They felt that I was abandoning them. My heart felt torn in two. I loved these kids, but I knew that in a few years, they would be gone. I loved Kevin more and I knew that God desired for us to be together. I did leave. I packed up all of my "teacher" stuff, I boxed up the projects they had done, I gave hugs, I had a party for them. In the end, they forgave me. They wished me luck with that "Canadian guy." They knew that I cared about them and I wouldn't forget them.

Last May, I thought about all of those kids. I looked back through my pictures and wondered about them. They would be graduating. How many of them had made it? Did they know that I still believed in them? Did they remember their grade 9 English teacher that tried so hard to make them feel pride in themselves, to feel a sense of worth?

I don't know the answer to that. I hope that they are doing well. I am not naive enough to believe that they all made it through, but I can hope. I still look at their pictures sometimes. I don't think you ever forget your first classes. If I look at them long enough, I can remember all of their names. I remember the funny stories they told, the jokes that we shared in class. I remember their tough exteriors, and their scared, sad hearts just crying out for someone to care about them.

Teaching is a gift. I have such an opportunity to be blessed. Each day young minds enter into my classroom. I get to see them change and grow before my very eyes. Lately, I have been contemplating my future. I've been thinking about getting my masters and wondering if teaching is something I want to do forever. As I look back over the last four and a half years, I realize how much joy this career has brought to me. I don't want to be anywhere else.

South High Rebels, I still miss you!