“AS LONG AS WE LEAVE WITH TEN FINGERS AND TEN TOES”
“Two years ago I got unexpectedly very, very sick (….) There was a about a year where I was extremely ill, trying to teach. I did not take a leave. (…) I truly had so much support from my colleagues at that time. If I needed to leave the room at any given time, I knew I could just yell down the hallway and someone would come, and I could take care of what I needed to take care of. If I was out sick, people would give me their lesson plans. But, honestly, it also taught me—it's not that serious, if they leave with ten fingers and ten toes, you know?
“I'm very lucky that I have administrators that I know will back me. I am very lucky that I have colleagues that I know will back me. But at the end of the day, this is my job. It is a big part of my personality. It's a big part of who I am, but it's also my job. I made two parent phone calls this afternoon already and I'm not going to beat myself up about what I could have done differently to stop this child from doing this thing. I tried my best and I'll try again tomorrow. My math lesson did not go well. My kids are at reading at second grade reading levels. We'll try again tomorrow.”
“Being sick and having that happen really changed my perspective. It'll be fine. As long as we leave with ten fingers and ten toes—and even if we don't. I've had kids break ankles out on the playground—it's going to happen. Nothing that I do is going to make or break them. I'm blessed that I'm in 4th grade. They have all this other time to continue. I will give everything I can to them, but if my math lesson was bad that day, it's not going to make or break them.”
“Some days I go home crying because of something that happened, or how I wish something went a different way. Yes, teachers are so important, but I think there's also that superhuman narrative around us, whereas I'm just a human. If I need to take a day off to go to the doctor to take care of my health, that's more important.”
“I personally had an epiphany lying in a hospital bed. My principal says a lot, ‘Every single kid in this room has someone who loves them and wants the best for them.’ I'm not there. I'm not the most important person in their life.”
“They'll be with me for a hundred and eighty days and I'll love them for a hundred and eighty days, and I'll try my best for a hundred and eighty days. And I'll answer the parent emails, and I'll do the point sheets and the PBIS and the clip sticks and all of those things. And then maybe they'll remember my name in twenty years. Probably not. Most of them won't remember me. They'll remember that crazy lady who made them sing all the time.”
“As long as it's not a life-threatening mistake, if I make a mistake or if something happens or if the kids are disrespectful, it's not about me. They don't care about me in the long run. If a kid's talking back to me and calling me names and being disrespectful, it's literally just because I'm there. It's not because they hate me, which took a really long time to figure out.”
“I'm going to a concert on a school night in a few months. I do those things and I just have to be okay with (…) sometimes my slides are not going to be cute, my math lesson might just be from the book. But it's going to be okay.”
“They'll survive. We'll do it tomorrow.”
“Every day doesn't have to be perfect for it to be productive.”
“AT THIS POINT I FEEL CONFIDENT ENOUGH”
“I think high school is a little bit harder. Yes, these kids could throw something at me, but I'm (…) not putting myself in harm's way. So I don't have to worry about that.”
“At this point I feel confident enough that I could handle almost anything. I've been run through the gamut. If somebody slams my door and walks out of my room because they're angry, (…) I've done this a hundred times—I know I know what to do. I follow my school protocols, and if I'm following protocol, that's all I can do.”