Tough Transitions

When I logged on to my blog, I’m pretty certain I could hear the crickets are chirping. Loudly.

I’ve been so quiet because this summer and school year have taken a different turn than I expected, and quite honestly, I’ve had a hard time being positive about it all. I can’t imagine anyone still reads this anymore, but I felt the need to write it all down so I could come back to it down the road and remember what I learned from this experience.

Last November, I had a conversation with our school leadership team about taking over as the Math Instructional Coach for the 2014 - 2015 school year. I had immediate reservations - my passion is teaching children, not adults, and I had no experience doing anything else. I was overwhelmed at the idea of taking on the responsibility for now 4 grade levels of curriculum and data, when my experience in Tennessee has only been in the 6th grade. I felt inadequate and unprepared and uninvested in this new role.

The more I thought about it, though, the more reservations I had about not taking the role, if only for selfish reasons - if I didn’t do it, someone else would come in and take over the math department. Someone else would be telling me what to do, and potentially that someone else didn’t have the same vision for our kids and our curriculum that I had worked so hard to build. Eventually, I agreed to take the job and started my new role officially in the second week of June.

I had no idea what I had gotten myself into.

It was a rough transition, starting with only one week off after an exhausting school year. The summer was filled with curriculum work that I didn’t know I had signed up for, including writing comprehensive assessments and foundational curricular documents for two grade levels, one of which I had no experience teaching. I was spinning my wheels for 12, 14, sometimes 18 hours a day, often feeling like I had no idea what I was doing with little faith in the quality of the work I was producing. There were nights I couldn’t sleep because I was so anxious, so I’d stop trying to fight it, bring my laptop in bed, and keep working until it was time to get up.

I felt unsuccessful, unsupported, and unfulfilled for those first few weeks in June and July, and it only got worse when we started planning for teachers’ arrival. I had no idea what it meant to “coach” teachers, especially around curriculum I wasn’t familiar with, and I had a crop of brand new teachers coming in who were going to need support in ways that were out of my comfort zone. I was still planning curriculum, but now I was also trying to plan and deliver professional development sessions, meet with teachers to help them design their first set of unit plans, lesson plans, and vision documents, and then provide feedback on their final products.

In the meantime, I was struggling to maintain a relationship with my best friend in Nashville, who became my boss with the new role (spoiler alert: this attempt was unsuccessful), and just generally take care of myself. I was unhappy both personally and professionally, and there was no end in sight.

When school started and kids arrived, I felt the ache of not being in the classroom immediately. As I watched my teachers do what I love, I was jealous and heartbroken. My primary responsibilities were observing and coaching teachers in their classrooms, meeting with them once a week to develop instructional practices, and continuing to develop network-wide assessments, none of which were fully satisfying to me. I was being developed in a way that didn’t feel particularly relevant or meaningful, and was often being treated in a way that was unsettling. I think it’s safe to say my parents were worried about me, and while I was certainly unhappy, I also knew that being unhappy with a solid job, a place I love, and a couple of really great friends in Nashville, TN is way better than the mental state I was in 3 years ago in North Carolina.

While this is not the most uplifting post in the world, it was my reality for the better part of the first semester. Like everything else, it was a huge learning experience, and I’ve come to appreciate the insight I’ve gained from struggling to figure out this new role. Potentially one of my favorite parts about this job is that it has allowed me to step back and really investigate what it takes to be a great teacher - my ultimate goal - and even practice some of those skills in isolation. I’ve seen my teachers develop some amazing habits and celebrated successes with them and their students (that’s another one of my favorite parts - I know all 400+ students in the building because I spend so much time in classrooms). I’ve built relationships with my teachers that have translated into mutual respect and genuine passion for our content and our kids. I’ve had time and space to learn how to develop curriculum that is way more aligned and rigorous than I’ve written in the past. And perhaps the most surprising benefit has been a healthier work-life balance - after surviving an incredibly brutal summer and first few months of school, I’ve figured out how to manage my time so that I rarely take work home and don’t have to arrive at school before the sun rises. In fact, one of my New Years resolutions is to get involved in hobbies outside of work, now that I have the capacity to do so.

There is so much to be grateful for, and although it was very hard to see in the moment, this transition and these challenges have made me a better teacher and a better version of myself. I am proud of the work I've done thus far, but I'm very much looking forward to the opportunity to continue to grow and eventually get back to what I love to do most - teaching kiddos. Fingers crossed that will be an option in the next year.