When I was really struggling, back in March, I spoke to a friend of mine about how to get back on course before all was lost. Nobody joins up to be a mediocre teacher, and I was really failing at my job. He mentioned that I had 90 days or so (fewer really, with weekends and finals and such) to change the trajectory of this episode of my students' lives. It went unsaid that it would be the defining struggle of my first year, and rightly so.
He said that as teachers, we must carry with us the ghosts of the students we leave behind; whether it is because of our own shortcomings or the vague cruelties of circumstances outside our control, our students' failures are our burden. To be a teacher here is to be haunted by the prospect of squandered lives and the honest shame of promises left unfulfilled. I am no exception.
I consider myself lucky in that I turned things around. I never looked back after that conversation and then went out and saved my Chemistry class. The ghosts are still here though; I lost a student at the beginning of the year and I saw a memorial to him at the riverfront just two weekends back. We are the ones who will remember him, and you can't really turn that kind of memory off.
It's finally about time to get back to work. Thanks for the comments (I was so pumped; thanks for reading and staying involved! Dried mangoes are not human skin!) and stay well until next time.
Congratulations on turning around the outlook of your class! It's much harder to change course late in the school year once everyone has become comfortable with the habits established early on, so that's a major achievement. I hope that, in spite of the ghosts and failures, you got a lot of positive experiences out of the school year as well.
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