Change, Doubt and Restoration

Thirty years, five different schools, too many rooms and class changes to count, and a few thousand students. Yeah… that is really weird for me to think about. More than 100 students coming through my classes every year for thirty years. I’m a math teacher, but the math still seems wrong. Of course, the thirty years seems a bit mind boggling as well. So many things have changed over the years…

It is hard to believe that it has been thirty years since I walked into my first science classroom in Selma, CA hoping just to survive and not do too much damage to the students unfortunate enough to land in my room. Now I find myself on the other end of the teaching experience spectrum. Middle school students are no longer intimidating, but I still often worry about the quality of my teaching. 

Change will do that - make you question what you do. Some of that is good, of course. Without change and questioning we don’t grow and mature. But often change, especially when there is too much, too fast and change you don’t believe in, can simply be a catalyst for growing a healthy dose of doubt.  

For the past few years the one thing that has been constant in my job is change. My schedule changed each year, not just what I was teaching, but where I was teaching. I changed rooms then moved out of my room completely, to nowhere, and became a roving teacher, teaching in other classrooms, but not having a space of my own. In the midst of my displacement, state standards changed, curriculum changed, policies and practices changed, promises of what would be changed, and teachers I worked most closely with changed. Some of the changes were gradual, but many were abrupt and temporary, meaning they just led to another change. Most disheartening, was that many were changes I didn’t believe in and they were out of my control, but I was expected to live in them anyway.

The changes led to frustrations and the frustration led to doubt. I doubted myself as a teacher and began to wonder whether I was still doing the right thing. The changes and subsequent doubt became a distraction and I felt ineffective. I began to ask myself if I had just become that grumpy old teacher that I never wanted to be. In my doubt, I lost my way and lost sight of what I believed most strongly about teaching, that all the standards, all the curriculum, all the strategies, all the theories, are mostly irrelevant without good relationships with students.

I made the decision to get into teaching, like almost every other teacher I know, because I believed I could have a positive influence on students. I wanted to be a role model and a mentor. I wanted to show them that integrity matters. I wanted to demonstrate the value of education, the joy of learning and the satisfaction of enduring temporary discomfort for the sake of a long-term payoff. I wanted to build the kind of relationships with students where they could look back on and say, “I remember Mr. Wayenberg - he made a difference.” That  is why I started teaching. It is my conviction that is the reason all good teachers start teaching.

Over the past few years I lost sight of all that. Struggling with the changes (and in some cases fighting them) became a distraction. I lost my grip on what I have always believed matters most. 

At the end of the last school year my principal called me into his office to talk about yet another change to my schedule. This one was different though. It was change initiated by confidence. It was confidence in who I had been as a teacher, not confidence in what was hoped I would become. It was my principal expressing confidence in who I already was as a teacher, not an expectation that I would be something different. It was confidence that what I had to offer was good and needed. It was confidence that I did not need more training, I just needed to be the teacher that I already was. 

There is a lot of empty praise in education and after thirty years I have gotten good, I think, at sorting out the B.S. from the genuine compliment. The expression of confidence from my principal felt very genuine and it was a huge blow to the doubt that had been choking my spirit, but it was just one big whack at the trunk of the tree. Entering the year I still had doubts. I was reinvigorated and refocused, but I still wondered if I was just getting too old to really build effective relationships with students. Doubt doesn’t die easily.

A funny thing happened, though, as the year moved along - I started having fun! I complained less when I came home form work. I slept good at night. I didn’t drag myself to work. I had students who had been problems the year before, who I actually enjoyed having in my class, and they didn’t seem to mind, too much, being there either. I continued to used archaic methods of teaching, but I did what I always believed was most important - I tried to build positive relationships with my students. Several students, especially my 8th graders, responded by giving back. Even if they didn’t realize what they were doing, they ended up investing into me. As a result, they helped chip away at the doubt and restore my confidence in what I believed to be right all along - positive relationships are the most important aspect of teaching and the second most important isn’t even close.

The final blow to my doubt came from two incredible students, who deemed me worthy of this.

It was like a final confirmation and a restoration of hope and faith in what I had been doing. It was the final piece of the puzzle that made me whole again as a teacher and made me believe that I still have much to offer my students, even in my old age. It assured me that God can still use me here and there is still purpose to what I do. 

One day later I sat in a meeting where I was reminded of my shortcomings following certain procedures and protocols. We looked at data and charts and graphs wondering why certain numbers looked the way they do. We wondered how we could make the numbers look better and how we can change our systems to achieve improvement. I know there is value in that, and I played along, but inside I felt like I already had the answer and it wasn’t going to be found in a system or a form or a procedure or in the correct ratio of positive to negative interactions. The answers are not measurable in data tables and graphs, because the solutions are not numbers, they are people.

I know there are at least a couple 8th graders that will read this, so to you, thank you! You know who you are! Thank you for helping restore my confidence and hope. Thank you for the role you played in reminding me what really matters and for helping chip away at my doubt and restoring my confidence. To my principal - Thank you for having confidence in me, despite our disagreements, and for giving me the opportunity to find myself again.

LIFE IS SHORT, LIVE IT WELL.