Teacher Appreciation Week: Chapter 1

In the spirit of Teacher Appreciation Week, I'd like to share my story of teaching in Baltimore. It spanned five years and covered pretty much the gamut of human emotion, so instead of making it one insanely long post, I have broken it into five chapters. I hope you'll join me in my trip down memory lane...

Chapter 1: It Was All A Dream

Teaching is the only thing I ever wanted to do. While other kids were playing House or Barbies or GI Joes, I was playing Teacher. In 7th grade, we got to start learning a foreign language and I chose Spanish. It was love at first sound. The gently rolled Rs, the rhyming melodies of adjective agreement, the softness and purity of the vowels... In an otherwise cloudy and confusing time, 12-year-old me had found clarity.

From that moment on, everything I did was to become a Spanish teacher. I spent the summer before I turned 17 at the Universidad de Salamanca in Spain so I could really start improving my language skills. I only looked into colleges that offered teaching certification programs in Spanish. I did my semester abroad in Seville. My student teaching and all my classroom observation hours were with other Spanish teachers. When I was approached by Teach For America about applying to the program, and I learned that they placed Spanish teachers, I knew this was my great opportunity to make my dreams a reality.

I am often asked why I opted for Teach For America as opposed to a "normal" teaching job if I already had the training and the certification to work at a "good" school. I like to say something really romanticized like, "I wanted to make the most significant impact" or "Because I knew that fate would find me a place where I was truly needed." It's bullshit. In all honesty, it was because I was scared to go out and hunt for a job on my own. I had never failed at anything in my life and I was terrified of putting myself out there, only to be rejected. At the same time, I had this completely unfounded confidence that I could go anywhere in the country and be awesome, right from the start. I had received some fairly positive feedback from my collaborating teachers and my professors so I naturally thought I was God's gift to the teaching profession. Oh, and remember, I had never failed at anything in my life so of course I was going to be great at this. Throw me to the wolves! I will tame the wild beasts with nothing but passion and sass!

Ah, to be young and naïve.

I was placed in Baltimore, I place I only knew from watching the first episode of The Wire and that one time we stopped at the Inner Harbor for lunch on our way to Annapolis for a band competition in 12th grade. People in Baltimore have boats. How bad could it be?

I packed the few worldly possessions I had amassed throughout college, loaded them into Jenna's Honda Civic and we were on the road to my new future. Sure, I was nervous but I felt ready. I felt like I could take on the world. I was 22, I had my first real job and I was going to change the world. I just knew it...