I Feel Seen

Below is my acceptance speech from receiving the Michigan Council of Teachers of English Middle School Teacher of the Year Award at the fall annual conference in Lansing, MI. I so appreciate the support during the speech, and also the kind words that I received throughout the day at the conference. I would also like to thank Dr. Karen Vocke from Western Michigan University for my wonderful award introduction.

This award really belongs to the 1500 + students I have served in public education, to my husband for being an ear and soundboard for me within the ins and outs of each day of each academic year, and the teachers around me that help build a community that is focused on continuously improving our standards, our strategies, and our practices all for the love of reading and writing. I found out in April I won this award. I have felt an array of feelings. Gratitude, grace, recognition, and appreciation. The best way to describe this moment is that I feel seen. My hope and goal is that my students feel seen in my classroom on a daily basis. I want them to know that I see who you are, and I want to help you get where you are going.

The things I have to say today don’t come from a place of expertise or knowing everything about this thing called teaching. Like you, I am in my classroom, room 615 at Maple Street Middle School in Kalamazoo, MI, doing the work. This includes celebrating the days when I feel like everything is going right and navigating the days when I am feeling like I am doing nothing right at all. There is a section in Jason Reynolds For Everyone that perfectly sums up my thoughts on teaching. It reads:

“You hope

The voice that

Delivers the loudest whispers

Of what you envision never silences.

That it never cowers behind fear

And expectations that other people

Strap to your life

Like a backpack full of bricks

(or books written by experts)

Because if it did-

If it disappeared,

If the voices vanished

And you were no longer

Overtaken by the taunts of your own

Potential,

No longer blinded

By a perfect vision

Of your purpose,

No longer engorged

With passion-

What would happen?

Well, I guess nothing.

And to me, there is nothing scarier than nothing.”

I have been fearful of that nothing since the first day of teaching. Teaching has and will continue to be a dream in pursuit. I got the offer for my first teaching job the night before teachers were supposed to report. It was at that first job that I found a love for solving problems or my “internal eczema” as Jason would say. I walked in the next day after that phone call and was ready to see my classroom. I received: No curriculum guide. No pacing guide. No materials or books. And little did I know that this was the greatest gift I could have been given because it forced me into the mindset of problem-solving early on. It also gave me the freedom to innovate. I knew I wanted to teach kids, but I had to make that room into something that didn’t feel cold and I had to figure out what I was going to teach those first two weeks of school. When you start out you have no idea how to teach expectations or behavior or content-mapping, I just knew I was a woman on a mission ready to talk about books with kids.

According to the MEA, 10% of teachers in Michigan will leave the profession each and every year. To the new teachers in this room or the pre-service teachers in this room, your perspective matters. I see the work you are doing, and I am hoping you don’t give up. You provide fresh insight that will keep our field going. To say to the new teachers that we need you and want you around is an understatement. My future children depend on you.

10 years after this first job, the problems that I am facing in education are the same. They even seem to be multiplying as I am given more responsibilities within my building and learning community. However, the internal drive to innovate and design lessons and try different strategies continues to grow with each day. I challenge everyone in this room to get clear about what matters to you and use this as your passion for jumping into the joy of your work each and every day. I want to close by sharing my non-negotiables because I have become quite clear about what makes me itchy about education:

Here are my top 5:

#1 Giving my students time to read and reading to and with them. The single act of promoting a love of reading is the best thing I can do on a daily basis. I want to show kids that I love reading, they can love reading even if they hate it now, and books can be ways to show that we are humans with our own stories. With only 19% of Americans age 15 and older reading for pleasure on a given day, this single act is my highest priority.

#2 Using books to show that my students can be authors and accomplished writers. My mentor text work is something that I am obsessed with now. As Tricia Ebarvia said, “We must interrogate not just what we teach but how and why.” I have been on a mission to put diverse and relevant books in front of my students, and then ask how I am teaching my students to look at those books and write like the authors of those books. This reciprocal process keeps my teaching heart fresh because it requires me to be an active reader, and my students are constantly giving me feedback.

#3 There are only two teachers out of 50 in my building who visit the library every single week. The other one is in this room with me now. We are lucky in that we have a librarian in our building. Libraries matter. And while I don’t have to tell that to this room of people, I do need to say it to the 92% of buildings in the State of Michigan who are not served by certified school librarians. Being 47th in the nation in staffing schools with media specialists is just embarrassing. We must continue to fight for these programs.

#4 I push each day for kindness. I mean the kindness between my students, between teachers and their students, and sometimes, most importantly teacher to teacher. Being nice gives us hope. Even on a bad day, there is hope. Empathy and kindness are my main priorities right next to reading. We don’t have bad kids. We have kids who try to push us out, and who have been shown that reading sucks. We have kids that think their ideas don’t matter, so why would they try writing them down? We have some kids that we feel like we won’t be able to reach. We have to continue to try.

#5: Lastly, I want to focus on writing for the joy of writing. I started a teaching blog called Writing Mindset in 2017 because I needed an outlet for all of my thoughts on teaching. My students are given free writing time in class, and this is their favorite part of the week because I let them be free. The idea is simple: Write about what makes you happy. You want to write a story about unicorns pooping potatoes? Yes. You want to create a screenplay based on your favorite TV show? Sign me up. You want to write about your weekend? Let’s hear it. Any lesson that allows our students to be themselves, we have to make time for it.

To my colleagues in the room that fight for kids, I see you. To the teachers in the room that identify as being readers, I see you. And to the people in the room that continue to push through problems to reach new levels of growth, I see you and I thank you for being a constant source of inspiration and strength.