Thoughts on Married Life

As Adam and I close on our sixth month of marriage, I thought I’d share some of what I’ve learned about marriage itself and relationships in general. 

First, a couple truths about married life.

1.) Being married is NOT a magical state of existence where all your problems disappear and you live in wedded bliss forever. Insecurities, anxieties, resentments, jealousy, halitosis—all still there.

2.) Being married does NOT mean that you have your life figured out, or that you know what you will be doing in a week, a year or 5 years.  I’m usually lucky if I know what I’m cooking for dinner on a given day.  

3.) Being married does NOT make you instantly feel like a real grown up. In fact, you may still occasionally have yearnings to revert to a younger version of yourself without so many responsibilities.  Adam and I both suffered from this while we were home for Christmas.

4.) Being married does NOT mean that you are free of doubts about yourself and the path you are on and how to make and find meaning in this world we live in. I think this is just part of the existential quandary that is being in your twenties.   Yes, there are a few people who seem to have everything figured out and live doubt free.  Good for them.  (I have a feeling that if you dug beneath the surface a bit, you’d find some insecurity.)

5. )Being married DOES meant that you get to spend the majority of your time (including all those moments agonizing over 1-4) with your favorite person in the whole world.  And amidst all the worrying and uncertainty and unpredictability  of everything around you, you have one amazing constant. That, friends, is a gift.

I love being married. I might even say that the past 5 ½ months have been some of the happiest, most contented months of my life. That is not to say that they have been free of sadness or anger or bitterness or heartbreak. Those low moments that occur in relationships—definitely still there. BUT the high moments outshine the low ones about ten thousand to one.  

In fact, my biggest challenge has been to stay present, to stay in the moment.  I have this terrible tendency in the midst of the good moments, the REALLY good moments, to let dark thoughts creep in. (Thankfully after reading some Brene Brown,  I know this is a universal problem)  These dark thoughts usually come in one of two ways: 1) I envision something really bad happening that would ruin the moment. (Like getting hit by a car, which actually happened to me once!) or  2.) I worry we won’t be this happy forever.  Isn’t that crazy? Instead of fully enjoying the happiest moments of my marriage, I’m tainted by worry that this happiness won’t last. That in 5 or 10 years we won’t feel this way about each other. 

Anyway, my goal lately, and  one that I will continue into the new year, is to soak in the happiness of the present moment (being kissed in the kitchen, lying in bed listening to the rain outside, looking across the table at my husband on a random Tuesday date night) and to push away those nagging worries.  Part of the burden of having a “type A” personality is that we’re so busy planning/obsessing over our next activity that we forget to enjoy the present moment.

I think one of the greatest benefits I’ve seen in marriage so far is that it forces you be less selfish.  As much as we are hardwired to think otherwise, this is a universal truth: It’s not all about you. It’s just not. 

If you’re doing it the right way, I think marriage should kick your butt in that it forces you to put the needs of someone else above your own.  I’m not advocating for a “whipped,” spineless husband or a totally submissive, self-effacing wife, but if both people truly put the needs of their beloved above their own, magic happens.  And by magic, I mean grace, which is a beautiful, life-altering, soul-fulfilling thing.

While it should be our constant desire to put our loved one’s needs above our own, we’re human, so we’re going to screw up a good bit of the time. In navigating this balance of self/husband, I’ve learned two pieces of advice that may apply to other relationships:

1.)  Choose someone who is a better person than you are.

 2.)  You don’t always have to have the last word.

If number 1 is a given, number 2 comes a lot easier. Most of the time I fail at number 2, but two experiences recently have helped me learn why it’s so important.

Adam and I were arguing about something. I don’t even remember what it was now, but I do remember that I was angry that he hadn’t done the dishes.  From my embittered, self-righteous anger, I had said a couple spiteful things. (Most of which probably stemmed from my own insecurity)  I was right on the verge of making some other snippy comment about the dishes not being done, but I waited. I held my tongue.  And you know what Adam did? Even though he was angry at me? The dishes.  It was amazing, and it never would have happened if I had the last word.

Another day Adam came home late from work and I was in bed with a bad cold. One thing you have to know about me is that sometimes I am very needy. I mean annoyingly, disgustingly, exhaustingly needy. Adam, bless his heart, puts up with this, and when I have a cold, my neediness factor multiplies tenfold. As soon as he walked into the bedroom that day, I whined about my stuffy nose and my cough and asked him to come snuggle with me.   “Look, I haven’t even taken my jacket off yet!” he said, more brusquely than my overly-emotional sick self could handle.  I was on the verge of tears and had about ten things I wanted to say back to him. He changed his clothes and walked out of the room.

In my head, I composed a litany of comebacks ranging from “How could you just walk away like that!” to “Are you not even going to come give me a kiss??”  Maybe because I was showing some self-restraint, or maybe because the cold was slowing down my brain cell reaction time, I didn’t say anything. I just waited.  If I were Adam, at this point, I probably would have closed the door behind me, grabbed a beer, and sat on the couch to watch t.v.  This is why it’s so important to love someone who is a better person than you, because once again, you know what he did? He came back with a cup of tea and crackers, crawled into bed next to me, kissed me on the forehead, and told me to go to sleep, which is really what I needed all along. 

This I Believe

Tomorrow is the last day of school. (woah.) On the verge of endings and beginnings, I think we’re all feeling a little vulnerable.  A little excited. A little unsure. Not too different from how we felt 2 years ago when we began this journey.

A few weeks ago, my program director had us write a “This I Believe” essay to reflect on our two years in the classroom, and it seems an appropriate ending to my school year and this blog.  There are so many stories I want to tell about my students, but I almost  feel that I might rob them in some way by doing so.  They are unique brilliant people, with their own lives and interpretations of what they have experienced. Instead, I’ll just tell my own, less inspiring story, and hope that they will one day each be able to tell their own.

I believe in the innate value and worth of all people.  Two years ago I would have told you that I believed this too.  I would have talked about service trips, working with disabled children, my belief that everyone is capable of, and deserving of, incredible goodness. 

However such sentiments would not fully be true, for I have been a part of the way that our society, subversively but pervasively, values the affluent and the educated over the poor and uneducated.  We see things that we want to see and casually avert our eyes from the things we don’t.  We even judge our own worth and value against these standards, equating more self worth with our appearance and ivy league degrees and our ability to attain a high-paying, prestigious job. It’s an easy culture to become a part of, but also a dangerous one, for when we fall short, we begin to doubt sense of self, and when we judge the poor according to our standards, we negate and devalue entire communities of people.

I entered this movement wanting to teach underprivileged kids to love language, but in reality, my students have taught me much more about courage and perseverance and the reality of poverty in America. 

My students’ parents are hotel maids and factory hands and kitchen crews.  They live in the dodgy neighborhoods that most kids in South Charlotte don’t even know exist. Sometimes their hair is dirty, their clothes are unwashed, and they come to school without pencil or paper.  Some days they are crazy and frustrating and immature. Some seem hopelessly behind in reading, writing, and spelling, so much so that I want to throw my hands up in defeat and move on to an easier, neater problem to solve.

Yet on other days, I am blown away by the brilliance and beauty of my kids, of their writing, and their stories, their humor, their personalities and the dark things they have overcome to arrive most days at my door, with a smile.

 I am frightened by the way society perceives our kids.   Take my student Eduardo, whose mom works the early shift at Food Lion, and whose dad works in construction.  Do other know people know how he created an entire model of the setting from our novel? Or that he wrote a witty poem about a tangerine? If we don’t help him to show others his spark, who will? Will he end up in a menial job like his mom and dad?  Is he any less valuable of a person if he does? Who failed to help his parents discover their own spark, or reach for their own dreams? What social and economic obligations kept them from doing so?

 Maybe this is a strange revelation, but I have learned that the importance and urgency of our work cannot be understated, even though others (including, painfully, some of my closest friends) have devalued it. I have most definitely failed in many ways as a teacher, but I will never forget the stories of my students and how very much of their futures, and ours, are at stake in the work that we do.

The brightest moments in teaching are sometimes few and far between, but are always unparalleled in joy.  I’ve been amazed by the deepness of my students’ poetry, inspired by their enduring work ethic, and brought to tears by their kindness. I find it’s always the ones you least suspect that can puncture your heart the deepest. The troublesome, rambunctious, endlessly frustrating boy who, in his final free write before spring break, after writing about going to Carowinds and eating lots of ice cream, wrote “I will miss you, Ms. Ryan.”  Or the helplessly unorganized, messy, unfocused low reader who NEVER has her pencil or notebook out, who one day scribbled a note on a white board that said “Ms. Ryan, I love you from the very bottom and top of my heart.”

I think too often I’ve let others delude me into a certain kind of nobility about my job. “Oh those poor kids NEED you.” Well, maybe they do. Most of the time I think they need and deserve a teacher who is much better and more qualified than me, but I lately I’ve been pondering the extent to which I, and we, need them.  I need them to show me how to forgive, how to be humble, how to love unconditionally, how to make paper airplanes, how to persevere through challenges, and how to believe in myself. You would think I’d spend most of my time teaching my students the character traits that they need to posses, but in reality they’ve been teaching me the traits that I value and aspire to. (theirs)

I am maybe probably teaching a third year at my placement school next year. I am probably maybe going to law school after that. I am most definitely marrying my best friend in a little over a month.

To all of my friends and family who have supported me in the classroom over the past two years, from the bottom of my heart, thank you.

December

December has been a strange month in my teacher world, with its fair share of highs and lows and unusual amounts of exhaustion, but also, ever-present, that blissful light at the end of the tunnel growing brighter day by day: Winter break. We first year teachers dragged our tired tails up from Thanksgiving break, lagging and a little despondent, yet fueled by the reassuring mantra: “3 more weeks. 3 more weeks.” We made it.

I’m not sure why December was so particularly bad in terms of exhaustion—I’ve been perpetually tired since August—but for some reason December brought asleep-before-your-head-hits-the-pillow to a whole new meaning. My sweet, and exceedingly patient boyfriend has unfortunately suffered some of the consequences. We went to New York City with his family over my birthday weekend. After a fun (but long) day of walking around the city in the bitter cold, did I want to go out for my birthday in the city that never sleeps? No. The whole walk home I dreamed exclusively of that big soft white king-sized bed lovingly calling my name. I got into my pjs and was asleep in approximately 7 minutes.

Or there’s the time when I came over to his apartment on a Monday night to watch Love Actually. I had, of course, made a big deal about it for several days, emphasizing the fact that it was one of my FAVORITE Christmas movies and that it was so romantic and that he really needed to watch it with me. We ended up having a late dinner that night and starting the movie around 9:00pm. Did I stay awake for the whole movie making witty comments and causing him to fall in love with the movie (and me!?) OR, did I fall asleep at promptly 9:30pm and proceed to stretch out on the couch, so completely and stubbornly that he had to move to his bedroom to finish his work on the computer? I think you know where this is going. I have conferred with several other teachers who have assured me that this behavior is, in fact, normal and not a symptom of some other more serious illness or disorder.

On the plus side, some of my best teaching moments happened during the month of December. The academic facilitator and reading coach at my school decided that we should do a novel study between Thanksgiving and Christmas, and the book for 6th grade was Esperanza Rising by Pam Munoz Ryan. Esperanza Rising is really a lovely book, and I would encourage anyone to read it. As a teacher, it was incredibly rewarding to have such a rich text to work with. Novels, after all, are the reason I feel in love with reading, hence the reason I became an English major, and hence the reason I decided to teach for 2 years.

I remember one class period in particular in which I was doing a read aloud and then explaining to students how that scene connected to two other scenes in the book. I was into it. They were into it. I was explaining all kinds of important things like themes and symbolism and characterization. And in that moment I thought, “I love this. I can see why people choose to teach.”

It’s also really exciting to see my kids get to into what they’re reading. The novel is about a Meixcan girl who loses her wealth and beautiful ranch in Meixco and moves to California to work in the labor camps. With snippets of Spanish, descriptions of the immigration process, and a theme of starting over in a new culture, it’s a book that my ESL students can relate to. One morning, my student Erica* came up to me in the hallway. Erica is one of my smartest students, but over the past 2 months she’s been a little boy crazy and it has been affecting her grades.

“Ms. Ryan, I do not like Marta! Miguel helped her, and he’s supposed to like Esperanza!”

I smiled and responded with some foreshadowing teacherly comment like, “We’ll see what happens…I can’t tell you. You’ll just have to keep reading!” But really, I wanted to jump up and down and shout, “SHE’S READING!!! AND SHE LIKES IT!!”

Unfortunately, along with the excitement of teaching a novel, December also brought the bane of my existence: Personal Education Plans or PEP’s. A PEP is a legal document that teachers have to create for students who are performing below grade level or who failed an EOG the previous year.

Out of my 87 students, only 8 passed the reading EOG last year. I had A LOT of PEP’s to do.

The process of creating a PEP in the online system is long and tedious (At one point I timed it, and it took 6 minutes for me to create each one.) Our school administration also brought out some terrifying threats and deadlines to make the process more interesting.

The whole thing involved a lot of tired monotonous clicking and a lot of fatigue and stress, so much so that when I went Marshall’s one Wednesday to de-stress after a particularly bad staff meeting, I burst into tears upon discovering that they had not a single red shoe in stock. (I was looking for shoes to wear to a Christmas party, and I had in my head imagined this perfect pair of shiny red heels to wear with my little black dress. It shouldn’t have been a big deal— this was my first day really looking—but on that day, it seemed like a real tragedy.)

Needless to say, after finishing a novel study and 70 some PEPs, Winter Break has indeed been a blissful respite, fulfilling all that the bright light at the end of the tunnel promised. I’ve been catching up on sleep, which was absolutely necessary, but best of all, I’ve been able to spend time with my close friends.

This brings me to my new year’s resolutions. Along with my teacher-related resolutions, (being more organized, being more on top of lesson plans, etc.) my personal resolutions are to say a prayer of thanks every day, and to be better about staying in touch with my friends.

Seeing my friends this past week has made me realize how terribly I’ve missed having them as a constant presence in my life. They are brilliant and kind and loving, and I am very lucky (and thankful) to know them.

I am also thankful for you, friend, for reading this silly blog post.

One small good thing

According to several major studies on first year teachers, the period between October and Christmas break is referred to as the “Disillusionment Phase.” This is when first year teachers are worn out and stressed out, and start to feel like failures. This is when that big beautiful vision of inspiring children and making a difference pops, leaving nothing but little pieces of drooly rubber to pick up off the floor.

TFA prepared us for this back in July. They gave us all the research, showed us emails written by former corps members admitting deep depression and a general feeling that they hated life. “Everyone goes through this. It gets better. Reach out for help if you need it.”

The month of October was supposedly the worst. It loomed for a long time, came, and then went. Looking at it from the other side, I guess I can say I survived it ok. I also somehow thought that when the month of October was over, things would magically get better. They didn’t. I’m still feeling the November blues.

I am incredibly fortunate in that I love my kids, and I don’t have any major behavior problems. Thinking of their faces is what makes me get out of bed at 5:30 every day. The part that’s most difficult to get through is feeling overwhelmed, and overworked, and underprepared, all the time.

Also, no one recognizes how hard you are working. I think there’s this selfish part of me that wants to get some credit for how much I work every day. I don’t get paid any extra for the many days I come into school at 6:30am and leave at 5:30pm. In fact, I don’t even think my principal, or anyone else really notices. My kids don’t notice or care how much time I spend grading their papers, or making lesson plans, or cleaning up the room after they leave—or how much of my own precious little money I spend buying them pencils and paper and poster board that they chew up or bend or break in 5 seconds.

Yet even as I complain about this, I also know I never thought about what my teachers did once I left their class. We think about the small lives we live and the spaces we inhabit. When we leave them, we think everybody else does too.

Some days, I feel full of gratitude for the opportunity I’ve been given. How lucky I am, I think, that I get to spend my day helping kids learn about reading and writing. How lucky to be able to be creative and moving around, helping kids all day long instead of stuck behind a desk inside an office. And some days I feel so incredibly in love with my children that I feel like there is nowhere else I could be and nothing else I could be doing that would be as important as this.

But then other days I feel hollow and tired and sad. I never realized how hard it is to give and give and give of yourself all day long, every single day. Sometimes I just feel used up. And my kids are failing and I am a bad teacher. On these days I want to crawl in my bed, sleep for a long, long time, and dream of a time in my life when I was good at something.
Teaching, and I suppose life in general, is made up of highs and lows like this. Sometimes we feel full of purpose, other times, full of failure.

Then there are other days that are different altogether— days when you learn about something terrible—and life feels broken and wrong. One of those days happened to me last week.

Lenny* is probably my smartest, most hard-working student. She and her family moved to the United States about 3 years ago from Vietnam, and, like many other families that live near my school, they are refugees. She came to us about a month after school had started, so at first she didn’t have any friends. When I saw her walking by herself during recess, I went over to her and we started talking. Lenny has 3 younger sisters and a younger brother. Both of her parents work, so she spends much of her time taking care of her younger siblings. She cooks and cleans and does laundry. She translates for her family when they need it, helps her younger sisters with their homework. And then she reads.

Lenny is my only student who I can say absolutely loves to read. When the bell rings, and other students are talking, waiting for their buses, Lenny is reading a book. She goes through about 3 books a week. She is quiet and sweet, and works incredibly hard at everything she does. In some ways, she reminds me of myself at her age.

About two weeks ago, I watched Lenny get up from her desk and walk to the computer. “Hmm, it looks like she has a limp,” I thought. She walked slowly, almost dragging one leg behind the other.

I’d also sort of noticed, in the way that you notice things without really thinking about them, that Lenny wore the same blue hoodie every day and that she always seemed to have her hands in her pockets.

Needless to say, I was not prepared when one of the guidance counselors at my school pointed to Lenny and asked, “Is that girl pregnant?”

My first thought was, “That’s absolutely ridiculous. There’s no way.”

But then I took a good look at Lenny walking around the track. And I noticed her stomach, pushing against her hoodie, and the slow careful way that she walked.

And then my heart started racing and my stomach felt sick because I knew—in the way that you know things sometimes, because truth, terrible or not, hits you over the head like a frying pan—that my shy, quiet, 12 year old child/student was not pregnant because she had a boyfriend.

We sent Lenny to the school nurse that afternoon. At first, the nurse just shook her head sadly and said, “It’s confidential,” but about 3 days later she confirmed that Lenny is in fact 12 years old and 5 months pregnant. Now all of us can’t believe we were so oblivious. But then again, I teach 11 and 12 year old 6th graders. I am not looking for my students to be pregnant.
I hope and pray that the nurse, counselors, and social workers are investigating the family situation. As a teacher, I am not allowed to ask questions about it.

In a situation like this, my own whining and self-pity seems very pitiful indeed. There is absolutely nothing in my life that I should complain about. Everything that I have is a gift, deserved or not. And my sweet Lenny, who deserves everything in this world that is good, has so little.

Last Thursday, when I saw Lenny walking down the hallway to my class, I wanted to cry. I think she knows now that we know too. Her usual smile was replaced by eyes turned to the floor. I felt her sadness and shame as she walked in the classroom, and I thought for a moment that this was unbearable. There was nothing I could do. Class went on like normal, and I tried to avoid looking at Lenny for too long.

But then, like always, after the bell rang, Lenny pulled out her book. I noticed that she was almost finished.

“Lenny, you’re almost done with your book. Do you want to get another one to take home for when you finish that one?”

She nodded and we walked over to the bookshelf. She browsed through the different titles for a minute, and then I got an idea.

“Lenny, you should read Ella Enchanted. I LOVED it when I was younger. It’s about a princess named Ella. It’s kind of like the story Cinderella. Have you ever heard of that? Your little sisters will love this too. Maybe you can read it to them!”

For the first time in 3 days, I saw Lenny smile big, and I felt a small ounce of hope.

Maybe there was nothing I could do to really change Lenny’s situation, nothing I could do to take back all that had happened to her, and all that was to come. But I could give Lenny a book that would bring her joy.

And some days, one small good thing is enough.

Will

I’d heard bad things about Will* from the first 6th grade open house. The teacher in the room next to me had just moved up from teaching 5th grade, and had taught Will the year before. “He’s a tough one. We had to schedule an emergency meeting with his mom because he was scoring in the tenth percentile on all his assessments. And his older brother is in a gang. It’s a bad situation.”

The first few weeks of school I thought this teacher must have been thinking of a different student. Will was sweet and quiet. He didn’t talk much to the other kids. He raised his hand often and always seemed eager to participate. I even gave him a classroom job as a Party Planner. “Will is a great student,” I thought. “Maybe he really likes me. Maybe this year will be different.”

Then I graded his first assessment. And I cried. Not just because of his test, but because of the whole string of tests that I graded that night that showed me how profoundly behind my students were in basic reading and writing. Will completely made up answers to some of the questions. He wrote about someone getting shot and running away, when the story was about a little girl moving from Mexico to a new farm in California.

But the low test grades were just the beginning. After that came the behavior problems. It started small. Will would call out answers in class instead of raising his hand. He began humming and singing repeatedly, even after I asked him to stop. Then he began talking when I was talking, and shouting out things like “This is dumb” when we were reading a story. This behavior continued despite the many times I took him out individually in the hall to discuss his responsibilities as party planner and the fact that I could take his job away. This behavior continued despite my repeated attempts to move his seat so that he was sitting as close to the front as possible. It got to the point (as terrible as it is for me to say this) that when Will was absent, I breathed a small sigh of relief because it meant my 6th block would not give me a sore throat and pounding headache.

Throughout this time, I had learned a little bit more about Will’s home life. He lived with his grandmother and his 18 year old sister and her baby. His two older brothers lived with his mom. I felt like this was a conscious effort on Will’s mom part to keep him out of the trouble his brothers were in. “If you call my house, my brother will get mad because he’s on probation!” Will shouted at his social studies teacher when he threatened to call home.
I talked about Will with the other teachers on my team. They discussed him as if he were a lost cause. “You know who his brother is right? That explains it all. School just isn’t his thing. There’s only so much we can do.”


A couple weeks ago, I taught a lesson on evaluating characters. We talked about how we evaluate characters based on how they look, the effect they have on others, and what they think, say and do. We practiced with a story we’d read in class, and then as a closing activity, I had them evaluate an interesting person that they knew. I told them they could write about any person that they wanted. (My goal was to make it doable for them.) “Just describe the person! Tell me what kinds of things they say. What effect do they have on you? What do they look like? I want to feel like I know this person after reading your paragraph.”
I took the stack of papers home and graded them that night as I was sitting in bed. Will’s was the first one I picked up:

“She says take out your homework. She always picks up our homework. She thinks I might fail grade and stay in the same class. She makes me happy when arurend her and in her room I can smell the pencel shades falling from where we write. She has blue eyes like the sky. She always dresses very nice and her room is butiful.”

I cried hard. I cried big, ugly, exhausted, self-pitying sobs, sitting alone in my bedroom at 9:30pm on a Wednesday night. Then I got up, grabbed a tissue, and thought about why I was crying. It was a lot of different things all mushed together. I cried because:

a.) I had felt relieved when Will was not in my class, now knowing that he felt happy when he was in my room.
b.) Will thought I thought he was going to fail the grade and stay in the same class. (How had I communicated these low expectations to him?? Or is this what he perceived of all his teachers?)
c.) The line “smell the pencil shades falling from where we write” was so strangely beautiful and so far beyond what I would have expected for this rambunctious 11 year old little boy to be able to articulate. How had I missed this side of him?
d.) I still felt sorry for him and his situation and I felt there was nothing I could do to change it.
e.) I felt sorry for myself because I was so overwhelmed and unprepared to be the effective teacher I needed to be to give this child the opportunity to have a better life. If I didn’t help change the meaning of education in for Will, he would probably join a gang like his brother. Education could literally mean life or death for him, in a very real way that I didn’t (and don’t) know how to handle.

I would love to be able to say that things have changed a lot since then, that we have had some kind of miraculous “Freedom Writers” breakthrough and that Will is now on the path to college. Honestly, not a whole lot has changed. Will’s behavior in class is still distracting and, at times, disrespectful. Some of his quiz and test scores have improved, but overall, he is still far behind.

I have started keeping a special folder for Will to document his behavior in class so that we can put him up for intervention team for possible special education services. His assessment scores are so severely below his classmates that we think there may be a learning disability involved. I am working to get materials together to work with him afterschool to figure out what some of his specific reading difficulties are. Perhaps most importantly, I am working to develop a personal relationship with Will, to figure out what motivates him and to let him know that someone cares.

I met with Will privately the day after I read his paragraph and asked him some questions about it. I had to confirm that the person he was describing was, in fact, me. He told me that it was. I assured him that I believed he was smart and capable, and that I did not think he was going to fail. I told him it was up to him to work hard so that he could pass 6th grade, but that I was here to help him.

It is my goal to be able to update the blog with Will’s progress throughout the year. We will see how that goes.

For now, I am running on worry and grit and hope (and the smell of pencil shades falling from where we write.)

*name has been changed.

How I found a church (or how my church found me…)

(Just a warning—this post is REALLY long. There’s a lot that happened with this, so I wanted to do it justice…)

For the past three months, Charlotte has provided pretty much everything I could ever ask for in a city—parks, neighborhoods with big, beautiful trees, a hip artsy area, a clean downtown, and even a little French bakery with the world’s best caramel brownie. There was only one thing Charlotte was missing, but it was big one for me.

A church.

Newman (my church in Chapel Hill) was a huge part of my life the past 4 years. Newman was my place. When I was there I was part of a community. When I was there I felt needed and supported and loved. Leaving Newman was one of the hardest parts of graduating. I knew moving on would be tough, but I could’ve never anticipated the ache I would feel week after week searching for a church, the yearning that would settle in the pit of my stomach on Sunday night, facing another epic long week at school with no real source of peace ahead.

This wasn’t for a lack of trying. I spent the last 3 months hopping from church to church, looking for the right fit.

First I tried St. Gabriel’s. This was the closest church to my apartment, located in a posh area of Charlotte called Myers Park. The congregation is medium sized, mostly families and the elderly. The music is typically Catholic, only a little more bland. I left feeling nothing.

Next I tried St. Matthew’s with my friend Ellen. This church is the farthest away—about 20 minutes from my apartment, way down in South Charlotte, which is wealthy suburbia. St. Matt’s is the closest thing to a Catholic mega church you can find. Ellen and I went to the evening LifeTeen Mass, which is a youth-oriented contemporary service. The music was more like Newman’s, which I liked, but I still struggled with the massive size. I left undecided.

Finally, I tried St Peter’s in uptown Charlotte with my friend Marissa. This church is small and quaint, located in a pretty part of downtown Charlotte. The service is very traditional—complete with organ and hymns from the 1800’s. I really wanted to like this one. It was small, and I felt kind of hip going to church in downtown Charlotte. I still left without feeling fulfilled.

So I rotated between these 3 churches, each Sunday hoping it would click—hoping that one day I would just realize which church I needed to go to. I particularly remember the Sunday two weeks ago. I had made the drive to St. Matt’s. I sat in the pew by myself, looking at the family in front of me. There were two girls, a mother and a father. The girls looked to be in middle school, about the age of my students. Like so many of the people around me, the girls were wearing matching North Face jackets. The mom had on Citizen jeans. Everyone was white. Everyone had plenty of money.

All of a sudden, I felt that being in that church at that moment was wrong. How could I go to school ever y day with my kids—my kids who are all on free and reduced lunch, my kids who are black or Latino, or Vietnamese refugees—and still go to a church like this? My kids like Manuel , who works every weekend at the Flea Market, only to give all the money to his parents so they can “pay the rent and stuff.” My kids like Natalia, who takes care of her 4 year old brother every day while her Mom works the 12 hour night shift. How could I live in their world every day and then come to this one on weekends? (I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with being white and having money and living in South Charlotte. St. Matt’s is a vibrant Catholic community, and I’m sure it does a lot of good for a lot of people. It just provided too much of a disconnect between my life as a teacher and my life as a church-goer.)

Anyway, by this point I was feeling confused and a little hopeless. Then I found Mo Tee.

Mo-Tee is in our newcomer ESL class. She moved to the US from Thailand a little less than a year ago. She is tiny, with long dark shiny hair that she wears in a ponytail. Unlike my other refugee students, her clothes are always clean and neatly pressed. She smiles and giggles often. Mo Tee is one of those students that you meet and fall in love with immediately.

Last week, as I was walking around class helping students with an assignment, I asked MoTee about her bracelet. It was a wooden bracelet with pictures of the Saints—several of my kids had them and I was wondering where they were from. “It’s from church” she said.
“What church do you go to?” I asked.
“I’m Catholic.”
“Oh, me too! Where is your church?”
She shrugged.
“It near our school?” (I was desperate at this point, remember.)
She nodded.

I left with a lingering of hope, and a mental note to google churches near our school.

The next day, shortly after walking into class, I noticed Mo Tee and her friend talking over a piece of notebook paper. There were boxes, lines and arrows written on it. I walked over to take a closer look.
“Is this a map?”
Mo Tee and her friend nodded.
“To your church?”
They nodded again.

It was a map of how to get to the church from her apartment. When I pointed to road names, she had no idea what they were called. The only thing she could tell me was take a right here, then straight on this road, then another left.

That night I googled “Vietnamese Catholic Churches Charlotte, NC.” I was surprised to see one pop up that was, in fact, very close to my school. It was called Our Lady of the Assumption. It had never popped up when I searched generally for Catholic Churches in Charlotte, but when I checked the website, I saw it has masses in English, Spanish, and occasionally in Vietnamese. I began to get excited.

The next day I came to Mo Tee with a piece of paper with Our Lady of the Assumption written on it. “Is this what your church is called?” I asked. She looked at the piece of paper, frowned, and shook her head. My excitement bubble burst.
I read the paper aloud, “Our Lady of the Assumption. Is that it?”
“AHH, yes!” She smiled and giggled with her friend. “That’s it.”

So, last Sunday morning, I got dressed and made the drive to Our Lady of the Assumption for the first time.

And I loved it.

It is the most diverse church I have ever been to. The congregation is equally divided between white, black, Latino, and Asian. It has a great choir that manages to sing traditional Catholic songs with some gusto. I found out that many of my students attend the Spanish mass, while at least three of my students (from Thailand, Vietnam, and Haiti) attend the English mass.

I brought Adam to church with me for support, and as we were leaving, I spotted Mo Tee and her long pony tail. I called out her name, probably a little too enthusiastically.

She stopped, turned around, and said hello rather meekly. Then she ran off to board the bus with her family. (The church provides a bus to take refugee families from their apartment complexes to church)

This was not quite what I had expected from her reaction after all that she had done to help me find this church. I felt like I owed this little girl so much, yet I left worried that I had somehow intimidated her.

But, as I’ve learned, shyness is standard for middle schoolers, not to mention the fact that it’s a quite a shock for them to learn that their teachers have lives outside of school. During class on Tuesday, she called me over to her. “Ms. Ryan, you come to my church again?”
“Yes,” I said, “I really liked it.”
“This Sunday, you sit with me at church?”


Yesterday, I went to Our Lady of the Assumption by myself. I walked to the left side of the church (where Mo Tee had told me she sat) and spotted Mo Tee’s family all lined up on a pew—Mom, dad, two brothers, two sisters, all small and dark and serious looking. I smiled at them and sat down a few rows over. There was clearly no room on their pew. I knew her parents didn’t speak any English, and I didn’t want to make things too awkward.

A minute later, Mo Tee, in her pink striped turtle neck and matching tennis shoes, came and sat down next to me. She looked up at me and smiled, rocking her legs back on forth across the pew. And in that moment, amidst all the uncertainty that I’ve ever felt about what I’m doing and where I’m going, I knew I was right where I needed to be.

Brave Beginning

I have decided that the whole post college graduation phase is like the first awkward months of middle school. You feel confused and unsure about nearly everything--uncertain about plans and jobs, and even if you have a plan or a job, you feel uncertain about how you’ll do, if you’re prepared. If you’re moving to a new city by yourself, there are a whole different slew of worries and anxieties—where do I live? How do I find a new social group? What do I do when I get home from work? It’s scary, and if I’m being completely honest, a bit lonely.

For those of you that don’t know, I’m teaching middle school Language Arts in Charlotte for the next two years. Right now, I’m trying to capitalize on this connection between awkward middle school angst and wandering, confused college graduate. Maybe it will provide me with some extra insight into my students. We’ll see.

During my last few months and weeks at Carolina, I felt a lot like I was grasping up moments and people, hoarding them as if they were jewels I could keep. I felt as if my friends were these beautiful shining feathers being blown away from me, and as much as I tried to grab them and hold them in my hands, close to me, they were flittering through my fingers, flying out of my reach and away. But life is change. So we sometimes have to leave the people and places that we love.

Prior to this time in my life, I have been a little critical of blogs. Nothing against bloggers, but to me they seemed a bit self-indulgent. Why would anyone want to read about the little trivialities of my life, or my musings on any particular subject?

But now, for the first time—and perhaps in my own unique an act of self-indulgence—I have decided to write one. I’m writing because I want to keep up with all of you. By the same token, I hope you’ll email or call me and update me on your much more interesting lives. I may not be able to hold onto the feathers anymore, but I still want to know where they’ve flown, how they’ve changed shape.

I’m also writing for an openly selfish reason. I’m writing because I don’t want to lose myself. Over the summer, in the beastly Teach For America training known as Institute, which I can only briefly describe as the most insanely difficult 5 weeks of my life, I felt like a robot going through the motions of life. In the constant bustle of teaching, sitting in sessions, writing lesson plans and attempting to absorb as much information as humanly possible, I started to lose who I was. I forgot what I was passionate about, what I liked to do, what was good and unique about me. As I said to my friend Amy, (who is a shining example of the fact that even when you think you’ve already been blessed with the kindest, most loving friends anyone could ever have, you can meet another one.) I feared that once I started teaching I would forget to be a real person and instead only be a harried, stressed out, struggling, crazy person who happened to teach middle school.

With 5 weeks of teaching behind me, I can say that this is partially true already. I do little outside the realm of teaching. It’s a really good day if I have time to cook dinner and go for a run. With dwindling personal time and general busyness, I thought writing a little would help me stay sane. I plan to reflect on the struggles and failures—and maybe with some luck, small triumphs—of my first year teaching. I also may reflect on this rather confusing phase of being a real grown up.

I have posters in my classroom with photographs and quotes from some famous African American and Latino Writers. I made the posters because I wanted my students to have role models that look like them, but also because I need inspiration myself. Lately, the quote that keeps sticking with me is one by Sandra Cisernos. Her writing is real and funny and—importantly to me—relevant to my 6th graders. In The House on Mango Street, she speaks through the gnarled bed-bound character Aunt Lupe, who says to the young narrator Esperanza, “You must keep writing. It will keep you free.”

So I am going to attempt to keep a blog this year. I apologize in advance it’s bad writing, or overly self-indulgent and whiny writing. And, in the spirit of doing brave things, (Writing like this can be scary, you know? Scary in a vulnerable kind of way.) and doing things that help us remind ourselves that we are in fact real people with real joys and passions and thoughts beyond what we do during the day to pay our bills or make the grades, I challenge you, dear friends, to do something this year that makes you feel that you, yes you, are worth it.