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.