If you read my last post, you may think I'm a rambling preteen girl who has no capacity for any reasonable insight about important things. That may be true, but I do, from time to time, think about things other than TV shows and books that happen to be en vogue at any given point in time. This long weekend has allowed me a few minutes to reflect on where I'm at in the school year. I'm six months into teaching. Half a year in this city and with my kids. And I have definitely changed. I am not the same.
It's funny how 23 second graders can change your life. They've changed me in a lot of ways I am not so proud of: I look older than I am, could fall asleep for a 3 hour nap at any given moment throughout the day, and have lost my hot runner bod that I earned this past summer (moment of silence to mourn the loss...). I feel guilty about the other ways I've changed, like sometimes having a negative attitude, a complaining spirit, or an aura of impatience. But there are other ways I've changed, and it started to come into my mind this weekend. For some reason or another, I was introduced to ten or so new people in the past few days through friends of friends at various events and I had to continuously say my schpeal about where I'm from, where I live in the city, and what I do for a job. Stuff like that can make you do a double-take on who you are and what you're doing with all your time. And why you're doing what you do.
I just have been thinking about who I am and what my job is in this crazy world. This does encompass my current job as a teacher, but I'm thinking more about my Job with a capital J. Like what I'm supposed to be doing with all my time. Like how I'm supposed to be spending my life. The way I've lived most of my life has not been the way I live it now. I've generally lived a privileged, comfortable existence as I bee-bopped through the years making friends, playing sports, loving school, and generally focusing all of my attention on, you've guessed it, ME. I did what I wanted to do and I spent my time making myself feel happy and important. You could generally say that I zipped from the mall to starbucks and back to my heart's content. I never truly went without money and I never truly had any sort of discomfort in my path. Of course every life has struggles, but I had it good. I still have it good. But just by a different standard this time.
Doing this Teach For America thing changes you. It's not anything valiant or wonderful that I've done that makes it this way, it's just the inevitable byproduct of living and working with my kids. It's all on them. It comes from meeting T who is 7 and babysits her 4 younger siblings alone. It's about D who wants to play in the NFL but has a heartbreaking home situation and hopefully will just make it through middle school without getting into trouble. It comes from so many other kids who have lives and dreams and experiences that I never would have known had I stayed on the path I was on before this year. You don't run into a lot of kids from East Garfield Park in Starbucks. Of course (as my last blog post and many others before that indicate) I can talk about nothingness just like any girl. I'm not above stupid banter (in fact, it's my specialty). But this whole thing does make conversations about dinner parties and side tables and yoga class a lot less interesting. The lens has changed.
It's changed because now I've seen a tiny taste of the real deal. I can't go back to my old life just pretending that this world doesn't exist. I've seen it, I'm in it, and it's too late. I can't pretend there aren't kids on the west and south sides who have lives and joys and personalities and talents and families just like anyone else. This of course is something I will keep thinking about (and therefore probably blogging about...my apologies to you) for a long time into the future. For now, I'll try to keep thinking about my Job with a capital J (I realize that is a silly way to put it). What I'm supposed to do when the comfortable life I lead isn't a possibility for kids just a few miles down the interstate. What I'm supposed to be doing in this world where the west and south sides do, in fact, exist, right along with millions of other places on earth where injustices are done and the brokenness is winning.
Yes. I'm not the same anymore. Good.
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