Teaching... The Sisyphus Way

This year has been full of ups and downs... mostly ups but but recently downs. I struggle to stay ahead in knowledge and energy of my students each day. I think up new and creative ways to give them material and have them experience and learn it and in my personal belief I am doing pretty well... until yesterday.

I received an email in the morning from our district PR person that said nominations for things like "teacher of the year" and "staff member of the year"... along with "rookie of the year." Scrolling down to our school I was surprised to not see my name there. See, when I was hired, I was the ONLY new teacher at the whole school. I tried so hard to fit in and make it seem like I wasn't SOOOO new. I have stayed late and come early, tried to join committees and oh, by the way I teach 8th grade science which is a TAKS level and I coach 7th grade basketball and help out with pretty much all the other sports. So when I say I come early and stay late, I mean that I come before the 7 am time for athletics and stay well after the 5 pm end of athletics... think 10:30 pm with janitors kicking me out.

Well, in January they hired this new teacher and let me just tell you about her schedule. She comes to school at 9am... teaches 3 classes of computer, has 2 conference periods and then goes to assist with high school sports. Are you kidding me? She even told me herself that her job was a cake walk. But, guess who my school nominated for "rookie of the year." That's right... half-day girl.

All I could say yesterday was WOOOOOWWWWWWWWWW! I was shocked. It was like a big slap in the face.

Some people talked to me about it later on and told me they felt the same way.... but these are all people that you would call "pee-ons," people that don't mean anything because they are just other teachers and not the great administration that we have at this school. My fellow pee-ons did make me feel better because they told me I was their rookie of the year and I thanked them.

Later on last night I was looking for some files on my computer and came across this paper that I had written in college for my "Sociology of Death and Dying" class. It was about Sisyphus who if you are not familiar with is the guy who pushed the rock up the hill only to have it roll back down so he can push it up again... for eternity. Well, our paper was related to the fact that we all go through the monotony of every day pushing of rocks only to have it fall while we sleep so we can get up again the next morning and do it again. Its a very negative but somewhat intriguing way to look at life. In my paper I talked about how our lives aren't just one hill and that there are a bunch of hills connected where the valley in between the next 2 is always a bit higher than the one before. So we are making progress but its like a 3-steps-forward-and-2-back kinda thing. I probably argue this because I refuse to believe what I do every day won't lead to anything and if you know me I am determined enough to have a success of some kind no matter how small.

OK, now that I have thouroghly confused you... let me tell you how this all goes together. We have to teach the Sisyphus way... well not the original way, but the way I talked about in my sociology paper. We can not wait for someone to tell us "Great pushing." We can not be in it for the awards... or for the recognition. We have to be in teaching to feel the little victories. As teachers, you already know what they are. Tying shoes, light bulbs turning on, passing a test, finally getting multiplication in 8th grade, and having confidence to stand up in class and give a speech are all examples. You can't ask for more than that. Occasionally you will get a valentine's or a big hug, but if we (and I mean me...) search for those awards to be handed to us everytime we stay late or help out a student who isn't even in our class or grade level... then we will be constantly stuck rolling our rock up the same side of the same hill forever. We will never be able to get our boulder into the next valley so that we can prepare ourselves for the next small victory. If we teach the old Sisyphus way where we beg for praise then at the end of our lives or careers we really won't have anything to show for it except a boulder sitting at the bottom of the smallest hill. When we teach the new Sisyphus way, we can end our careers and even die knowing that we made a difference in our students, our community and maybe most importantly ourselves because we were able to give ourselves victories instead of waiting for someone to give them to us.

So, I am ok with it now... and I hope this other girl feels good with her reward because it seems to me this might be the only one she's received all year. I, on the other hand, have watched and shared successes with over 100 students this year and that is definitely something to be proud of!