To be honest, this has been a challenging semester. Most days I feel like can barely keep up with what is happening around me and everything that I have to get done. On top of that, I feel like I haven’t been meeting the expectations people have for me. People want me to give more, share more, or be a little more like this or a little more like that, and I don’t even really know how to do that. To illustrate the semester, I would like to use a line from a prayer we used to recite at CCD that said, “the harvest is abundant, but the laborers are few.” However, I would like to revise the prayer to read, “the critics are abundant, and the supporters are few.”
Although I had the feeling that my tank was running on empty, it wasn’t until a couple of weeks ago that I was forced to come face-to-face with it. I am on the Christ Encounters retreat team for this semester, and at a recent meeting, I brought in my talk for my day of workshops. I knew that my talk wasn’t excellent. Whenever I write something that I know is good, I have this nervous excitement to share it with everyone. I’ll just say that I did not have that when I brought in this talk. After reading what I had written to my fellow team members, one of them said, “this doesn’t have the Erin Sousa passion.” At first, I was a little surprised he said that, but I couldn’t deny it. The tank was running on empty, and others were starting to notice it too.
That night I could barely sleep, and I kept tossing and turning. During a toss or a turn – who knows which one – a certain word came to my mind: WHY. Why do I do what I do? What is my “why” for what I choose to involve myself in? I realized the word “why” was how I was going to find THAT passion again.
Miss Sousa
I never thought I would say this, but over the past couple of months, I had been questioning what my life would be like if I did not go into teaching and worked in writing or publishing instead. Right now, most teachers do not seem to have many positive things to say about their jobs and I honestly began to wonder if I was setting myself up for a sad life. It was truly an identity crisis. I didn’t tell anyone because that would mean I would have to admit that I was going off-brand. I especially couldn’t tell my father, who works in municipal finance, because he would have said, “But Erin…THE PENSION” and then imply that I would be a starving artist.
One day after class, my professor asked if I would like to observe her eighth grade English class over Zoom. Since I hadn’t observed a class in almost a year, I decided to go. I wasn’t quite sure what to expect, mostly because I’ve substituted in middle schools many a time, and they’re usually war zones.
Well, I logged on to Zoom to find the sweetest group of students I think I’ve ever met. To preface, the class keeps a virtual recipe book in their Google classroom. One of the boys shared that he was looking forward to testing out the apple crisp recipe from the book and wanted to get other people’s opinions on what kinds of apples he should use when he makes it. If reading that didn’t make your heart grow a couple of sizes, then you are heartless. KIDDING. Anyways, that boy will probably never know, but he reminded me of my “why” for wanting to be a teacher.
I want to be a teacher because I want my students to know that they are accepted and appreciated as their authentic selves. I hope that my students will feel that my classroom is a safe place for them to come just as they are. As a future English teacher, I also cannot wait to share how much I love reading and writing with my students! I believe that there is a sense of joy that comes from communicating your thoughts through writing and learning more about others around you through reading. My goal is to help my students view reading and writing as joyful exercises.
I like watching Brittany Sinitch’s videos on YouTube because she is a cool, hip, and stylish English teacher. A piece of advice she gave for future teachers currently in college is to picture your future students cheering you on when things feel difficult. Lately, I’ve been picturing my future students cheering me on quite a bit.
When I am being an Excel wizard, crunching numbers to find the average scaled score for the 2018 MCAS for my statistics class, I picture them cheering me on. I am stumbling my way through Excel. I am an English Education major, so I have never really had to use Excel before. However, I am figuring out Excel as I go, and I’ve actually been proud of how much I’ve been able to teach myself over the past month.
………………
The other day I was filling out my application for student teaching and I got kind of teary. I was sitting in the science center and there were people around, so I had to make it look like I wasn’t crying, but I kind of was. Although I felt like my tears were dramatic and borderline sickening, they were for a good reason – my dream of being Miss Sousa is coming true.
The Rough Draft
Well, a few days after the workshop for my talk, I decided to look back at the prompt that I had initially been given to write about. I happened to notice that I had missed the general idea that my talk was supposed to cover. OOPS! I guess that is what happens when you’re a little burnt out. Anyways, the general question about this prompt centers around the word “why.” What a coincidence!
For my talk, I will be sharing why I am Christian and why I continue to pursue God in my life even when it feels routine, and the excitement wears off. While I cannot give too much of my talk away because I think I am sworn to secrecy until retreat is over, I continue to pursue God because He remains the same through everything. Although it feels like a lot has changed in my life over the past year or even just the past couple of months, He always stays the same. He always welcomes me back, even when I do crazy things. As Miss Alabama Hannah would say, “Jesus still loves me.”
………………
The other day, I talked to my dad on the phone and told him that the critics had a lot to say about me the other day in the press. He did not understand my Nicki Minaj reference, which he wouldn’t because he is a fifty-five-year-old man who drives a Ford pickup truck. He replied, “people are talking trash about you in the school newspaper?” I then had to explain the reference, to which he just nodded and said: “okay, dear.” Anyways, John Sousa went on to say that people told him in his early twenties that he didn’t have management potential. Well, he is now a manager and has been for a long time.
Basically, just ignore the critics.
I am learning that life does not have to be perfect to be wonderful. In fact, my life will never be perfect, which I particularly realized when I spilled water on my temporary paper license and I had to blow dry it so I could actually use it. However, I am starting to think that the fact that my life is imperfect is what makes it exciting. Therefore, even when it feels like the critics are abundant and the supporters are few, I will choose to remember my “why.”