Becoming My Mom

I distinctly remember the day, one sunny spring afternoon in seventh grade, when my two best friends and I decided what we were going to be when we grew up. We had finally grown tired of the inflatable backyard pool and were laying on the grass talking as only middle school girls can. Lauren was going to be a professional writer who taught kindergarten to make ends meet since writing probably wouldn’t be the most lucrative career option. Kailey was going to be a chemical scientist and was going to make lots of money discovering the cure for some obscure tropical disease. For my part, I wasn’t sure what I was going to be, but I did know one thing: I was not going to be my mom. 

My mom teaches middle school advanced language arts and coaches volleyball and track at the local high school. I was in her class 90 minutes a day, five days a week, for two years when I was in middle school, and then was her athlete all four years of high school. She was a teacher and a coach long before she was ever a mother, and we had positive relationships in every capacity. Before school, she was my mom. At school, she was my teacher. After school she was my coach, and after practice she was back to being my mom again. I loved her class and I respected her as my teacher, but I knew I never wanted to do what she did.

Fast forward ten years and here I am today, working hard to do exactly what my mom does. By the end of next school year I hope to have a job as a middle school language arts teacher, and to be scoping out potential opportunities for coaching high school track. I love middle school students; I can’t wait to be surrounded by their energy and identity discovery. My dream would be to teach advanced 7th/8th grade LA classes, where I can teach deeper content and really push the students who are ready to be pushed. In short, I want to teach exactly what my mom teaches. 

In case copying her teaching demographic isn’t enough, many of the techniques I plan to use in my classroom are ones I learned from my mom. Not every piece of writing needs to be red-pen graded, but students should be given a lot of writing. That’s my mom’s philosophy. Essays that are going to get corrected by the teacher should be graded and returned as quickly as possible. That’s also my mom’s philosophy. I agree with both of those beliefs, and they are practices to which I plan to hold myself accountable as a teacher. I plan to use her agenda/whiteboard set-up, her essay folders and turn-in basket set-ups, her subtle redirection strategies, and even some of her projects or assignments if they will work in my curriculum. In a lot of ways, I want to become my mom in the classroom.

When it comes to sports, I used to think it was ridiculous that my mom taught at the middle school and coached at the high school. Why don’t you coach at the school where you teach? It makes so much more sense logistically and relationally, but once again, here I am hoping to teach middle school and coach high school. While I do love middle school students, a full school day is plenty of time for me to spend with them. High schoolers make a nice maturity balance to the wilderness of middle school. In addition, middle school athletes are simply not ready to learn what I am ready to teach them when it comes to track and field. My favorite track event isn’t even available in middle school, and I want to coach athletes who are physically and mentally ready to make subtle and difficult alterations to specific physical movements. With very few exceptions, middle school athletes are not ready for that. There is definitely value to middle school athletics, but they’re not for me; once again, I am left in the position of becoming my mom.

When Lauren and Kailey and I were sitting around the pool deciding what we wanted to be, I was the only one who was dead wrong. Kailey just graduated with a degree in public health–she’s not quite curing obscure tropical diseases, but she’s probably educating people about them. Lauren is not teaching kindergarten, but she is teaching. She just finished her first full year teaching middle school language arts in the Santa Barbara area, and I am hoping to join that content area train next year, teaching middle school language arts somewhere in Oregon’s Willamette Valley. As a seventh grader, I didn’t know what I wanted to be, but I am definitely excited about where I am and where I am going.