Teachable moments
Home school freak goes to school
Happy New Year! The calendar has changed, but the ramblings of Kitchen Sink remain consistent as ever. I’m coming to you from a Sunday afternoon (workaholic much?) in what the ~news is currently calling the world’s most polluted city<3.
Yesterday morning I was trying to choose the perfect outfit to wear from a morning bicycle ride to a fancy sushi lunch date. The modern woman really can spare no expense when it comes to flexible wardrobe pieces. To accommodate my needs of comfort and elegance, I reached for a pair of wide-legged trousers that have been banished to the back of my closet since last year.
Upon buttoning them up, I reached into my pockets and was confronted with two relics of a time that suddenly feels very distant: in one pocket, a Pokemon card, in the other, a stubby piece of chalk. These were among my “teacher pants” and had lived for three years in the monochrome stack of clothes I pulled from every exhausted morning so that I wouldn’t have to use my brain. I suppose the last I’d worn them was in my final days of teaching last May. (Here is where I kindly ask you to overlook the implication that I don’t wash my clothes as regularly as I should.)
Over the last few months, I’ve thought quite a few times about writing on my teaching experience. I have a lot to say on the topic. I think the thing stopping me from saying (or writing) them formally is that I’m worried it’ll be a punch in the gut. That in letting myself think about teaching, I’ll admit how much I miss it, or that I’ll face that haunting six-letter word: regret~~. There was no room for regret in my budding freelance life, which has been held together through pure self-delusion and blind conviction.
But on finding my sweet little artifacts of the first grade yesterday, I felt more joy than pain, and above all, immense gratitude. And what do I do when I feel things big time? I tell you all about it, of course.
Little monsters
When I began teaching in Hanoi in 2021, I intentionally sought out a position in high schools. Young kids are famously loud, sticky, and annoying, and as someone who doesn’t even want one of my own, I had no interest in corralling someone else’s. So, off to the 10th grade I went, bright-eyed in my fantasies of peaceful learning.
As I’m sure many of you can guess, and I should have surmised if I’d thought for five seconds, it was not peaceful. Teenagers require just as much classroom management as little ones, but they’re also old enough to hate your guts. And they can be selfish. I feel it’s okay for me to say that because looking back, I can remember how selfish I was at that age. It’s a time in life when it’s hard to think about others, and when I know I had my greatest capacity for cruelness. Add to that the chaos of hormones and the truly intense pressure of just being 16, and you end up with a classroom in mayhem.
I say all this not to bully young people, but to stipulate that with all the rambling I’m about to do about all the values I’ve taken away from teaching primary school, I have immense respect for people who do this work with older kids. It kicked my ass.
In 2022, I stumbled into a job teaching first-grade language arts. I took the role because the curriculum was much different. In my secondary school job, I’d been teaching ESL (English as a Second Language), which involved mostly vocabulary review and similar soulless activities, to students I only saw once a week. Now in grade one at a small private school with an English immersion program, I would see the same students for 90 minutes every day. We’d learn through reading and writing, not just drilling, and I’d have a lot of control over the lesson planning.
When I made the switch, my mindset was that teaching probably just wasn’t a good fit for me in general. But I wanted to stay in Hanoi, and the best way to do so is to teach, so I’d try my hand in a different job.
So that fall I fell into primary school. Funnily enough, as a homeschool freak, it was also my first day of “traditional” first grade.
“I like to think they teach me”
The most rotten thing about the above cliche is just how true it is.
When my friend Ella was visiting a couple of months ago, after I’d taught my primary school students for two years and then left the profession for journalism, she asked me what I felt I’d taken away from my brief time teaching. I found answers spilling out of my mouth before I even had time to think. As it turns out, first grade was actually an extraordinarily formative time for me.
Kids are loud and sticky and annoying. But they’re also selfless, resilient, and generous in every way. They give you their love without reservation, their thoughts as they pop into their heads, and their very last pencil were you to ask for it.
More than anything, they changed my understanding of my own values and how I interact with the world. Being the adult in a room full of kids, I came to discover what it means to take responsibility for others’ well-being. If there was a problem, like a task being too difficult for some, it wasn’t on the children to fix the situation; it was on me. In the most blunt terms, the kids can succeed, but they can’t fail; only I am failing if they aren’t learning, and that makes the job extraordinarily humbling.
And though that sentiment is at its harshest in the classroom, it’s a nice mental practice to apply in doses for the rest of life. To think of those around me and not ask what they can do for me, but wonder how I can best serve them is a much happier way to live (or try to live). It also makes the rewards of returned affection much sweeter, when they are never expected and only appreciated.
Reimbursement, tenfold
When I returned for my second year at this primary school in the fall of 2023, I was only freshly recovered from my tonsillectomy surgery that summer. If you read my post about that surgery, you know that it basically broke my brain and turned me into an anxious, depressed disaster woman (and chaotic teacher). What I didn’t fully dive into in that essay is just how crucial my teaching job was in keeping me together that year.
Teaching is such a strange job because there’s really no limit to what you can put into it. You can always prepare more materials or spend more time on differentiating work. It almost feels like constantly pouring yourself into a cup with a little hole in the bottom. The closer you get to filling it, the more you realize that you never can.
Sometimes, this is problematic. As much as I’ve found a fondness for education, I’m no believer in work consuming anyone’s life entirely, and I’m sure teachers much better than I can attest to the importance of a work-life balance. But at that time in my life, my capacity for happiness felt so shallow, and I felt that I had so little to give, that digging deeper to put more into my classroom was exactly what I needed.
Every day, no matter what had happened the day before, my students would show up, full of enthusiasm and excitement, and I’d have to find that in myself to match it. And perhaps even more wonderfully, they never held the previous day against me.
My time in primary school convinced me that kids are naturally inclined to see the best in you. Some days in school I would just be so angry, and it would show. But I remember once a student (who went by the name “Bean”) came up to me during work time and softly asked why I seemed so sad. I was being a total prick that day, but his instinct was to give me the benefit of the doubt, and the chance to be having a hard time rather than being a jerk.
And the next day, he forgot all about it. Oh, the beauty of developing brains.
And so I learned how important it is not to hold the previous day against them either. The virtue of trying to always give them the benefit of the doubt. This kind of long-term patience was one of the most difficult but rewarding lessons from my extremely brief teaching career, and I failed at it all the time. But it taught me the immense kindness of giving others a do-over, and how much they blossom when you do it. Just like I did.
One particularly fond memory
Last spring, in my final months of teaching (though I didn’t know it yet), I began organizing what would end up being my most treasured project of all: a pen pal program between my students in Hanoi and students at my niece Lydia’s school in Seattle.
We did an introduction video of each student and assigned them a partner at the sister school. We learned all about Seattle as a city and how our mail would travel from one place to the other. Most special of all, my parents ended up being the ones who brought the letters over from the U.S. when they came to visit that April, because mailing to Vietnam has proven tricky in the past. They came to class for the day to deliver the letters and help the students write their responses. And of course, my mother came with an entire suitcase full of candy for them (visible in the background of the photo below). This raised their standards for treats irreparably, and nothing I got for them was ever good enough again.
But I can describe that day as nothing short of absolutely darling. For starters, it was hilarious how excited the kids were to meet two random adults that they’d never see again. I’m not exaggerating when I say they brought it up every day for weeks, wondering when they’d finally get to meet my parents. Don’t get me wrong; my parents are fabulous, but I never understood this.
But also, it was so special for my parents to see the job and the tiny little people that now took up so much of my time, energy, and, honestly, my heart. My parents had also had to hear me complain every week that year about the workload of my online teaching degree program, so this was a window into why I was doing it. And why I’d decided over the previous three years that I’d like to be a teacher again one day. What a fortunate turn of events.
Gallery
Above all, the thing I miss the most about the first grade, the thing that has the most capacity to fill me with regret when I dwell on it for too long, is all the itty-bitty moments.
Kids have an uncanny ability to say the most insane things. To come out of nowhere with a baffling stroke of brilliance or a jaw-dropping feat of absurdity. While there were many days I wanted to die on my drive home from work (certainly more than I’m remembering now), there were others when I couldn’t believe I’d been fortunate enough to be let in on the wonder of 7-year-old minds. Often, it felt as if all the little moments were like dimes in a piggy bank, and at the end of the week I could crack it open to find I was rich.
So, here are some very random bits of student work from my camera roll. Now that I spend my days toiling on the computer, now that my teacher pants are just “pants,” they’re a nice reminder of when I got to be in on a very cool club.
Finally, I would be remiss to prattle on this long about teaching without mentioning two of my very own teachers who subscribe to the blog! Of course, my dad, my first and longest teacher. And Mr. Sorenson, my high school journalism teacher, a class where I found so much more of myself than I ever could have expected. Thank GOD you guys stuck the job out longer than I did! The end.
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The bullet points:
Bathroom Sink will return next week for its 7th installment! We are going to have some #momtalk with my friend Celine, who recently gave birth to the cutest baby with the tiniest feet!
My dance teacher Daniela, who also happens to be a dear friend, has been giving me “dance scholarships” these last few months while my income is less than impressive. The other day she said something so charming I have to share it: “What’s the fun of dancing if people can’t do it because of money?” I also witnessed her mix red and white wine the other day and call it “science.” She’s the best.
Sending love and childlike wonder!
Ryley
Love this!
This was a fun read! I am excited to read the next one!