Failure

Tasha wasn't exceptionally smart or good or any of those things that teachers love to brag about.  Tasha was just sweet and average, the sort of kid that would get looked over if she weren't so short.  Anyway, I felt it was necessary to see her.  You have to have a clear picture of her before you can see my failure.  take a good look at the picture. 
   Now image her telling you both verbally and through a written evaluation that you were weak and needed to take control of your room.  Yeah.  That's how I know I failed.  You can't argue with evidence like that.  I knew she was right, and until very recently when I began reflecting over my past year, I didn't really know why she was right.
   Here's what I decided, and I think I'm right.  Maybe.  Looking back at my journey through a first year of teaching, the one thing I lacked more than anything else in the world was the realization that I am an adult.  My first few months of teaching made this obvious.  Every day that I showed up to work, I felt like I was dressed in a Halloween costume, a child parading around as a teacher.  This caused me to shy away from calling parents, as I felt I had no legitimacy to tell these parents anything negative about their kids, and it kept me from thinking about what I wanted to see my kids do.  That might seem minor, but if you don't know what you expect your kids to do, then you don't have expectations.  If you don't have expectations, then no expectations are communicated to the kids.  If this doesn't happen, then the students get the idea that nothing is expected of them.  In turn, nothing happens.  Except chaos.  That's my point of failure.  The real cherry on top is that if you don't realize that you're an adult, you also don't feel the need to enforce any of the consequences when the students fail to meet your non-existent expectations. 
   This has been my big revelation from the past year.  I AM an adult.  I pay my bills.  I cook my meals.  I clean up after myself.  I make decisions.  I have a degree.  I have a job.  And on and on and on.  I am the adult in the room.  I didn't realize that coming out of college because for 100% of my life my problems were taken care of for me by my parents and most everything in my life was paid for with minimal work on my part.  And now that I've been forced to realize that, by both my failure and the very adult experiences I had to deal with this year, I feel like I know why things went awry this year.  I was a pansy ass.
   That's not to say my generally soft personality must be masked in the classroom. Only a real adult can be both themselves and an authority figure.  The adult Ms. Hill doesn't have to change who she is; as a matter of fact, the adult Ms. Hill is so confident about herself that authority comes naturally instead of forced.  The adult Ms. Hill doesn't seek approval from middle schoolers because she knows that these kids don't even know what they need.  The adult Ms. Hill doesn't shy away from correcting students because she knows that really caring for a students means knowing when to provide boundaries.

My failure stemmed from the fact that I needed to grow up.  And I think this year has taken care of a lot of that.  That's not to say that I don't still have a lot of growing up to do.  One year of teaching is just a drop in the bucket, and I have lots more life experience to gain before I have everything perfect.  I just feel like when I return to Tasha in the fall I will have more confidence in being who I am and being the adult in the classroom.  Hopefully, I won't let her down as tremendously as I did this year.  That's my goal.