Working Mom

I love being a mom, and I feel like I'm great at it. Of course, Penn's pretty easy on me. I mean, look at that face:

This is the boy helping with the laundry. What a sweet pea. (Note the poor child's long bed hair. I'm putting off a haircut until a year if I can help it.)

I've been back at work for a month now. Penn's been in daycare and seems to be adjusting well. I'm still breastfeeding. I lock myself in a work room every day to "do the thing." Little boy's going to be six months in two weeks, so according to my plan per American Academy of Pediatrics, we're starting solid foods soon, but still breastfeeding until one year. I'm proud of the work that I've done to provide for him, and hope that it does give him a healthy foundation for his life. But it is a little work, and a little awkward in the current culture. As modern as we are, as organically as we strive to feed ourselves, we're still afraid to desexualize women enough to support breastfeeding openly as the best natural option...maybe there is a level of being sensitive to women who choose not to breastfeed, or feel that they can't. But I feel like if breastfeeding were supported more, there would be better information out there, more community for women struggling with it, and maybe a healthier foundation to the future of our nation. Sorry. Didn't think I was going to get all "La Leche" and political. But jeez, I get bored being locked in a closet.

Several women have told me that when they went back to work after having their children, they cried the first week. I didn't do that. I cried the month before I went back to work, and I haven't cried since. I've just been trying to stay on top of my game, and I suppose that's required more focus than emotion.

My goal was to start out the year with good classroom management...what I always seem to struggle with. And so far, my class is better organized than ever before. I have a great seating chart, laminated make-up work folders, class emails out to all the parents who can receive email. I'm still not behind in grading, and that usually starts to happen by now. My students haven't been out of control, and my classes have been pretty on-task. So I've felt successful...until a few days ago.

Katherine Patterson, author of Bridge to Terabithia, spoke Saturday night at the annual Buechner Institute lecture. She levied an accusation that when we should feed our children bread, we feed them stones. She said today's famine is one of mystery and imagination. She said that children's hunger manifests itself as a craving for the supernatural, hence the boom in the vampire lit etc. In that wise, grandmotherly way of hers, she called teachers to bring beauty and mystery to their students. She charged teachers to show students that they're valuable even if they're not a pop star.

I've been so oriented on managing my classroom that I don't think I've connected with my students. It's been me and them, not us. And its been...let's practice persuasive writing so you can do well on TCAPs. But with TCAPs behind us today, the challenge that lies before me is to bring beauty to my students. And how can I teach them the beauty of literature, the mystery within themselves, unless I know them, listen to them, show them they matter.

I envy teachers who are friends with their students. I'm afraid to really befriend students, so though I may joke with them in the classroom, I'm generally not personal with them. I feel awkward though, because I think my students expect that since I'm younger, I should be cool...be like them, relate to them. I feel that I disappoint them. I'm just another boring old bat making them read and write.

Don't get me wrong, I'm motivated to try creative means of teaching. Sigh. I guess I just wish that I were the kind of teacher who a kid would come to if something was going on in her life. I wish I were the kind of teacher who would know what to say, know how to help, be a blessing.

I guess I'm coming down off a high of feeling so successful with the whole mom thing, feeling so close to my son, that it's hard to go through a day where I feel incapable and even impersonal with my students. I'm looking for a way to be a teacher who stretches her students intellectually and creatively, a teacher deserving of their trust.