T I M E

Time is such a constructed concept. Nowhere does this become clearer than when I am traveling. Leaping across time zones and boundaries, I find myself departing at 2 pm on Thursday afternoon, only to reach my destination on Saturday morning. Or more fantastically, travel out at 1 pm on a Sunday afternoon to reach at 12:30 pm that same Sunday! Readjusting watches, recalibrating myself to the jetlag—this all seems so strangely false. In a more insidious sense, I have felt the pressure of time these last few months as I’ve tried to recalibrate my own life.

            

I made the decision to quit Teach for America in June, weeks before the school year ended. Right after that, I traveled with a friend on a long-planned journey to India. When I came back, I was struck with a sudden panic that I was losing time professionally. You hear that your twenties are a time to experiment, to boldly try new jobs and take more risks. Especially if you’re a woman, apparently. Afterwards, the winding road of life imperceptibly straightens and slows. You’re expected to work a steady job, be sure of your income. Putting things away in savings. Settle down. Have children. Buy house. It’s funny, after all this ‘progress’ and supposed shifting of the 21^st-century American psyche, our collective societal goals are still the same age-old goals. I scoffed at it before, but I see the reality of this path in my older friends and relatives. I know I’ll be drawn to those same goals in just a few years.

Until I went to college, time seemed to plod along so slowly. Summers in particular were endless. I joined the myriads of activities that is a suburban [Indian] kid’s rite of passage, of course. Ice skating, swim lessons, piano, bharat natyam dance, ballet, gymnastics, softball, baseball, basketball, soccer, Carnatic singing. None of ‘em stuck. My sister and I played with Barbie dolls, fought, did our homework, and waited anxiously to grow up. We couldn’t wait to do this and that as we got older. And also escape the loving, somewhat stifling gaze of our parents.

               

 In college, I was suddenly unendingly busy. I finally had total control on how to structure my time, but I felt pressured to stuff that time with classes, work, and extracurriculars. It seemed like I blinked and I was suddenly a fourth-year who realized she had not given enough thought to what she wanted to do with her life. I quickly settled on Teach for America, and another year went steamrolling by.

  

Suddenly, here I was in August 2015, after five incredibly fast years had gone by, once again thinking about what I was going to do with my life. I was scared. Unemployed, living back at my parent’s house, that’s not where I envisioned myself a year after graduation. I realized I was lucky. I had a safety net and a family who could support me. But I didn’t want that—I wanted to be self-sufficient. And I felt time slipping by in a different sense, careening onwards as I was suddenly stagnant and losing out on professional growth.

  

In Lean In, Sheryl Sandberg advises her fellow professional women to seek growth while they’re young. As we move into our late twenties and thirties, the pressures of settling down weigh more heavily on women. After all, we’re the ones who must carry and deliver a human being. Our aging bodies can be more dangerous for a baby’s health. Women remain much more likely to step back professionally than men in this time.

Yes, I know I’m only 23. Objectively I understand that a year out of the workforce won’t cause irreparable personal damage. It’s just that there are so many things I want to do. I realized that I need to go to graduate school. I want to explore on-the-ground development work in India. I want to work for the government. I may want to practice law. When will I settle on what I want? Is this a millennial problem? I thought frantically those first few months.

I began applying to graduate schools, fellowships, scholarships. I slept nine hours a night. I traveled a lot, and I visited friends across the country. I learned to knit. I will be starting an internship in February. I’m mostly happy, and I should be. But there’s this gnawing part of me that screams, You should be doing more! It emerges after I spend a day (or days) guiltily binge-watching TV. Or reading all day instead of studying for a graduate exam. Shouldn’t you still be doing more? The voice screams. Experimenting with new recipes, exercising, cleaning the house, working on that story you thought of? Taking charge of your time? I am faced with the tyranny of choice, and it overwhelms me.

The sneers of that voice have manifested in ugly ways. I have found myself much more volatile, particularly with my parents (mother). My own frustration at my lack of self-discipline morphs into anger, and I turn it to the people who I know will never shun me for it. Isn’t it a terrible thing that we release our worst selves onto the people who love us the most? Even as I get angry, I want to apologize, but the words catch in my throat and I choke on them. I’m so sorry.

I realized that I’m only as disciplined as I have to be. I work hard when I need to. That’s how I’ve gotten through my whole life. I’m driven by people around me, motivated by their discipline. Alone, not so much.

This guy, Daniel Gilbert, says that it really only takes a few simple things to make us happy. Spending time with family and loved ones, exercising, getting enough sleep—basically living a healthy and balanced life. But I think it’s more than that! At least for me, I need to be driven by something professionally that contributes to a greater societal good. For me, the idea of contributing to something beyond me to make it better, that idea takes the place of religion. It gives me something to believe in, something to work for. I’m ready to get back to it. 

What a Teacher Learned.

                The two girls ran around my classroom, yelling and slapping each other as they went. They knocked over tables, and the room seemed to swell with the noise of other students cheering them on. "What the hell am I doing here?" I thought, before shoving myself into the madness.

Let’s just say this is not how I envisioned teaching.

Part I: WHY

When I applied to Teach for America, I was critical of the organization. A program that goes into underprivileged neighborhoods and has teachers teach for two years before moving on to “bigger, better” things? It seemed a little counterproductive, to say the least. So what finally drew me to apply? Well, honestly, TFA markets itself well. I was already interested in social justice and inequality, and TFA brands itself as a way to learn about educational inequality on the ground, and then use that experience to work to “One Day” in whatever profession you end up in.

That thought certainly made me uncomfortable. Isn’t teaching a lifelong profession, not just a stepping stone? But I pushed aside those worries with a justification that I might stay longer in the classroom, commit 3 or 5 or maybe even 10 years to teaching, and in that time I could make real change. Also, if I’m being totally honest, Teach for America was a reputable program, it would afford me a vast alumni network, and I could end my job search early in November of my fourth year.

Part II: “Training”

So that’s how I ended up at Teach for America’s institute on a steamy June afternoon in far-out Queens, ready to learn “how to be a teacher.” I was assigned to co-teach high school social studies in the Bronx with two other co-teachers, what they referred to as a “collab” group. Institute was exhausting in a kind of nonstop, no time to yourself kind of way. We rose at 6:00 am every morning, grabbed breakfast and packed lunch at the dining hall, and loaded on buses to the Bronx. There, at the high school’s summer school program, half of the trainees would start morning lessons with students while the other half had an hour long teaching instructional session with our “instructional leader.” Then we’d switch. Our teaching block every day was about an hour and a half long, split among a group of three teachers. That’s right. We had three teachers to teach and manage a small group of high school students for an hour and a half every day. It was terrifying, but so much easier than what was to come. The rest of our day was filled with other training sessions, until we finally had free time in the afternoon and evening to frantically lesson plan and print materials for the next class day. I had moments of doubt and fear that I wasn’t adequately teaching these high schoolers World History. But I loved the topic, worked well with my partners, and enjoyed the students, for the most part. Honestly, the most difficult ones often skipped class. I left institute with a vague sense of comfort about teaching.

Then came middle school. Towards the end of July, I interviewed with and was hired on the spot by a K-8 charter school in central Brooklyn. I was hired under the promise of teaching Social Studies or English, but issues emerged about what I could teach between my graduate school program, TFA, and my school. By the time the dust settled, my school had filled all their vacant positions except math. 8^th grade math. I hadn’t taken math since I passed my AP Calculus exam in 12^th grade, whooping with delight at the thought of never having to take the subject again. Now I was being asked to teach it. Uh oh. At this point, my options were: Either take the math position, or leave TFA. Neither option was particularly palatable, but I convinced myself that I could get through it.  My administrator promised me that I would teach math for “just one year,” and the next year I could teach a subject I had more interest in.

Part III: Teaching

I woke up at 5:30 every morning, and brought a to-go breakfast of a slice of toast with peanut butter. I got to school around 6:30, worked frantically (and made last-minute copies) until 7:35, when my first students would start to trickle in for homeroom. The rest of the day was a frantic rush of class, prep, and meetings until 4:30 when I would collapse, numb at my desk. I tried to grade and lesson-plan until 6:30-7, when the hollow emptiness of the building and looks from the custodial staff signaled I should head home. I got home around 7-7:30, ate dinner, and fell asleep, just to start the cycle all over again.

Most of the time, I wasn’t sure what was happening in my classroom. I knew teaching in an inner-city school would be an objectively different experience from my days in the suburban public school system. But really, I had no idea. If I can boil it down to one thing, it would be this: In a suburban school, teachers and authority figures generally start out with a modicum of respect from students. You listen to your teacher until he or she does something to lose respect. In an urban school, teachers don’t start out with that level of respect. They have to earn it, from a student’s point of view. It makes sense. In my school, the teacher turnover rate was very high, as it is in schools throughout NYC. Long-term subs weren’t uncommon, and students often had to deal with inexperienced teachers and a constantly shifting administration. In my old county, I knew what teachers to expect in high school from the time I was in middle school. Students had less inherent trust of authority here—I got that.

But in a day to day sense, I didn’t. Up until this point in my life, I was used to succeeding at most things I attempted by buckling down and working hard. The same logic didn’t exactly apply to teaching. I spent hours and hours working on lesson plans—first refreshing myself on the material, then thinking about how I could relate it to the students, then printing materials, copying, and grading. Quick side note: Teachers have to be SUPER organized because they deal with mythical mountain-sized stacks of paper. After all that work, I often couldn’t get through even twenty minutes of my planned lesson before things went off the rails. Here are some of the things that happened in my class: Kids getting out of their seats and walking around the room, throwing paper balls and pencils at each other, talking loudly over me during instructional time, and occasionally, hitting each other. Kids knew when they were entering my classroom, they were entering a war zone, a place where the normal rules just did not apply.

How I felt for the kids who tried. Those kids who came into my class every day with determination, looking to me to answer questions and teach them despite the chaos going on around them in the classroom.

Some of my coworkers were truly amazing. One colleague, after watching me break down at a meeting, asked what he could do to help. “Um, maybe organize?” I responded. That day after school, he came to my room, told me to just dump the ungraded homework and classwork that had been sitting around, and helped me organize my desk and sane-ify my life for an hour. Teachers stepped into my class when I needed a minute, and there were always coworkers around to talk to if I needed it. But I couldn’t sustain doing this.

It wasn’t just that I was failing myself. I was failing 60 other children in the process, and I could not forgive myself for that. How could I have put us all in this situation?

I was mildly depressed that fall. I am amazed at both my courage and stupidity in not quitting those first few months. Part of it was that I didn’t want to be another teacher abandoning her kids. I also couldn’t fully accept my sense of failure.

Part IV: Do-Over

In December, after attempting numerous different techniques on my classroom, my academic director spoke with me. The school realized I had been working hard, but we couldn’t sustain a classroom like this. I was informed that I was going to be pulled out of the math classroom, and replaced by another teacher. I wasn’t fired, but I was going to be moved into an experienced teacher’s classroom. I would be trained by her, and put on probationary status. There was definitely an angry, embarrassed part of me that officially had to accept my first classroom’s failure. There was also the frustration of a backwards shift, from running a classroom to observing and assisting with one. But overall, this was a good thing.

I learned a lot from my mentor teacher. I didn’t want to run my classroom exactly like hers, of course, but in observing her teaching, I saw so many of the things missing from my old classroom. She had a definitive sense of order. Kids knew what was expected of them, they had a routine, and they were held to it. If they transitioned into the classroom badly, they went outside and did it again. My mentor teacher seemed to have her eyes everywhere, dealing with every little issue she saw so that they wouldn’t escalate into bigger issues later—“sweating the small stuff.” She wasn’t your “everybody’s best friend” teacher, but she was liked, and most importantly, respected, by her students.

Under her careful tutelage, I slowly built up my shattered self-confidence. We worked on pieces like introductions to new material, engagement tactics, and the many management tools to run a smooth classroom. We debriefed lessons over lunches and after school. We analyzed the psyches of our various kids. And I got better. But it wasn’t enough.

In May, the founder of our school came to talk to me about my status with the school next year. He based his comments off of the three formal observations my supervisor had done of my teaching over the past three months. I had made growth, he said, but not enough growth to merit a teaching spot with the school for the next year. I angrily called my TFA mentor, who said TFA would support me in finding another school, because he believed I had made enough growth to merit another chance.

Part V: Reflections

I resigned myself to moving to another school in NYC, and began interviewing with different schools. The interviews went well, but I walked away from them all with a terrible pit in my stomach. I finally admitted to myself that maybe I didn’t want to teach again next year, and my body was viscerally rejecting the idea of continuing to teach. I decided that at the end of the school year, I would leave and I wouldn’t return to teaching.

I would have been a better teacher this year than I was last year, that’s for sure. But I still wouldn’t be good enough; I still wouldn’t have been what these kids needed. And that’s because, at the end of the day, teaching is not what I want to do. The idea of being a constant and uber-mature role model to these kids—I don’t like that. I didn’t even like my little sister looking up to me when we were growing up. I never felt like I could be my natural, ‘true’ self in the classroom because that would clash with the authoritative vibe I needed to create. I hated holding kids accountable for everything they do in the classroom. I could have taught a group of kids for another year in a new school, finished my commitment to TFA, and left—but that felt unfair, both to the kids and to me.

Every teacher has days when they feel like quitting, when it’s all too much and they feel like they can’t make a difference in anybody’s lives. Usually that teacher needs to stay in the classroom. But sometimes quitting is the right thing to do. I joined TFA as a naïve 21 year old, interested in social justice and not exactly sure what I wanted to do in the world. I learned that teaching is not the path I want to approach social justice through, valuable as it may be.

If anybody asked me for advice about teaching, and Teach for America, I think I’d maybe tell them this: I don’t expect you to listen to the criticism, because I ultimately didn’t. But just honestly think to yourself: Why do you want to do this? Is it for the prestige? Is it because you don’t know what to do with your life? Do you want to teach as a career? If your answer to that final question is yes, then maybe TFA is for you. If not, I’d think really long and hard about it. But that's just one person’s opinion.

After I quit TFA, I finally started asking myself those hard questions. I’m reaching answers that finally make sense to me. I’m pursuing opportunities I’m passionate about, and I won’t be cowed by the fear of failure. I learned so many lessons. It is amazing how much you can learn as a teacher.

Is Obama Finally Getting More Real?

                A couple weeks ago, I started reading Obama’s Dreams from My Father, a frank, powerful memoir in which Obama delves into his identity and race. I followed the now well-known steps of his journey from his childhood upbringing in Hawaii and Indonesia, raised by his white grandparents and mother, to his somewhat turbulent college journey, to his position as a community organizer in Chicago. Throughout the book, I was struck by his candor and uncertainty as to where to put himself as a black American. He talks about a friend calling him out on “sucking up” and “acting white” to get favors from teachers. He gravely muses on the situation of boys in the South Side, thinking about the statement that “black boys are not safe anywhere in America.” He’s candid but not disparaging, not too inflammatory or blame-y towards whites—though of course there’s plenty of fodder there.

                Reading this book now, in the seventh year of his presidency, is very bittersweet because I can compare his ideals to the events of his presidency. And the question is: What has Obama done for black people? Let’s be real: He wouldn’t have been elected in 2008 without the completely solid support of the black community. He lost the biggest base of voters among—can you guess?—white males. He was historic. I have seen magazine pictures of him framed and put up in a number of black homes. To liberal whites, he may have harkened an exciting feeling of a “post-racial America,” but to the colored people who know better, he represented a step forward in moving towards racial equality.

                Obama’s been a part of some very historic stuff. Obamacare, his politically exhaustive undertaking, pushed through and looks like it’s here to stay. He got us out of a terrible recession. He repealed DOMA. He killed Bin Laden. Okay, okay, yeah, but what did he do for black people?

                I remember this speech in 2013 to Morehouse College grads, preaching the grads to “not make excuses….Nobody cares if you’ve gone through discrimination.” This tough-love, picking yourself by your bootstraps speech wasn’t well-received. During his early presidency, he was also remembered for the remark advising “Brothers should pull up their pants.” Recently, during the issue of striking back against state laws that might make voting more restrictive and disproportionately affect black voters, Obama called it politically infeasible.

                My own heartache, though, is more fundamental than what he could have done in policy. I wonder what he could have said. These last couple of years have been particularly volatile with Michael Brown, Eric Garner, Freddie Gray, Tamir Rice, and the death or subjugation of countless other black lives. #Blacklivesmatter has swept the country. Obama gave speeches condemning the violence after each instance. But could he have pulled this together, could he have supported the #blacklivesmatter movement, could he have engaged white mainstream America on a discussion of how racism manifests itself today?

                I know I’m putting the burden of representation on him, but I too know the reality of bearing the cross as a cultural ambassador. So does every other person of color in the United States. I’m tired. After teaching at a K-8 charter school in Brooklyn, I’m tired because I know those kids start internalizing messages about their color before they reach third grade. I’m tired because I know they feel like black lives don’t matter to most of America. I’m tired because a name like “Shaniqua” is mocked—though why is it any less legitimate of a name than “Shoshanna?” I’m tired because, even knowing what I do, I still sometimes catch myself in my own prejudices.  

                The burden’s on everyone, I know. It’s not just on Obama. But…just but.

                This being said, he seems to be getting a little more “real.” He started last year with the “My Brother’s Keeper” initiative, which focuses on programs to help young men of color. He’s speaking out and attempting to pass through a criminal justice reform bill. He let his “anger translator” speak for him at a White House correspondent’s dinner. He even gave Kanye West some key advice about running president, with an amazing final line: “Do you really think this country’s gonna elect a black guy from the South Side of Chicago with a funny name as president of the United States? That is crazy. That is cray.”

                That line was so amazing because it addressed the stereotypes, it emphasized the struggle, it brought hope with a little sarcasm and a smile and a little urban dictionary. Here’s to hoping he keeps keeping it real.