I'm a teacher. I've been a teacher for so long that I can get perfect scores on the vocabulary and grammar quizzes I give without having to study. I've been grading essays so long that I can read a student's introduction and see exactly what's wrong with it. I've told so many students where to put the punctuation marks and citations with their quotation marks that I can't believe they don't understand by now...
Of course, standing at the front of a classroom explaining grammar I understand and sitting on the grading end of an essay I assigned is easy compared to being in the totally vulnerable position of having to hit submit on the ideas I've shaped in a field in which I'm NOT the expert.
Speaking of "not an expert," I want to become a published author. Enter Southern New Hampshire University's online Master of Fine Arts program. Without leaving my comfy chair, I take classes from published authors. In the last fifteen months, I've taken five classes to try to learn to write, publish, and market a novel (or, ideally, more than one). On my own, I haven't been able to write anything that anybody would want to read. I've started four of five novels over the years. Some of these documents have enough words to be considered novels, but I don't have anything good. To sum up, I'm not an expert at writing novels...yet.
And sticking with something I'm not good at has helped me to remember how it feels to need help. I know how it feels not to have enough time or energy to do my best on an assignment, but to get it done anyway. I know the disappointment of getting lousy feedback on a piece I thought I nailed or not getting enough feedback when I don't know how to make my work better. I know how annoyed I get when the expert in the field doesn't understand what I was going for.
I try to take this awareness of what it means to be a student into my classroom with me. Because of my online classes, I can better relate to my students' frustrations. Of course, this empathy doesn't mean that I've gone soft. In fact, knowing how much free time I've given up to get my work done might make me tougher on my students who hand in work late. I know the joy of watching Netflix or reading romance novels until the wee hours, but that doesn't mean I think it's okay to pursue those leisure activities before getting the words on the page.
The empathy comes with understanding that it's hard to get the work done, so I can truly celebrate the kids who push through to do it anyway. I feel so much joy when my students can use the comments I write on one essay to make improvements in their next submitted piece.
I got an email the other day from a kid I haven't taught since last year. He wrote to ask a grammar question for an essay he was writing for his this year's teacher. I felt so happy that he knew he could come to me for help. Isn't that what teachers are for? He knew I was a safe resource. Color me proud!
When's a time you allowed yourself to be vulnerable? What did you get out of the experience? Feel free to leave a comment.