I enjoy teaching, but I still fear the future and feel a bit haunted by the past. What are we investing ourselves in? Our lives? Where am I going? It's maybe strange to be asking these questions now that I am "home" with an education and a career, near family and with my husband and new hopes.
I've always wanted to impact lives - whether nannying, teaching, or writing. To impact the tide. When I worked at AF, we were starting something incredible - but the flip side was that our impact was being watched, discussed, evaluated, copied, or critiqued. I did not thrive under a spotlight. It was no one's fault, yet I still cringe when I think about it. The logical business model is strategic - pinpointing these weaknesses in order to provide help. But with my weaknesses pinpointed, I became frozen, stuck, and self-defeating. The harder I tried, the deeper I became stuck. I finally gave up. I became that teacher I couldn't really imagine before, the one that stopped trying. In the seemingly most ideal environment - a dynamic-tide-changing-achievement-gap-closing school, I began bitterly going through the motions of eating, commuting, teaching, and returning home.
I invested my hopes into this ground-breaking school and utterly failed. I guess I was investing in the wrong things: education, AF, living in Harlem, New York.
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