What would you do with your life if money was no issue?

Background: I recently became a Beachbody coach, and I've been posting about it a lot on Facebook because I'm really excited. I wrote a more in-depth post about my lifetime journey with body image issues and weight loss programs, and how I came to the 21 Day Fix. But I wanted to share about the moment I decided to dive in. 

I was reading a book my coach, Lesley, recommended to me: You Are A Badass by Jen Sincero. I had been doing the 21 Day Fix in some form or another since June, and slowly, but surely, building a healthier relationship with my body. 

Then I came to this line: 

"What would you do with your life if money was no issue?"

Before I could censor myself, before my skeptical internal editor piped up, my first thought was: 

"I would help people not hate their bodies and be at war with food like me." 

My second thought was, "buy the entire Cole Haan inventory." 

...I guess some things never change. 

That's how I knew helping people with this fitness and nutrition program was something I wanted to do. It was that simple. I rarely have moments of complete clarity like that. I have an impressive amount of insight into what I'm thinking and feeling, but rarely into what I want to DO. Just so you have a frame of reference, I taught swimming at a camp for 4 summers while in school for Writing, Literature and Publishing at Emerson College, but it took the combined efforts of my father, one of my best friends (who was also the head of the pool), and the camp secretary to convince me that I needed to pursue teaching. Also: Thanks guys. Love you. 

What would you do with your life if money was no issue? 

Bronchitis AND Pneumonia: GO HARD OR GO HOME.

Well that sucked.


I’ve been a teacher for years. I have on occasion (read: frequently) exhibited unhealthy behaviors that promote illness, including but not limited to:

• running in all messes of freezing cold precipitation 
• staying up too late 
•  drinking too much 
• drinking too much again the next night 
• not eating healthily 
• getting dehydrated 
• sharing water bottles with any number of people 
• not getting enough sleep for weeks at a time 

Despite all this risky behavior... I HAVE NEVER FELT THAT AWFUL IN MY ENTIRE LIFE. 
I’d like to start by telling you what it was like through other people’s eyes. I’ll tell you what it was like for me.. Don’t worry.. I have lots of stamina and a rambling ability that rivals televangelists.

MY BOYFRIEND will tell you that he knew I was sick because I wasn’t putting on a brave face or trying to act like I was okay. I’m not sure what he’s talking about, because I find it difficult to hide anything at all from anyone. Every year there are a couple of close calls when I almost admit to total strangers that I have menstrual cramps. But maybe he sees something I don’t. Maybe I hold some modicum of my discomfort in. That sounds like something real live grown-ups do, and I usually don’t associate myself with that demographic, but maybe I’ve changed.

He’ll also tell you I was a zombie who farted a lot, but you can ask him for more details on that one.


MY FATHER will tell you that I flip-flopped between bouts of intense pain and wittily making light of my situation. When he found me, I was shaking in a wheelchair of the ER, which they gave me because I kept falling down. I wasn’t fainting, per se, rather I was experiencing repeated bouts of kneesnotworking syndrome. It was the strangest thing. One minute I was standing, and the next minute, it felt like my feet, calves, knees and thighs were resting on top of one another, but not connected in any way, like jenga.


It was awful. I’ve had swine flu, regular flu, scarlet fever, and a variety of other illnesses. I’ve also run a marathon. Believe me when I say that this body ache was the worst thing I’ve ever felt EVER. LIKE EVER. My muscles stung constantly. There was no ache. There was no up and down. You know how the fire drill is a repeating beep sound? Well, in the south, we had tornado drills, and instead of beep beep beep it was one long beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep. That was what the pain was like. One long kick in the muscles that somehow stayed consistently awful without letting up.


I tried stretching and got yelled at (“Hey, the girl who just collapsed and is in a wheelchair is trying to do yoga, someone tell her to cut that shit out.”) I tried wheeling around in the wheelchair to use my muscles, but it only helped temporarily, and I was so weak. Everything hurt. Pain vibrated through me.


MY FATHER will also tell you that after telling the same symptom story to 2 people, I got tired of repeating myself. I took out my writing notebook, made a list of symptoms, and started showing it to anyone who asked. As new symptoms appeared, I added them to the list. At the beginning, I gave a half-smile and explained that I was a writing teacher. By the end, I stopped caring.


Then we have the issue of hospital food. I happen to be very well acquainted with this hospital's cafeteria from my mom’s surgery. Their macaroni and cheese sits like a brick in your stomach but hot damn is it a good-tasting brick. However, I have trouble walking in this hospital since I associate it with my mom being weak and covered in iodine and tubes, and I was having trouble walking in general, so that wasn’t an option. Luckily, I had a back-up plan.



Have you ever had a night when you got too drunk, and you wake up the next day and dread opening your eyes to see the scene in front of you? You just KNOW you’re going to open your eyes and see that you’re still in your clothes, expensive DKNY stockings ripped beyond repair, raccoon eyes smeared across white pillowcases, contacts plastered to dry eyeballs, cell phone dead, half-eaten Lean Cuisine next to you that was healthy before you dumped no less than 1.5 cups of parmesan cheese on it? And then you open your eyes easily (what? I removed my makeup so it’s not gluing my eyes shut?), blink 28 times because you can’t see (I took my contacts out?), and see that you’re wearing matching pajamas next to your plugged-in cell phone and a to-do list neatly written on a post-it? I love those nights. None of that has any right to happen, because I decided that ONE LAST SHOT of Jameson’s (it’s always Jameson’s) wouldn’t kill me except it totally did, yet somehow I wake up in a perfectly orderly calm nonchaotic fashion? I love those mornings, when in a drunken stupor, you inexplicably managed to execute every single nighttime ritual, even ones you sometimes forget about when sober.


Sometimes in bad situations, this happens to me. It’s like there’s a panic switch and when I flip it, my body shifts into a silent autopilot that does everything right without panicking. Sometimes when a student tells me something and it has to be dealt with RIGHT THEN because it’s a big bad and there are 26 others students there only 7 of whom are quiet, this switch gets flipped. I make up something for them to do, assign it in my military voice, pick up the phone, and get shit taken care of. Or when someone I love is hurting and everyone’s standing around wringing their hands unsure of what to do, and I start barking orders. Most of the time I don’t think it’s that I do anything that special, it’s that I do SOMETHING and I do it RIGHT THEN. People need you to take action more than they need you to take the perfect right action. It’s kind of like driving in Boston. If you wait around and contemplate every move you make in traffic until you’re 100% sure it’s the right one, you’ll end up wrapped around a telephone pole most of the time. You’ve just got to pick something and go with it.


Anyway, on Wednesday of last week, this switch got flipped. I called my roommate/savior from the road and the second I heard her voice I dissolved into tears. She’s one of those people who was born a nurse and spent most of her life waiting until she could legally become one, and it shows in her voice. She’s a healer, a fixer, a problem-solver, and an empath. She’s exactly who you want to hear on the other end of the line when you’re struggling to stay in one lane of the highway and not faint, but she’s also the reason I lost it. I knew it would be okay, and I could stop goinggoinggoinggoinggoinggoing and just HURT because she was going to make it okay. 

I got home, and since I was resigned to letting other people take care of me (finally!), I was able to think for myself. I took a shower, shaved my legs, deep-conditioned my hair, brushed/flossed, and put on scented moisturizer. I picked out my favorite track long sleeve, an XL a relay meet that’s soft as fuck and stained from that fantastic rainy run when Tori and I went puddle-jumping. I tried on three pairs of knee socks to find a pair that was soft but sturdy. I packed 4 books, 8 colored RSVP pens, my writer’s notebook, my phone charger, and an extra pair of socks for good measure. I even made sure I was wearing cute underwear in case something terrible happened and my clothes had to be ripped off me in what would look like a scene from Grey’s Anatomy except with my added cellulite. I also packed an assload of mesclun mix lettuce, a mini-tupperware container full of Ranch dressing, and cut up a cucumber. I was prepared.


How I had the peace of mind to do this I don’t know. As my dad frequently reminded me, he didn’t have that luxury when taking my mom to the ER for her infected finger, which explained why he couldn’t devote as much time to picking out cute socks. I guess I was just on autopilot. Good thing.


SIDENOTE: I realized when I needed to eat that I hadn’t brought a bowl for the salad, and my Tupperware wasn’t large enough. (BOYFRIEND QUOTE: “What’s with the container of leaves in your bag?”) I remembered having food poisoning years ago and the little pink plastic dish they gave me to puke in, so yes… I asked for one. To eat my salad in.


I hate emergency rooms. It’s my belief that the relationship you have with a person enables you to help them more effectively (in any profession: teaching, writing, healthcare, etc). Thus the fact that no one knows you in the ER makes it that much more difficult for all involved. They gave me an albutirol breathing treatment, Tylenol, anti-nausea stuff, and a couple of other things, none of which helped much but did stop me from feeling like I was teetering on the edge of bad and worse.


There’s a difference between telling someone there’s no magic cure to fix them and telling someone there’s no magic cure to fix them but here are some ways to help deal with the symptoms until the body can fix itself. I’m a teacher. I’m here to learn. I’m a smart, agile thinker with maybe a bit too heavy a hand on the WebMD app. Telling me there’s nothing that can be done short of ibuprofen, water and rest is like telling me stare at a stab wound in my leg and wait for the knife to leave on its own recognizance.


All they told me to do was sleep, take ibuprofen, and drink water.


WHAT THE WHAT FUCK WHAT?

Every tiny movement shot pain through me. My body was heavy and unwieldy and not staying vertical. You don’t just send me on my way with a codeine prescription. I vaguely remember getting the prescription filled at CVS. Walking through the aisles was akin to swimming through molasses. I opened a container of goldfish, ate half, put the remainder next to the Fresca and paid for my prescription only. I ended up home. Codeine made me puke. It always does.


The next thing I remember is Saturday morning.

I have glimpses of being awake long enough to eat enough to take codeine and hopefully not puke (but I did anyway). I slept for 21-22 hours a night. When I couldn’t sleep anymore, I took sleeping pills. I drank lots of water. I took ibuprofen. I coughed and coughed and coughed. Everything stayed the same.


That kind of weakness is nothing I’d wish on anyone. I was hot then cold then hot then cold then FREEZING because I’d sweated through my sheets. My gums bled because I brushed my teeth after each time I threw up and I threw up a lot. I started eating whatever I wanted because it was going to come up anyway my roommate S's girlfriend/MY SOUL SISTER QUOTE: “Twice the flavor, because you taste it coming up, and half the calories!”).


At some point on Sunday afternoon I realized I still wasn’t getting better. I hadn’t turned a corner. I still felt just as shitty as I did on Wednesday night in the ER. I still couldn’t walk more than 10 feet without taking a break. I still struggled on stairs.


On Monday morning I woke up unable to talk. Well, I tried to talk. But talking stung my throat and I coughed up blood so my mother finally relented and actually texted me to communicate (Mama, you’re good at texting, why don’t you do it more often?). I called a cab company to take me to the hospital to see a doctor in the practice, but I sounded so bad they wouldn’t come get me. My father, luckily, did. Of course they were laying a gas line in my street so I had to walk 30 feet to his car. I almost didn’t make it.


The doctor was one I’d never seen before: tall, handsome, black and very quiet. I began with this: “I have felt like this since last Sunday night, and I’m sorry, but please don’t tell me there’s no magic cure except rest, water, and ibuprofen, because if you say that I will snap. I don’t mean to be a bitch, but I’m not getting better.”


This guy was SO COOL that I wish I could change my PCP to him. I love my doctor, I do, but this guy was amazing. He poked and prodded and listened to me breathe for a good five minutes, but then he started having me say numbers while he listened through a stethoscope. He explained that he was listening very carefully to see how different sounds traveled. When I repeated “Ninety nine” sixteen times, he called someone in for a second opinion. He sent me to get another chest x-ray, which showed congestion and stuff (??) on the bronchus. This wasn’t new. Upper respiratory infection was the diagnosis from the start. But when he compared the x-rays, his face changed. I saw that cool “A-ha!” House M.D. moment crawl across his features. I had bronchitis. Bad bronchitis.


He started listing what OTC meds I would need, and when I asked him to write it down, he said, “You don’t know what these meds do, do you? Let me explain. Then you’ll remember which ones to get.” It sounds simple, but I didn’t know. Twenty seven years and I didn’t know that post-nasal drip irritated the throat and caused a cough, and Sudafed worked by drying up the nasal passages to prevent this dripping. I didn’t know how ibuprofen and acetaminophen worked differently, and how to use them both to their maximum effectiveness. I didn’t know the first thing about my lungs. MIND = BLOWN.


Back in the car I was dizzy and light-headed when my phone rang. I wish I could tell you exactly what he said, but I was so out of it I don’t remember the details. Something about how he’d consulted more research, called an expert in another part of the hospital, sent my x-rays over, and determined I had bronchitis AND PNEUMONIA. Bam. Antibiotics sent to CVS not a moment too soon.


Bronchitis AND pneumonia. I guess I’m incapable of doing anything halfway. I have to go all out. The pneumonia was in the pre-stages the first time I was x-rayed, so it didn’t show up. Because it was combined with the bronchitis, it was effectively hidden or camouflaged or overshadowed or WHATEVER by the bronchitis. No amount of ibuprofen and water and rest was going to fix that.


Seven hours later I felt like a different person. I was still hurting, but the fog had cleared. I was still weak, but I could finally pick up the cat without needing a five minute break afterwards. I pranced through the living room and announced to Stephen, “I have pneumonia AND bronchitis, WHAT!!” to his bemusement. After that, I did need to rest. Prancing takes a lot out of you.


Tuesday and Wednesday (today) have been a mixed bag. Sometimes I feel okay, and I think, “Man, it’s only 11, I should go into work and teach the rest of the day,” and then I’m hit with a coughing fit and I have to sit down for 2 hours. Last night I coughed myself awake 5 times, and I coughed so long I actually gagged. But the moment I realized I was getting better was when my boyfriend said, “What’s that face?” and I grasped the wonder: the body ache was gone.


Last night when I was writing out my sub plans for today, I had the biggest, goofiest smile on my face. My job is stressful day in and day out. Combine that with the fact that I’ve been more or less sick since October, and it’s been a while since I smiled while making lesson plans. Usually, when I come home, I’m so emotionally or physically destroyed from the day that it’s hard to feel anything else. But I found myself grinning as I typed, “if they aren’t engaged in the discussion, ask them how many of them have ever been bumped or pushed or shoved in the hallway right outside the class. Then, connect it to the metaphor of the poem: A pinball is also bumped, pushed, and shoved in a pinball machine.” I LAUGHED (yes laughed) as I typed, “If all else fails, tap into their deep appreciation for complaining. Remind them that the author wrote this poem about disliking middle school, and they have plenty of things they also hate about middle school.” It was a wonderful feeling. I can’t remember the last time I felt it. I LOVE figuring out interesting ways to get through to adolescents. I LOVE figuring out what makes them tick. I LOVE their quirks, their volatility, their mood swings, their perfect combination of asserting their individuality and independence while still seeking your approval. I LOVE IT. I’m not thrilled that I had to take six days off to become reacquainted with this love, but maybe that’s what had to happen.



THANK YOU:
1. Dad, for spending your day in the ER with my mother then me last Wednesday, and for taking me to the doctor’s on Monday and leading me around the hospital as I bounced from office to x-ray room to office and back again.

2. Mama, for the matzah ball soup and love and support.

3. MY COUSINS—I’M SO SORRY I HAD TO POSTPONE THE TRIP. I love you.

4. My boyfriend, for never leaving my side, not getting mad at me for being comatose for the better part of a week, taking care of me, getting me ice packs, and holding me together.

5. Roommate, for your support, comfort, validation, back massages and love. And the first ride to the ER.

6. Roommates, for putting up with me.

7. Friends and colleagues for your well-wishes. It means a lot. Seriously.

8. Whoever subbed for me for the past week and everyone at work who helped when I was gone. I know it sucks having a teacher out.

9. Pitch Perfect, for introducing me to the cup song, which I practiced to entertain myself in the waiting room.

10. Awesome Doctor Man for obvious reasons

11. the cat, for keeping me company.

12. Dick Wolf, for creating Law & Order: SVU (which I was too sick to watch until yesterday… That’s how you know shit’s bad).





One final note: The x-ray technician will tell you I’m a pro. She led me into the changing room and said, “Take off all your clothes, even undergarments, and put on this robe.” I responded, “Oh please! I came prepared.”

“T-shirt, no bra?”

“You bet.”

“Ain’t your first rodeo girl, woohoo!”

Stress Hangover: I WANT MY LIFE BACK

The class I just taught was a disaster. I'm sitting here at my desk, counting the minutes until I can leave for the day and escape to the sweet oblivion of my bed. 39 minutes until crisp sheets, PJ pants, lemon seltzer and Ice-T's sarcastic quips about the latest murder-rapist to terrorize the streets of New York City. 38 minutes until fuzzy socks, cool air, the evening stretched lazily in front of me in that special way that only Thursday evenings before Friday holidays can (Sidenote: Thursday evening is more glorious when there's no work Friday. Fact). 38 minutes until I start my usual weekend dance of trying to shove the stress of the work week out of my head for long enough to enjoy the 2 days off. 37 minutes until I can shut my eyes and try to sleep and probably fail because there's too much in my mind but somehow trying unsuccessfully to sleep beats purposely being awake.

When I started student teaching and grad school, my mom stopped incessantly yelling about my terrible sleep schedule. At first I didn't know how to respond. No one yelled at me to get up at a reasonable hour on Saturday. No one cared if I slept until 4, which I routinely did. No one screamed at me when I was going to be late for teaching. Instead, I woke up to hot coffee being poured into my mouth and a warm "Morning honey!" When I finally confronted her, she said, "Honey, you're working extremely hard. I can't imagine taking on that courseload while teaching all day. If you need to sleep 20 hours a night, by all means do it. In high school, you were just lazy. Now, you deserve those 20 hours." 

I took this to heart and I'm glad I did. It's so easy to feel guilty for the time it takes to recover from teaching, especially in a tough school system with many troubled students. Even the greatest teachers -- you know, the annoying ones who seem to have perfect systems in place for discipline and instruction that promote student accountability, consistency, inquiry, and growth -- come home and sit on the couch for awhile to decompress. Trust me. I've asked them. I'm not saying I'm thrilled about it. I would love to be able to leave work and DO things for the several hours until I go to sleep. I would love to teach summer school if I weren't so destroyed from the school year. I would love to have real hobbies that require regular time commitments and friends I see more than once every other month when I don't bail because I'm too tired or upset. I would love it. But I've come to terms with it. I no longer apologize for my SVU binges, or clicking DECLINE on 99% of the weeknight facebook event invitations that come my way. I'm not happy about it, but I spend enough time feeling guilty about the fact that I could have done this or that better at my job. I'm not going to feel guilty for how I recover from that job. 

But this year has not been typical. Nothing about it has made sense. And somewhere in the last few months I began to wonder if things are getting worse. Somewhere in the last few months I began to think maybe I should replace "well-adjusted" with "in denial" when describing how I deal with all this stress. 

Did I always take things so personally? Did I always get this destroyed? It's hard to remember. This year has been terrible, worse than other years by far, but my reactions have been astronomically more severe. My first year was pretty bad. I taught 7 different classes at one point (non-teachers: I mean I had to prepare 7 different lessons each day). My second year (or was it the third?) I had those 8th graders in the morning that gave me HELL, and then there was the year I had to plan different lessons for each 7th grade class because they were each dysfunctional in completely different ways. Last year was awful, the worst I thought I'd ever deal with, until this year happened. I was upset frequently. I slept a lot. But I wasn't this unhappy this often for this long. Lately it seems like every little thing sets me off, and the panic and anger and pain that set in last for longer.

I used to go weeks without going out on the weekends. I used to sleep 20 hours a day. But somehow I remember it being a choice I made, which implies that I could have made a different one. Last weekend, for the first time in 2 months, I went out on Saturday night. I karaoked with my friends and for awhile, it was actually fun. I didn't drink, because I can't control my emotions sober let alone drunk, but I love being with my friends so I still enjoyed myself. Sort of. Mostly. For awhile. I thought if I looked the part, dressed the part and acted the part, it would be enough. As it turns out, pretending to be okay isn't the same thing as being okay, so I ran out of Hong Kong in Faneuil Hall crying.

There you have it. There's no set of circumstances that could allow me to go out and for ONE NIGHT not fall apart. I can't be normal. It's not an option for me anymore. I'm at home alone every weekend night watching TV and reading because I HAVE NO OTHER CHOICE, unless I want to make crying while sober in crowded bars a habit. 

Remember when you realized you couldn't drink like you used to? It happens to all of us at different times. I was about 25. Losing 30 pounds and being 3 years out of college combined was what did it for me. Suddenly, I could count the times I HADN'T gotten wasted, instead of the times I had. Suddenly, I was hungover until 7 o'clock at night. I started losing Saturdays and Sundays. Eventually I realized why: My tolerance had gone down. My body chemistry had changed. My outlook was the only thing that hadn't shifted. 

That's how work feels. The stress from one tough class leaks into another. The stress from one terrible day is still there the next morning. I run and sleep and box and watch SVU and I still can't get away from it. The stress is like a hangover that never ends. You can reevaluate the way your body handles alcohol, and change your habits accordingly. You can drink more water, drink less beer, get more sleep, and be hungover less frequently. But what can you do if your job is what's making you sick? What do you do if your life is one neverending migraine headache,  your mornings are spent bent over the toilet, you've been sick with one thing or another since October, and your doctors tell you the stress is causing your body's systems to malfunction? What do you do when you panic the second things seem calm because it's so unfamiliar that you're unprepared? What do you do when your body rejects the place you have chosen to do the job you love more than anyone has any right to love a given job? What do you tell the ER doctors when you're throwing up blood for no reason? What do you do when what's wrong with you doesn't show up on blood tests, and there's no medicine to make you better?

MCAS is a sinking ship of fail.

I hate MCAS. 

We know this. It’s not a secret. I complain quite frequently about it. MCAS is a soul-sucking, creativity-killing, beaurocracy-driven, logistically despicable waste of valuable learning time. I understand why tests need to happen. I don’t understand why we can’t figure out a faster way to revise the testing process to make it more accurate and meaningful. 

Thirteen years ago, the sophomores sat down to take 10^th grade MCAS for the first time (officially, anyway, because previous years served as guinea pigs). Thirteen years later, we finally have a new set of learning standards, but we’re scrambling to create a better test to assess these new standards. Thirteen years of stupidly-worded questions, boring, repetitive analysis, and hours of missed learning time later, we’re TRYING to make a new test. 

THIRTEEN YEARS. Why can’t it happen faster? What’s with the slow turnaround? While we were wasting time on a dumb test that doesn’t measure anything worth knowing, THIRTEEN YEARS worth of kids grew up and graduated or didn’t but it doesn’t really matter because we can’t help them now. Thirteen years worth of students think open response is a genre and multiple choice is a way of life. Thirteen years worth of students missed God knows how many hours of learning time that was spent prepping for or taking a dumb test. 

What took so damn long? When a ship is sinking, you jump ship and try to swim to shore. You escape in a lifeboat. You shoot off flares. You do anything, really, as long as you’re doing SOMETHING. You don’t stay on the sinking ship until it hits the ocean floor, just to make sure it’s really sinking, just to make sure there’s no hope. 

So here’s a radical idea: What do you say we try not to drown from now on?

Bubble sheets make me want to hurl.

Bubble sheets make me want to hurl.

I’m a smart, flexible thinker. I’m creative, well-read and articulate. When I take the time to research and plan, I am capable of exceptional study skills.

I spent my childhood reading. I was shuttled to every extracurricular and enrichment activity I asked to take part in. My mother corrected my grammar in first grade. I was the second grader who could explain subjunctive tense.

I have all the makings of a good test taker. Usually, I am. But despite all that, bubble sheets make me want to hurl.

You might think a fifth-year teacher in an urban school system would have gained some perspective by now. You might think five years of No Child Left Behind would have calmed me down, lowered my blood pressure, and taught me not to freak out because tests aren’t the most important thing. You might think that five years of confronting the real problems that cause our students’ sub-par standardized test scores -- poverty, violence and apathy – I would know better than to dread tests that I’m not even taking. 

You’d be wrong. Bubble sheets still make the bile rise in my throat.

Every year my seventh graders go through multiple days of standardized tests. Tomorrow, they start the first of three days of ELA testing. My stomach is churning, right on schedule. My seventh graders, on the other hand, could care less. They’re nervous that they don’t know the writing prompt, and about being able to work for so long, but beyond that, they’re fine. As I write this, they’re emailing me to ask if spray-on deodorant is better than roll-on deodorant because I gave them a speech today about how important it is to smell good when you’re going to be sitting in one room with 28 other people for 4 hours.

He's thrilled to try out his new deodorant AND take MCAS!
*Results not typical*

So why aren’t they nauseous like me? I’m not even taking the test.

Seventh graders are a curious species. They are self-conscious to a fault while determined to hide this fact and pretend like they don’t care what other people think of them. They’re moody and volatile; everything is the Best Thing Ever or the Worst Thing in the World, and the tiniest sideways glance can make or break their day. They try on different personality traits as they form their identities, yet still spend a large portion of their time calling each other fake for doing just that. Seventh graders are developmental wild cards – clay malleable and soap scum stubborn. It’s why I love teaching them. Seventh grade is the year when you learn to pick yourself back up on your own, not depending on your parents or friends to do it for you. Seventh grade is both lonely and empowering at the same time, the best and worst and everything in between. Seventh grade is where people are made.

Seventh grade is also awful. Going through it once was enough, and if you’d asked me at the time, I probably would have told you half a school year was more than adequate. But at times like these, I almost miss it, because seventh graders have no idea what they’re up against. 

IRRELEVANT PERSONAL CONNECTION:
In seventh grade, they took us to the New England Aquarium where the woman who was the voice of the Little Mermaid sang for us. She had red hair and was dressed like a total slut. At the time, I was conflicted. Looking back... Ariel was kind of questionable to begin with, so I forgive the woman for her outfit choice. 

They don’t know the role background knowledge plays in any kind of literacy-based test, and how much they’re already missing. They don’t know how much time we spend crunching numbers in meetings, analyzing why five of them got the wrong answer on question 7 but not question 9 which is strange because both questions target the same learning standard (In all likelihood, those five probably got the question wrong because they were upset about something involving Justin Bieber). They don’t know how quickly test scores and grade point averages add up to paint a picture that determines in part what chances they have in life. They don’t know how one rough year can create a knowledge gap that could throw them off for years to come. They don’t know that each day of learning helps them, providing them with skills and strengths that will come in handy.  They don’t know any of it. They’re completely unaware.

I would love to not know any of that sometimes. I would love to not care for a change. I would love to look at all those bubble sheets and feel healthy apprehension instead of stomach-curling nausea. I would love to stop worrying about the sixth grade class that does no homework. I would love to not think about tomorrow before it happens, and do something today without considering how it will affect my tomorrow. I would love to spend an hour doodling INSTEAD of doing what I’m supposed to be doing and not worry about what I’m missing.

Insert some ridiculous jingle sung by Peter Griffin about throwing up in toilets, a jingle that goes on for 90 seconds too long.  

What if that was my life? What if I blew off a professional commitment, and in lieu of discipline, my principal or vice principal CALLED MY MOTHER, then she yelled at me and made me stay in my room until I did what I was supposed to do?

When did this happen? When did I change? I remember making excuses and forging notes in high school. I remember lying to my teachers, my parents, and myself. I remember putting things off until the last minute and then deciding not to do them at all. Then some xylophone music comes on, the picture gets blurry and I’m 10 years in the future with a salary, a lease, a car I paid for, a master’s degree, three teaching licenses, and two sets of good china. I blinked and now I’m a grown-up who does things and cares about things and owns things and thinks about things before doing them and it’s really complicated and hard and sometimes all I want is to be screamed at by my mother and told what’s right.

One time, roughly 2 years ago, I had a panic attack. I was behind on work stuff, I gained 4 pounds overnight, a guy blew me off, there was a dead mouse in the kitchen, I was broke, and on top of that my room was a WRECK. Hysterical, I called my mom. She told me to stop everything and clean my room, because it would help me think straight. I told her I was tired, and she YELLED AT ME. My mother YELLED at me, circa high school/2001 YELLED at me to clean my room. It worked. I calmed down immediately and cleaned my room until I could think straight. It was so nice to relinquish control. It was oddly liberating to be told exactly what to do.

I wish I could take a break from caring and doing and making decisions all the time, but I can’t turn it off. I do my best to compartmentalize, and push it to the back of my brain, but I can’t un-know the things I know. Even in my most mellow moments a part of my brain contemplates whether or not the Incubus song playing in this bar would be an effective way to teach metaphor (ANSWER: It is).

Teaching is not a job I leave at work. It will always come home with me, whether I’m grading papers or not. It will always be on my mind, whether I’m in front of a class or in the ocean or out for a run or watching Law&Order SVU. Learning is a big deal. Supporting seventh graders as they grow into the people they will become is a big deal. Standardized tests, however flawed they may be, are a big deal. What we do in schools –the frustration, the magic, the journey -- IS A BIG DEAL.

I guess that’s why bubble sheets make me sick to my stomach. Standardized tests are a part of something bigger that means everything to me. Teaching means everything to me. My students’ futures mean everything to me. Any test that even attempts to measure that – regardless of its efficacy – is bound to twist my stomach into knots. In my experience, if it matters to me, I feel it in my stomach, whether it’s nausea, anticipation, anxiety, shock, adrenaline, perseverance, pain, or fear. I’ll deal with it, so my students don’t have to. They have enough to deal with just trying to become people. I can only hope they grow up and fill their lives with things they care about so much it twists their stomachs up in knots.

So bring on the bubble sheets, Department of Education. I’ve got my Pepto. Do your worst.

And try to enjoy it, seventh graders. Pretty soon you’ll be real live grown-ups, without the luxury of a mom to ground you, a teacher to discipline you, and a 30-minute detention to repent for your 12-year-old sins. So work hard, but don’t rush to be a grown-up. Spend a good long time picking out the sweatpants you’ll wear for MCAS day (since I told you to dress comfortably), because soon you’ll be real, live people, limited to the 2 pairs of pants you haven’t stress-eaten your way out of fitting into. Pass notes in overly stylized handwriting. Set detailed goals for yourselves that all involve getting to new levels in the latest video games.

Enjoy it. I’ll be over here, holding my stomach.