When I first came to Stanford, I was so in awe of God for redeeming so much of my past. I would now finally get to live my dream and live happily ever after because as many seem to believe, Stanford = making it in life.
What I didn’t expect was that being here would reveal how much more I still had to grow daily and would make known to me all the aspects of my life that still were not healed. When I first set foot in a classroom as a student teacher, I expected that teaching my students would feel natural. I expected to feel like I was living the dream that God had shaped in me for so long. Instead, I had never been more overwhelmed. I felt the weight of it all, the gravity of my responsibility, and my fear of not being able to break or worse, continuing the cycles of systemic inequtiies that are so embedded in my story. I wanted so badly to build a classroom community where my students felt like they could be fully themselves, but did not feel equipped to do so as my past had me crippled by my own fear of hurting my students. I knew they desired to be seen, and I struggled to know how to see them through the material I sought to help them learn every day.
My second week at Stanford in June I considered leaving but was persuaded by my supervisor and director to give it time, and in December when I still was walking out of my classroom feeling like I wasn’t affirming or teaching my students the way I wanted to I felt so defeated.
But in January I began independent student teaching and things started to get better. I decided that all I needed to be grow in to be the teacher I wanted to be could co-exist with, as I had written in my admission essay, modeling to my students how to freely learn in their imperfections. In this year I have needed a crazy amount of support: a spiritual mentor, wellness coach, outstanding supervisor, strong mentor teacher, a vulnerable supervisory group, and both my faith and teaching communities.
My voice is beginning to sound more like mine in front of my students, and as I become freer the level of cringe/bad jokes/joy I bring to my class increases directly proportional to my confidence in both management. Some days I am able to look a student in the eye after they share with the words, “Say that louder with confidence, because you have a powerful voice.” Other days it still feels awkward. But it is now basically the end of my time here at Stanford. I’ve turned in my credential test and somehow passed (bye EdTPA) and have said yes to my first salaried adult job. I can’t believe this year is over because I still don’t think I’m ready yet for the work I truly want to do. Having just graduated from college last year the difficulty of transitioning out of my old communities is still fresh, and I’m about to do it all over again. Although I’m supposed to be celebrating right now my heart is heavy and prepared to grieve the loss of another thing that I’ve loved.
If you are reading this, and your life is about to change in some way, shape or form, I hear you and I see you.
Transition is difficult. It is okay to grieve a former season of life and the relationships you loved that are about to change. Curiosity is the antidote to shame, and the best is yet to come. You do not have to slap a positivity bandaid on the grief of how things used to be, nor do you need to feel guilty for not seeming to enjoy the present as much as you “should” because all you can think about is what has changed. And what will keep changing. And how you are going to make it through all the change. Even when there is peace about the decisions that are made, it is okay to have peace, joy, and grief simultaneously.
There is no hierarchy to grief. And I know that life changes come with a lot of complex emotions. I am sort of excited about this transition. I sort of want this season to end. I sort of don’t want this season to end because I don’t feel ready for the next one. But I also feel more ready for the next one than I ever have.
And the question I have been asking God this whole year still lingers in my mind. What is your place for me? Where do you want me? Will there ever be a place I feel like all of me truly belongs?
Welcome to today’s episode of “How did we end up here?” I believe that nothing goes to waste, and I hope this is honest and encouraging to those wrestling with my same questions. I hope to look back on this post in year 1 of teaching and be reminded of what matters the most to me in the classroom.
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I spent so much of this year, especially in the beginning, writing and dreaming about the future I wanted to create as an educator and the future educator I wanted to be. I envisioned myself to be firm but vulnerable, loving but not afraid to call my students higher if their actions were harming the community. I envisioned myself tearing down the lie that success only looks one way, asking my students who they really were underneath the person they thought they needed to be. I wanted to be the teacher that told my students it was okay to put their desires and well-being first, who modeled to them what it meant to fully embrace every intersectional identity that God gave me.
I imagined holding space for conversations on race and ethnicity, mental health, colonialism and imposter syndrome. I wanted to talk openly about my own journey with mental health and cultural acceptance. I envisioned creating a community full of love and joy in my classroom, where I constantly convinced my students to go to the front and take my spot. I imagined my students doing fun chemistry labs rooted in contexts they related to. I dreamed of a space where people who never saw themselves in STEM would realize they were always smart enough, a space where mistakes were truly celebrated. I wanted to be a teacher that didn’t just say mistakes were celebrated in my classroom but actually did thank every student who contributed any answer. A teacher that celebrated differences and made everyone feel valued. A teacher that my students would feel safe opening up to, one that was willing to have the hard and uncomfortable conversations.
I dreamed of a classroom space that students would feel welcome in. I’d put a giant stuffed dog somewhere it wouldn’t get lit on fire during a chemistry lab but also was accessible enough if someone just wanted its vibes. I’d have a cabinet full of feminine products, a Brita filter for water with cups students could use, hair ties for labs, and an array of fairy lights at the front. I thought of covering my classroom with inspiring quotes and pictures my students brought in, and having a space in the back for conversations with parents and families about how I could best support their kids.
I wanted to do this while being a strong chemistry teacher. I wanted to have well organized labs and well structured practice, have assessment policies that allowed me to measure what my students knew more than how they were able to take a test. All of these things made me a practitioner that valued equity and aligned with my faith. And throughout the year as different classes had us going around in whip around circles asking us why we teach, I would say, “I teach to break cycles of generational trauma within schools and communities.”
But what does that even mean? Because I will never be the savior. My faith is in a God who loves my kids more than I could ever love them, a God who heals and restores, who created each and every one of them with His divine perfection and mystery. Through this they are already enough before they walk into my class, and I hope they leave continuing to feel like they are enough.
In order to do this I am realizing something else that grips me in the middle of the night and quiets my soul. It is that I cannot love my students well if I don’t believe I am loved, or if I am not continuing to learn how to lay down what I am not meant to carry.
And sometimes, I forget. But today I remember how good God has been to me, to call this flawed human into a field of being a teacher. And when I remember where I used to be, when I remember the days I thought my anxiety had the final word over my life, my perspective changes. I have more grace and love for my students, and I can see through every behavior and every comment they make. I can see them all as human beings, children of God, students that are worthy of love, connection, and belonging.
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Everyone keeps asking me how Stanford is and how Stanford is going. I don’t know how to answer this loaded question, but when people ask me this I think they want to know if being at Stanford feels like I’ve made it in life. I am sad to report that I am about to have a masters degree in education and still don’t know so much about the field, how to teach, or how to support many of our students through the various complex struggles they face.
I feel like I’ve made it in a very different way though. For the first time in my life, I have cared more about being a part of community and have not had to worry at all about my grades. I am so thankful to have had a year to simply focus on growing as a person, and have found such solid community through church and XA Stanford in addition to the community of my program.
I’m about to have my masters, and this last year has gone nothing like I thought it would go. It really is better this way, but I have had to learn how to trade my idea of what things should be for being present and abide, or remain, in the strength of the Lord to pursue what I need over what I want, and people over accolades and ladders.
I ended up with 3 job offers at the end. 1 was so different from what I wanted. But when I visited it, I realized hearing the wise assistant principal advise me and my friend Oscar on our journeys of how teaching was a marathon not a sprint, that we needed to be somewhere we’d feel supported our first years. The other was exactly what I wanted, and I loved it so much but knew I would really struggle to vibe with some of the staff who seemed to value different things from me. It wasn’t a completely closed door, but it wasn’t a good fit for me right now. The last was also so different from what I originally wanted but had everything I needed. When I originally saw that job offer I was shook.
I know someone who teaches here. Memories flooded my kind of when my car a few years ago, Turtle, died forever on the freeway because I blew my gasket. With a ton of smoke coming out of the hood and being stopped in the middle lane at the front of the light on a freeway ramp unable to move, a bunch of strangers helped push Turtle to the side of the road in the pouring rain. One of those people was a math teacher.
A lot of us before Stanford felt really alone in our pursuit to be teachers because it seemed like nobody wanted to do that work, and I’ve almost forgotten what that felt like now. But when Turtle died I was still a learning assistant. I had not become a glorified section lead yet, or published a paper on the class we designed, or gone through all the messiness that comes with this work yet. I was just a girl who was tired of pursuing the Eurocentric ideal of success and knew I wanted to build relationships with more people and create spaces of community and belonging. I wasn’t pursuing Stanford then, I was just pursuing the love of God and desired to tell people they were enough. But the day my car had broken down I had asked God for a sign. I told God I could never do this work without Him as I had already seen from just being an assistant how hard and complex it was.
On the side of the road that day ranting about education with rain dripping down my long hair with this random teacher, it was a sign from God. Shortly after that I got hired as a section lead, and a million other things happened to land me here. And now I was about to graduate and was looking for a job, and saw that the same school this random teacher taught at was indeed hiring.
I thought my interview wasn’t great but the next day I got a call saying they really liked me.
“We really think you’ll be a good fit here,” The assistant principal told me. And I felt peace about it even though I had not visited the place yet. The school was on a 4×4 which meant I’d be teaching 3 90 minute classes a semester every day instead of 7, and I felt this would allow me to spend more time focusing on building relationships with my students. The staff I met was so supportive, and I knew if there was a place to take it slow the first year it was this. I trust my department chair to bully me into leaving if I’m staying too late and my colleagues to have my back with everything. I felt the peace of God that transcends all understanding, and took the job as an act of faith. Because even though this wasn’t the kind of school I wanted to teach at, I will only go at this point in my life where God is because He knows me better than I know myself.
And I rejoiced for the job. And then I simultaneously grieved where I thought I’d be. Because in my mind, taking a job for my own well-being and to be closer to family and be supported was not what I had dreamed up in my mind. And, I was going to miss all the community I had formed here in the Bay.
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Will I belong in this new school? I posed this question to God daily in the mornings. Though most people get excited when they have a job, I was mostly just sad that I would be leaving all of my friends and mentors I’ve found here. The amount of people trying to congratulate me was weird as it didn’t feel like an accomplishment, though I knew choosing the slow and steady path was the wiser choice, and I knew that there was no way I could’ve taken a job at the same school as the person I met on the side of a road 3 years ago if God didn’t have me. I was tired but didn’t feel like I had a reason to be tired, and after hearing so many of the teachers at my new school tell me I wasn’t there to sell my soul, I felt like I was beginning to lose my joy for the work I loved. I dragged myself out of bed in the mornings and pushed myself to be present in my last few days of student teaching.
My fear for the next season of life turned into apathy, and my apathy turned into criticality. My spiritual mentor called me out for being really critical of people and being even more critical with myself, and I realized how this whole year I had been asked to be critical. I had been practicing the skill of finding the faults within a system, and I had become quite good at it. But what happened to grace? What happened to the girl who entered education that didn’t blame others for their actions, the girl who was open minded, the girl who only wanted to be in the trenches with others and longed to understand people?
I texted the professor/mentor who had walked with me from my admissions essay to now, the one who had inspired me then in my senior year of college that maybe I could do this.
Lea: Kelly I think I am losing my capacity for empathy and this is a very sad thing.
Kelly: Hmmm…. Using the “believing” angle of it or something else? What’s going on?”
Lea: I have no idea what’s going on. I had my last quarterly meeting with my supervisor and CT and it just made me realize how much joy I’ve lost for the work.
Kelly: You have GOT to be exhausted.”
Lea: Since taking a job for “self preservation” it’s like I’ve given up on everything and no longer care about dreaming or trying or whatever.
Maybe.
Kelly: You went straight from your undergrad into this. People need rest.
I feel the way you feel sometimes too. Like I hate people, the system is awful, what am I doing here.
Lea: Yeah exactly.
That’s it.
Why dream about the future if doing so is why I’m so disappointed right now?
Kelly: It’s a life out of balance.
Lea: I have been trying to be positive and change my attitude all week but I can’t.
I don’t know really know why I’d be exhausted though. I have been having fun here.
Kelly: I think the attempts to change towards positivity might be futile.
Maybe noticing it, honoring it (the negativity) has some merit
Lea: I agree but then the more I do that the more critical I become and then the harder I am on myself.
Kelly: I see.
Lea: I keep catching myself being so critical of people who I barely know. This is not the person I want to be.
What happened to seeing people as human and having grace?
Kelly: I wonder if you’re scared.
Scared. What a word. It punctured deep into my chest, and was the very thing my brain was constantly rationalizing, intellectualizing, and internalizing to protect me from the all consuming weight of disappointment. I would’ve been disappointed no matter what job I took, because I knew I had dreamed up a school in my mind that did not exist.
Lea: Yeah very.
Kelly: For me, being critical is a type of shield. I’ve learned that. I’m not saying that’s true of you but
Lea: No that’s it. That’s what Brené Brown was saying in her podcast too.
I’m probably just being critical as a way of dealing with my fear, grief, and disappointment. Love that.
Kelly: You might have to be at or over 50 to see the before and after of all this.
You’re (rightfully) armored up right now.
Lea: But that actually means I’m not turning into a critical person so that’s good. I’d rather it be a shield than that.
I hate this.
Kelly: I don’t see you as an inherently critical person. You’re in a moment.
Lea: This makes sense now.
Kelly: Committing to becoming an educator is a terrifying thing.
Lea: Yeah. What have I done lol
Kelly: I ask myself that all the time! LOL. But really, though, you know all the twists and turns of my career – so many of them. What would I change? Nothing about my actual choices to teach. I’d redo the Sac High 3 years and teach somewhere else. But, that’s about it.
Lea: I know it’s going to take time. I think I’m mostly afraid of being disappointed.
Which is why Brené Brown says dreaming and/or feeling joy or excitement is so vulnerable. I will come back to that place where I want to risk believing something can be so good, but it’s just not now.
Kelly: Yes, and that’s absolutely fine. ❤️
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“There are times when personal experience keeps us from reaching the mountain top and so we let it go because the weight of it is too heavy. And sometimes the mountain top is difficult to reach with all our resources, factual and confessional, so we are just there, collectively grasping, feeling the limitations of knowledge, longing together, yearning for a way to reach that highest point. Even this yearning is a way to know.”
Bell Hooks, Teaching to Transgress
We are all longing for more, that is the truth. That is why we were taught at Stanford not to do everything, but to lay bricks for a cathedral. I don’t know what work I will be able to do at this new school. Because maybe when we accept our limitations we are actually the most free, and we aren’t so caught up in doing the impossible that we forget to do what we actually can: love other people.
The more I began to accept that there wasn’t a perfect school where I could support first-gen students with good admin where I’d get to be close to my family and keep my current community, the more I began to be present with what was. After saying goodbye to my students this year I’ve been spending my days napping, sharing meals with people, going on hikes, going rock climbing, writing songs, staring at my ceiling, and reading.
I’ve been finding joy again in the little things. I can’t create joy if I don’t find it. There is joy in the longing, only when our worth is not attached to our performance. If the only thing I teach my kids at this school is that, I have succeeded.
I’ve realized that I hoped I’d “arrive” at the teacher I wanted to be leaving Stanford, but this is never something I will arrive at. But, I don’t celebrate my students only when they do well but when they try and when they grow. And maybe God was still proud of me, and in the quiet place as I listened I could feel His pride overflowing for me, not because I was a perfect teacher, but because I was His daughter. And He could see all of me far better than I try to see the good in my students, and clinging to Him would be the only way I create a life-giving classroom that was safe for all my students.
“Maybe a better question you should be asking instead of ‘Do I belong here’ is ‘How can I create belonging here?’” Marilyn, one of my boldest, kindest, instructors said to me over coffee. Because the answer to every question about who my students are and how I show up for them always ends up being answered with building relationships, listening, and seeing them as human beings first.
We can’t go into spaces looking for where we don’t belong, because we will always find it. We belong everywhere and nowhere, as Maya Angelou says. There will always be that ache and longing, there will always be histories of trauma embedded in every culture that proclaim we are not enough. It’s my job to see that my students are, to see under the armors they’ve trained themselves to wear so they don’t get hurt. And so I pray that I would love them the way my God loves, the way he sees what is unseen.
This is a prayer for the all the ones that I pour into
A prayer you feel loved when our eyes meet
A prayer that my words would come from heaven
A prayer that you see Jesus in me
This is a prayer that when I’m with you I see you
A prayer you can share yourself with me
there’s a God who’s chasing after all of you
through Him I hope you feel so known and seen.
This is a prayer that my heart would not be anxious
But would reach for God in every single dream
A prayer that all of my broken pieces
Would become part of a broken masterpiece
I am praying that the words I sing would echo
For the many generations after me
That they would know that they are set apart and worth it
That this inheritance is theirs if they believe.
I am praying that when I’m with you I’m present
Not caught up in the world of busy
That the time I spend in the word would fill me
To bring heaven on this earth, set captives free
I am praying God for words to say because I don’t know
The answers to the questions they ask me
Put people in my life that will help me
Who will fight with me when I am fighting for peace
I am praying God that I’d be able to listen
Bring whatever up you want to heal in me
When you do so you do it gently
Hold my heart and guide me steadily
I am praying God the words I sing would echo
For the generations that come after me
So they would know the inheritance they walk in
Is a yoke that’s light and burden that’s been freed.
I am praying God that all of my anxieties
Wouldn’t hinder all the plans you have for me
Help me to slow down and remember
You’ve already carved out a path for me.
This is a prayer for the ones that I pour into
Would I see who you’ve created them to be
Let me pour my love on them because I’m grateful
For all the ways somehow you still love me.
For all the ways somehow you still love me
I pray that all the things that make me different
Wouldn’t make me stumble in my beliefs
That I would always know that I belong here
That I’m allowed to voice all of my needs.
~Ms. Faith
lea faith 