The Thin Line Between Calm and Anxiety

Two years ago this week, I sat in an exam room at the Antioch Kaiser, crying as I told the doctor about the stress and hopelessness I felt at my job teaching high school choir. I told her how my reaction to stress is usually crying--sometimes uncontrollable crying.

The doctor put me on a low dose of a generic anti-depressant. Within a few weeks, I felt better--I still didn't love my job, and I still felt stressed by it, but I could handle the stress without falling to pieces. Slowly, I started getting me back.

I spent another school year at the job, only to be told, on Valentine's Day of 2008, that my services would no longer be needed, thankyouverymuch. So much of what I had regained came crashing back down, and I slowly started building it back up, and moving on.

When I started working at my new job, I immediately felt the difference. Instead of working with teenagers, the endless fundraising, and planning field trips, I was now free to come up with creative lessons. Working with the younger children is delightful, and my middle school kids give me enough challenge, but also a lot of reward.

I teach four middle school classes, two on "A" days, two on "B" days. They alternate, every other day. When the kids don't have my class, they go to PE. Three of my classes, 5A, 5B and 6A, are pretty easy. They have their moments, and I have to watch to make sure they're following directions, but for the most part, I can move around the room helping kids, or sit at my front table working on stuff, without worrying that the place will come crashing down around our ears.

Then there's 6B. From the first day, 6B has proven to be a unique blend of immaturity, lack of care for school, and "we just wanna have FUN!!" mentality. Don't get me wrong--I have some GREAT kids in 6B. Unfortunately, they're surrounded by some of our most difficult middle school students.

In December, I started to finally feel I had a handle on these kids. I even had the most naughty boys in the class doing ballet! Then Christmas was over, Santa went back to the North Pole, and a couple of new kids came to our school. They were placed in 6B, and they came screaming in like poison darts.

The first made farting noises on his first day in my class. He just sat there, making the loudest and most obnoxious farting sounds he could muster. When he wasn't making verbal flatulence, he was yelling impertinent questions in the most obnoxious unchanged voice I've ever heard from a twelve-year-old.

The second came in with his pants around his knees, walking into my room with the "I'm too cool for school" swagger of the gang-ambitious young man.

It's amazing to watch the balance in a class shift from mostly silly, slightly irreverent kids who will humor me and do the ballet to the craziness I have dealt with in the last few weeks from 6B.

As I felt my control on this class starting to slip, I quickly started pulling in on the reins. Some days it works, on Tuesday of this week, I had to send a few kids out of my room and write a lot of citations. Four kids ended up getting assigned to after-school detention, and one was suspended.

Yesterday, I arrived at work to find an email from the second-in-command at my school, asking for me to come talk. She is concerned about my assigning four detentions in one class period. Mine, she said, is the only class this happens in. She thinks it must be my classroom management, and, "I wonder about your curriculum, if they're doing this instead of the work."

I sat in her office and felt all of that old anxiety come crashing back down on my head. This woman has never once watched me teach. She did not care to discuss how my other three classes do the projects I assign them, nor did she listen very much when I mentioned that 6B breaks my colored pencils, loses the caps to my markers, and, in general, makes such a huge mess, that I can't even trust them with Elmer's glue.

Nope, it must be MY FAULT. Because an 8th grader told her that kids were sticking gummy bears to the wall, and that's why he felt compelled to pick up a metal folding chair over his head and run around after another kid with it.

For the record: there were NO gummy bears. I would have noticed. By this point in our "little chat," however, I didn't even bother saying this.

I spent the rest of the day walking that thin line between calm and anxiety. I spoke to my middle school colleagues, who helped me come to an interesting conclusion: BULLSHIT.

I call bullshit! A woman who has never watched me teach will take the word of an 8th grade student (who is known for getting into trouble with all of his teachers, not just me) and form her assessment of my classroom management skills. Ridiculous. Her oh-so-brilliant solution? Bribe them with treats...make them earn donuts or nachos or candy.

Yesterday afternoon, 6B came to my class. It was a nightmare. As one kid walked back to his seat after asking me a question, another kid turned around without warning and stuck a piece of construction paper covered in glue to the passing kid's shirt. Of course, there was retaliation before I could get over there, even though I said, "Do NOT retaliate!"

At the end of the day, my room was a disaster and I felt like a failure. I didn't write the glue-spewing kids up, even...I am now afraid to do so.

As I lined my kids up outside, I could feel tears coming on. I saw a colleague who'd just had prep and asked if he would walk my kids to the front of the school. He took one look at me and agreed right away. I ran back to my classroom and promptly had a panic attack.

It's a razor-thin line, sometimes, that line between calm and anxiety. I waked the tightrope all day, at in the end, I fell off. I sat in my classroom, shaking, sobbing, unable to breathe but for the gasping breaths that come with feelings of anxiety. Finally, I fled to my car and drove home.

I spoke to my parents, and both agreed, pretty much, with my assesment--BULLSHIT. Dad said it perfectly: "She may be wrong, but she's the boss. Make her happy." So I will talk the talk and show her that I'm a dutiful little soldier. Meanwhile, I will run my classroom as I see fit--and not take advice from a woman who taught kindergarten before becoming an administrator.

Needless to say, I woke up this morning with severely puffy eyes, exhausted and apprehensive about the day ahead.

But the most amazing thing happened. I had a GREAT day.

My kindergarteners and first graders were giggly and excited about their coming Valentine's Day parties, but, as ever, eager to have music and sing "Mikey the Monkey." During my prep time, I reorganized the pens and pencils 6B and messed up the day before.

5A came in and behaved beautifully. At lunch, a colleague mentioned writing one of the 6B students up because he was watching a video of gang activity on a classroom computer and he lied about it. I felt vindicated--it's not just MY class. These kids are pushing the limits in all of their classes.

After lunch, 6A sat quietly and made Valentine cards, keeping the talking to a low rumble (which I allow--no one should be forced to do art in complete silence) and the mess to a minimum.

At the end of the day, the only evidence that two middle school classes had been cutting and pasting in my classroom was a small pile of debris I had swept up--little tiny pieces of construction paper that had fallen to the floor. The major debris had been put in the garbage. My markers and colored pencils were neatly put away. I walked my class to the front of the school for dismissal and thought to myself, "You're better at this than you give yourself credit for!"

The bottom line is that I refuse to let one administrator who doesn't bother to know what I'm doing in my classroom get me down. I'm a good teacher--not a great teacher, but a good teacher who is working her way up that ladder of greatness. I love what I do, I put a lot of time into it, and I can get 7th and 8th graders to make Valentine's Day cards, Chinese New Year lanterns, and to try the five basic ballet positions. If, every once in a while, I have to assign four kids from one class to detention, this is not bad management--assigning detention for bad behavior choices is what we're supposed to do. I am not in the wrong.

Once again, the anxiety fades away to calm. I breathe normally. It's certainly not gone forever, but the tightrope has widened into something I can walk with ease.