Know your Purpose!

"If you don't know what your purpose is, how can you expect your students to know theirs?"
Know your Purpose-Bam-it hits me like a freight train.
It knocks me on my ass. It hurts, it's scary, and it make me angry! Why? Because I don't know what my purpose is. And not just as a teacher, as a person, a bonafide human being. What is my purpose?
I am a teacher, an English teacher, and despite what others may think or believe, I am not very good. Don't get me wrong-I have a passion for it, my students, my content, but somewhere in the last 8 years it vanished. Now, I still feel the smoldering embers, but it isn't that fiery all consuming love that it once was. I MISS it and want it back so bad that I cry every time my students don't do well at something.
So this summer, I went to the Rocky Mountain Reading Conference with one of my colleagues. I went hoping that Cris Tovani (yes, the reading guru! in the flesh) would perhaps get me a few new tools, and that my cynicism wouldn't creep in and make me bitter for missing the day at the zoo with the Boys. I was pleasantly and uneasily surprised.
I had so many knock-me-on-my-hiney moments that I thought I should take up permanent residence on the floor! But when she said that, that "know-your-purpose," I wanted to DIE! Yes, that's it! That is where my passion went! I don't know my purpose because I don't know what I should be passionate about!
I became an English teacher because I love to read! I have relationships with great pieces of literature: Jane Eyre, Moby Dick, To Kill a Mockingbird, Poe, Wordsworth, Blake, Keats, Shakespeare! The second that I finished Anne of Green Gables, I was hooked on reading anything and everything! So for the past 8 years that is what I taught: great literature and writing. Unfortunately, not all of my students have that same relationship with literature, and, no matter how hard it is for me, even painful, to admit this, not all of them ever will.
I have to accept this and move on to redefining my purpose as an English teacher. And I am soon discovering that this is the what is happening in education. Blame it on NCLB, testing, whatever, just teaching literature is not what "English" is all about anymore. I need to teach them skills for LIFE! Yes, use the literature to do this, but literature isn't the focus anymore. And That is the truth!
My dad, who works for Farm Credit as a Regional Manager in Appraisals, told me after this conference that he, as an employer, does NOT care how many works of Shakespeare applicants have read or if they can find the beauty in Henry's "Speech to the Virginia Convention." He wants them to be able to read, write clearly, and be effective and honest communicators. Not mini-Literary scholars. WOW!
So, as I am sitting there watching Cris Tovani literally with my mouth hanging open and tears in my eyes, I realize that my life seems so disjointed and unhappy, not just because of the PPD, but because I need to find my purpose. I am not saying that I am going to give up Milton and the Bronte sisters, never, but I need to redefine my passion for what I teach and what is really important for my students to know.
So all summer, I have struggled with this. What is my purpose and when the hell am I going to find it again. So I made a decision, one that is NOT easy and that will be hard and take long hours of hard work. I am going to get a master's degree in reading!
Really!?! Absolutely! Sounds strange to add stress to someone that is maybe stressed out, but I NEED this! I am shriveling up inside and if I have to go on anymore and feel disappointed in my professional self I will quit and never return to what I have wanted to do since I could talk. And maybe along the way, I will feel reenergized in LIFE! But all I know is that in this moment, right now, I feel alive, energized, excited, and for the first time in forever, happy!
So wish me luck, dear readers, I will need it!
OH, and don't be surprised if my blogs get fewer, even scarce, for the next year and a half-I am doing this with gusto!