“Why I Teach” by Annette Wawerna

A few times each year, when gathered together as a full faculty and staff, a few educators are asked to share why they teach.  These speeches provide insights into the lives of colleagues with whom we work and inspiration for the deeply personal work of teaching.  

During this year’s teacher/staff retreat in July, elementary campus music teacher Annette Wawerna gave her “Why I Teach” speech and generously agreed to let me share her speech in my blog.  You can find it below.

“Why I Teach” by Annette Wawerna

“May we all find salvation in professions that heal” is a line from one of my favorite songs “Cry Like an Angel” by Shawn Colvin.  Her record Steady On was released in 1989, just about a year after I graduated from college with a major in theater and a minor in music.  I was working at the Center for Puppetry Arts, singing with a couple of different groups and wondering, REALLY wondering what I was going to be when I grew up.

I was 23 and struggling for the first time in my life.  I don’t mean struggling financially (though believe me I was struggling with $$$ too…working at the Center For Puppetry Arts is not a “get rich scheme”)  No, I was struggling with growing up.  Despite growing up with a profound learning disability (I’m dyslexic) I always loved school.  I liked knowing what was expected of me, I enjoyed the structure, I loved learning and I loved people.   I used to wish that I could know everyone one on earth… past, present and future.  I knew it was impossible, but I still wished it.

So when Shawn Colvin’s record came out each song spoke to my loneliness and confusion, but more importantly spoke to my deeply ingrained truth that I wanted to make the world a better place.  I wanted to “be a helper.”  I wanted … to find my salvation in a profession that “healed”.

I however didn’t think this “salvation” was going to come through TEACHING.  Quite the contrary, I was determined I was NOT going to be a teacher.  My mother was a first grade teacher, my father’s mother had been a second grade teacher and my father was a professor.  Although I loved and respected my family, this career didn’t seem spectacular enough for me.  I wanted to be a rock star and raise money for starving children or create and star in the next “Sesame  Street” for Children’s Television Workshop. I was looking for something splashy!

In the meantime, my job at the Puppet Center turned from a job as a house manager of the theater, to one as the Education Department Outreach Coordinator.  I began traveling around the country, teaching puppet making workshops with kids and other groups.  I also would sometimes go to one school for a week or two as an “artist in residence” and help kids write puppet shows and stage bigger productions.  I loved the work and I received lots of positive feedback but ….. wait… this is teaching….I wasn’t going to be a teacher.  

So after a couple of years I decided to try to concentrate on music and take a job (or 10)  that was  “just a job” .   This is the era that I have dubbed… “when I worked every job in Atlanta”.  I sold baby clothes at Rich’s, shoes at Abbadabba’s, I worked in restaurants and mortgage companies, & I even was a Jenny Craig consultant and eventually I took a lovely little job as a membership assistant at the Atlanta Botanical Gardens.  But a funny thing kept happening, in each job I took I kept being asked to teach or train. At the botanical gardens my roll went from helping input membership to becoming, “Rosie the Gardener” the Botanical Garden’s mascot. I didn’t get a fun giant head like other mascots, but I got to teach. I would go to conferences, conventions and parades and “teach” about all the wonderful things going on at the garden. I was having fun, but I felt like I was spinning my wheels.  I certainly did not feel like I was “saving or healing the world.”

During this time I was still plugging away at music.  I had been part of 2 or 3 bands, sang backup for folks and was part of the Indigo Girls’ remake of Jesus Christ Superstar (where I first met the lovely and talented Joyce Williams, ANCS’s former music teacher).

I was also burning through my 20s and had gotten engaged to my funny and fabulous best friend. I felt like it was time to stop pinballing around my life and get a bit focused.  I took a hard look at the things I was doing and how could I turn them into a real job.  I was crazy about people… big ones and little ones. I loved being part of a community and helping people feel included.  I enjoyed helping others discover their gifts. I always loved learning new things and asking questions. I loved music, I like to collaborate and I’m not afraid to take on a challenge.  I needed my work to be making a difference.    Aww Man, I think I want to be a teacher!!!

So while planning my wedding, and continuing to sing whenever I could, I applied and got accepted to the alternative preparation program masters in early childhood ed at Georgia State.  The program was very intense, but I really ate it up.  I elected to be part of the “Urban Program”. This meant attending additional classes and discussion groups related to race relations and inequity in education.  I spent  a year as a  student teacher  in schools in Southeast and Southwest Atlanta. I worked at Thomasville Heights, and the now defunct Lakewood Elementary. I was inspired by my program.  I was inspired by my professors and classmates. My idealism was in full swing.  We created lessons that were project based and engaging.  We learned about multiple intelligences and the varied ways that kids learned.  We studied positive classroom management methods. We worked together because we all brought a different skill sets, worldviews and life experience to the table.   We had difficult but enlightening conversations.  I felt challenged and excited about what was to come.  

I got a teaching job in an “at risk” school in Dekalb County and set out to “change the world”.  My idealist graduate program was over and reality hit me squarely between the eyes.  For the next 3 years I taught second grade with up to 35 second graders at a time.  The kids needs were severe and relentless and the school was turning a blind eye to most of the issues. With the exception of one reading specialist and my newly retired mom coming in to read to my kids once in awhile, I felt totally alone.  Because the school was not doing well, we were supposed to spend a lot of time teaching to the Iowa Test of Basic Skills.  Although I rebelled, I was not supposed to take the kids out to recess, I had to fit 30 minutes of bubble filling activities into each day and we were all subjected to ITBS pep rallies!   These pep rallies simultaneously stressed and hyped the kids out of their heads.  Most of the teachers were counting the days until retirement or trying to get administrative degrees to get out of the classroom..fast.   I didn’t feel comfortable having even my most out of control students go to the principal. He was a former high school vice principal and was given the job at our little hurting school, because he was known “tough” and was going to get this school to succeed with “tough love”.  After I witnessed him threatening to chopped a child’s fingers off, I decided to deal with behavior issues on my own.  Collaborating with my teaching team, was nothing more than sharing dittos.  Where were the teachers trying to discover how their students learned?  Where were the projects? Where was the collaboration? Where was the hope? Those 3 years ate away at my spirit.  I felt like I was truly failing my students.

In my 3rd year I was still trying.  I truly felt like I was alone and this was the antithesis of how I thought this teaching thing was going to go.  I loved the kids but I felt like I was drowning in their needs and my powerlessness to help.

To keep myself sane during this time a produced a solo CD, if for nothing else to capture some of the music I’d written or performed over the past decade, and maybe it would lead me to some more music projects.  Three weeks before my CD release party I was thrilled to find out that Mike and I were going to have a baby.  

I was lucky to take a year off when my sweet Asher was born and he helped to begin to heal me.  Mike and I had bought a little house in Grant Park and we like so many families wanted to help create a neighborhood that could support and sustain families as they grew.  Because we loved our neighborhood and our child we got deeply involved first the Grant Park Parent Network, then I became a founding board member and and Education Chair Person of the Grant Park Cooperative Preschool for it’s first three years.  I was also asked to help with a plan to create a charter school.  I remember visiting the Carterville Charter School System and I also remember when Katie Sullivan introduced us to the idea of a constructivist curriculum.  With each new idea the folks in the neighborhood rose up to the challenge.  There were many hurdles to jump through but with each one I felt my excitement grow.  I was being healed a bit more by this community.

I started working part time for an early learning music program for kids 4 and under and their parents called “The Music Class.”  It was so wonderful to make music with kids, but I enjoyed connecting with the parents just as much.  I felt my role was to be the parents music teacher so they could be their child’s music teacher.  I worked for The Music Class for 10 Years.  The preschool and the charter school opened.  We survived and thrived after the NCS fire in 2003.  My daughter was born.  There was so much to be thankful for.  This school and this community was so special I wanted other communities to know about it that is why I made the documentary From Acorn to Oak.  I wanted to show that it wasn’t easy, but it was possible to create an exceptional public school with inspired professional teachers and deeply invested families. I guess I wanted to TEACH others about this special place.

When Ava was settled into kindergarten, with Ms. Swern and Ms. Goss, it seemed to be time for me to consider going back to work full time. I adored the Music Class but it was never going to be a fulltime gig.  It seemed to be a natural to try to get a job at NCS.  But I can’t lie I was EXTREMELY apprehensive.  My last elementary school job had not only broken my heart, but it had mangled my confidence.  That job hadn’t been a “profession that heals”.

I was lucky to come back as an associate teacher and get to work with Veleta and them Kole and Tawanda and Kristen and the amazing kindergarten team and now with the killer related arts.  I have been so touched by the efforts of this school, this amazing professional staff and beautiful kids.  I don’t feel alone when I have an issue or an idea.  I see the work we talked about graduate school in action in this place.  I have continued to grow as a teacher and person, through critical friends, conscious discipline, work with student teachers and cognitively based compassion training and other forms of Mindfulness.  And in the last year a love for music and my job as a teacher have come back together again when I was giving the most beautiful opportunity to be our music teacher.

I seem to teach because I can’t seem to help it.  But I chose to teach HERE.  ANCS, even on our most challenging days, is profoundly special.  It is full of interesting, creative people who care about the kids we work with and care about each other.  We take the time to create connections, celebrate successes and hold each other up in hard times.  We have hard conversations, we laugh, we solve problems and everyday we sing …together.  

I thought that I would find salvation in  a “profession that heals”, and maybe I will… but I can say for sure that I have been healed by you.

“Cry Like An Angel” by Shawn Colvin

The streets of my town are not

what they were

They are haloed in anger, bitter

and hurt

And it’s not so you’d notice but

it’s a sinister thing

Like the wheels of ambition at

the christening

So I went out walking on the

streets of the dead

With a chip on my shoulder

And a voice in my head

It said you have been brought here

Though you don’t know what for

Well the mystery train is coming

right to your door

And I hear you calling, you

don’t have to call so loud

I see you falling and you don’t

have to walk so proud

You can run all night but we

can take you where

You can cry like an angel

There were high school night dances

When we played stump the band

We were raising each other

In a strange land

There were hard pills to swallow

But we drank ’em all down

Oh the nights were too short then

And now they’re a little too long

I hear you calling and you

don’t have to call so loud

I see you falling and you don’t

have to walk so proud

You can run all night but we

can take you where

You can shout out in anger

You can laugh like a fool

You can cry like an angel

So look homeward baby

Keep your eyes on the sky

They will never forgive you

So don’t ask them to try

This is your party, I know

it’s not your ideal

May we all find salvation

In professions that heal

I hear you calling, you

don’t have to call so loud

I see you falling and you don’t

have to walk so proud

You can run all night but we

can take you where

You can shout out an answer

You can laugh like a fool

You can call up to heaven

We’ll be listening to you

You can sing hallelujah

You can fly like a bird

You can cry like angel

When there are no words