“Why I Teach” by Veleta Greer

During gatherings of our full faculty and staff a few times each school year, we get to hear from some ANCS educators give a speech titled “Why I Teach”.  With their permission, I’ve been sharing some of them here in my blog.  This week you can enjoy the speech our Kindergarten-2nd Grade Instructional Coach, Veleta Greer, gave to our teachers and staff at our annual retreat this July.

“Why I Teach” by Veleta Greer

I was that kid that always says, “I want to be a teacher.” Here I am in the 1st grade. Notice the apple on my dress. It was my destiny. You know this kid. The little girl in class that follows directions and always gets her work done. However, for the life of you, you can’t get her to understand that she’s NOT the teacher.  Here are a variety of teacher comments from my elementary report cards. I realize you can’t read them, but they all say some variation of “Veleta is a good student, but she talks too much and tries to run the class.” Teaching must have been in my genes…or I was just bossy!

Throughout school I continued to believe that I was going to be a teacher. As a senior, I applied for and was accepted into a pilot program in my high school called Teacher Cadets. Through this program we began to study education. We even had a partner elementary school where we were able to work with students. I loved this work and knew this was what I wanted to do. I’m pretty sure that class is what got me through my senior year. Then I graduated. I had been involved with drama classes in high school but during college I became part of a women’s theater company. Through this work I began to venture away from teaching, thinking there had to be something more exciting for me. I dabbled in broadcast journalism and even changed my major from education for a brief period. For whatever reason, I always came back to teaching. If I’m being completely honest, it seemed like the most realistic option. I was going to college, but coming from a family that didn’t have a strong educational background I possibly didn’t have enough confidence in myself and teaching felt safe. Everyone can be a teacher, right? I mean, I had been practicing since kindergarten!

Every year as I’ve listened to colleagues so eloquently explain why they teach, I’ve always felt like I had no idea why I teach. That’s what I always knew I would do. Then I realized that for me it’s more about what keeps me teaching.

I think back to my first years as a teacher, and I’m amazed at how naive I was. The realities began to quickly set in at my first Open House when parents bluntly asked without hiding their mistrust, “how long have you been teaching?” It was obvious that they were not happy to have a brand new, fresh out of college teacher for their child. Being a new teacher, I wanted my classroom to be warm, inviting, and cozy. I had spent weeks setting up and making sure every corner of the room was perfect, especially the reading area. I remember finding that perfect couch for students to settle into and get lost in reading. Did I mention it was inflatable? Yeah, that didn’t work out so well. At that first Open House a hole was quickly poked in the inflatable couch and there went to perfect reading nook! I moved through those first years like a zombie, checking off boxes and “getting” the work done. However, I also met the first of many mentors-to-be, Mary Schier. Her and I could talk for hours about the “work”. She was such a natural, and I admired how creative she was with her teaching. Mary was also a bit of a rebel, which many of you know for my rule-following self can be scary! In this case though, following the rebel was the right thing to do. She got me out of the textbooks. I knew those basal readers weren’t working, but she gave me permission to trust myself. Mary and I enrolled in and completed our masters program together. It was then that I really started to see that there was so much more to teaching than file folder games and bulletin boards. I started to learn a variety of strategies and about using assessment to drive instruction. I was beginning to understand the importance of really watching the student and not checking off boxes on a to-do list or lesson plan.

During my master’s program I was introduced to The Art of Teaching Reading by Lucy Calkins. This was the first time I heard the word “art” used with teaching. Could teaching be an art? I wanted to know more about that! Around this same time I was introduced to Cindy Fujimoto. Some of you know Cindy and will know what I mean when I say she was dedicated like no other teacher I’d ever met. Many of the practices and materials that we still use at the EC were written and put together by Cindy. Cindy became my teacher. We began to meet regularly and I couldn’t believe all that she knew. I wanted to get inside her head and just absorb all that knowledge. We all had some teacher books on our shelves in our classrooms ones left over from college or maybe some that we were particularly interested in, but Cindy had an office in her house that was filled with books about education. No wonder she knew so much! Somewhere in all of this—working on my masters, reading The Art of Teaching Reading (parts of it—I still haven’t read the whole book), meeting Cindy—I began to embrace teaching as my craft just like when I was acting. After any performance people would always ask the same question, “how do you learn all those lines?” I never really had a good answer other than practice. And just like with the acting, I learned that teaching takes practice. Once I accepted teaching as my craft, I realized that all those endless hours of work I put into planning and preparing were all a part of the process. Being in the class with the students was like the performance.

So again, what keeps me teaching? It’s understanding that this is where I’m meant to be. Teaching is my art and it’s what I love. It’s mentally and physically draining and exhausting, but it’s where I feel alive– where I feel most confident and comfortable in my skin. The feeling I have after a successful day in the classroom is comparable to the high I felt after a theater performance. The energy in a classroom is the same energy I felt on stage. Whether it’s the whole class engaged in a discussion or one-on-one with a student, when it’s good, it feels electric. That energy feeds my soul, gives me life, and reassures me that I’m in the space that was created for me. After all these years though, I’m convinced that without the practice before, the high wouldn’t be quite the same.

Here I am after 17 years at a new path in my teaching career. Being an Instructional Coach has shifted my work, and I’m not in my element anymore. I don’t feel the same comfort and confidence that I once had as a seasoned teacher, but I know that with that same practice I will rebuild that confidence. The challenge of honing my craft in a new way is exciting, and I believe is what will keep me teaching for years to come.