Suddenly, I seem to be teaching English in the Mississippi Delta.


I wear a tool apron.


I do know this: I'm a pretty good teacher.  I'm not saying I don't have bad days, or that I'm on top of everything, or even that all of my students are succeeding, or even that I don't occasionally let the whole of Learning Strategies (the 4 of 15 who show up) veg out in front of MySkills Tutor on the occasional Friday. But I know I'm good at what I'm doing. I'm still learning to do it, but I feel good about the decision I made to become a teacher.


I had an advantage in having raised a child that gave me a head start on classroom management. I'd also been a boss to some adults, so I didn't have the hurdle of suddenly having to cast myself in an adult roll that many of my MTC colleagues did.


But having lived a full professional life before coming here was both an advantage and disadvantage. I used to have control over my working environment. I could close the door and be alone.
As long as I met my deadlines and budget, got my job done, and won the occasional design award, no one bothered me all that much. I was able to use my personal -- professional -- discretion in deciding to work from home, take a three-hour lunch, or a walk to Misha's to clear my head.


I didn't anticipate how much it would affect me to have that taken away. So although we are supposed to be evaluating our professional growth here, it feels in some ways like I am no longer in the professional realm. I punch a clock. People whom I could run intellectual circles around chastise me for not turning in paperwork they've lost. I kowtow and yess’r, yess’m for every little favor thing I need.


But when I close that classroom door... it's pretty much mine. I've proved myself to my principal so he comes by for an occasional evaluation, but still calls me out during meetings as an example of

At school, there’s a hall. At home, there’s not. One of many ways in which they are different.

classroom organization or effective lessons. And that feels good.


This second semester of my second year -- which on a 4x4 block is pretty much like a third year with all new students -- I’m beginning to know what it will feel like to get into the rhythm of the year, to have former students drop by for a hug or to brag.


And then there’s my life.


In the past two years I've spent more time in hospitals -- in emergency rooms, cardiac ICU, neurology
ICU, and orthopedic recovery -- than I've spent with my principal. For that matter, I've spent more time under general anesthesia than I have with with my principal!


My mother's heart surgery during my first month of teaching; my own accident that took me out of school in March last year; and my mother's recent stroke last month have all taken a toll on my energy and stamina. It’s taken a year to be myself again and recover both from the

Taking mom to Doe’s. Spring break 2008

initial shock of teaching in a critical-needs school, and from the physical trauma of my accident.


There’s almost no way in which Mississippi Teacher Corps has not impacted my life. Not being in my 20s with the safety net of “going home” beneath me, my commitment to this change was a serious one. I have nowhere to land if I fall. There’s almost no aspect of my former life that I recognize, apart from the furniture in my house — and the moths have made major headway on my Turkish wool rugs.  For the first year I lived, breathed, ate, and slept teaching and planning. I’d like to say I am more optimistic about the future now, but I’m not. I’m more resigned, though, to the concept of slow change. I’m beginning to understand the intricate complexity of the dance of race, poverty, privilege, and history. I’m  beginning to get the barest glimpse of just how much I still don’t know.


Now that I have my health back again, I take great pleasure in my house, cooking, knitting, my garden, and my personal
life here. I'm once again inspired creatively by the strange haunting beauty of the Delta. I have the love and support of some of the nicest people I've ever known. Each as different from the next as night from day, but each filling what would be a huge hole if I were adrift here alone in the Delta.


I’m staying on, at least for a third year, and probably beyond. I live in Mississippi now.


I would like to beg you dear Sir, as well as I can, to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don't search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.

Rainer Maria Rilke, 1903
in Letters to a Young Poet