Reflection

Yesterday I was talking to my best friend about school starting back up again. I am so excited for the new school year and the new challenges it will bring. As we were talking, she started naming off all of the things I was able to help my students with this last school year.

One of my students, we'll call her Lexi, has a learning disability in both math and language arts (basically an English class). She came to me for both class periods and I taught her at her level of understanding. Lexi was extremely shy and withdrawn when I first met her during my student teaching and I immediately took her under my wing. She reminded me of myself when I was her age.

Although Lexi was an 8th grader, her level of understanding was about 3rd/4th grade. Her main struggle was her inability to retain information unless it was repeatedly taught to her over a long period of time. There were times that I spent the entire 60 minutes teaching her a simple math concept, and then the next day she would have no idea how to do the math problems based on what we had learned the day before. After several weeks of this, I became frustrated with myself because I wasn't able to get through to her.

What I did start noticing, however, was that she was starting to open up to me. Instead of me trying to get her to talk to me, Lexi would start the conversation! She started asking more questions and was able to voice what she wasn't understanding. As time went on she became more outgoing and self-confident. I became less frustrated with myself and did the best I could.

The last week of school, I was working with Lexi on her last math assignment. It was long division - we had been working on long division for 5 months with no real breakthrough. As she was working out the first problem, she looked up at me and said "I never knew how to do long division before because no one would teach it to me. Thank you for teaching me." She smiled and then went back to her assignment. It took all my strength to hold back the tears. I was so happy for her, but at the same time it made me so sad to think that all of her other math teachers hadn't bothered to spend some extra time with Lexi to teach her long division.

There are times when I feel like I need to be a better teacher because I'm not teaching my students "good enough"...but then I think back and remember Lexi. Something so simple that I had done for her meant the world to her.

I want to be able to do that for each and every one of my students.


*Bee

Barely Hanging On

I have been struggling a lot lately... I know it is because I'm way over thinking and over analyzing everything. I do this when I have long break periods between things, like my long summer break until school starts back up again in the fall. I have fallen into my old pattern of over thinking and over analyzing...and I'm making myself sick because of it.

I'm afraid that I will fail as a teacher when school starts up again.
I'm afraid that I will have such a major breakdown that I will need to be hospitalized.
I'm afraid that I will go inside and never be able to come out again.
I'm afraid that I won't be able to trust my new T and that my alters will get worse, like before.
I'm afraid that I will fail.

No matter how hard I try to distract myself, these thoughts keep creeping back up into my mind and I am paralyzed with this overwhelming fear that I'm going to be a failure.

I don't know why so many people have told me that I'm amazing. That I'm smart. That I'm extremely talented. That I'm a hard worker. That I'm one-of-a-kind. I don't feel like I'm any of these. I feel like I'm a fake. I feel like I'm pretending to be all these things so people will think highly of me. I feel like I'm going to mess up big time and then all of those people will be so disappointed in me.

Why am I always thinking that I'm going to fail?


*Bee

Response

(This post is a continuation of my last post - here)

I would have written this post sooner but I have been really sick these last few days and I've had no extra energy for anything but sleeping.

After sending my letter/email to my T on Saturday, I spent the weekend feeling very anxious and panicky. I didn't know how my T would respond and I just wanted some indication that she had at least read it. By Monday I had still not heard anything and so I took my emotions and pushed them to some place deep inside me.

Tuesday morning I received a call from my T and she asked if I could come in to see her. She said she wanted to talk to me and clear things up. I was hesitant, very hesitant, to meet with her since I had decided that our previous session would be the last one for a while, but, she said her colleague Dr S would be with us as well. I like Dr S a lot and I knew that having him there would be best in this situation.

During the session my T told me why she has been unavailable, even after she had promised me that she would be there for me. Once she had told me everything that has been going on (soooo much going on!), I asked her why she would share all of this with me. She looked at me for a second and then said, "Bee, I'm not going anywhere. I am here for you one hundred percent. I made a promise to you when I first started seeing you that I would stick with you for the whole ride, the whole journey. No matter what is going on in my personal life, I will make time for you."

While she was telling me this, I felt so special and loved and my anxiety slowly calmed down...

...but...

...I still had that nagging feeling in my gut that this was just another promise she was making that she wouldn't be able to keep...

Is that fair? Should I give her another chance? Should I keep crawling back to her?

As I look at this situation from an outside perspective, pretending that I am not this girl, pretending that I don't know this girl or this T -- I find myself disgusted. I find myself wondering why does this girl keep going back to her T? Why does this girl keep putting herself in the same situation over and over and over again?

I don't know why I keep going back. However, I did tell her that I want to take a break from her. I need to clear my head and figure out what I'm going to do. She set up an appointment with me for a month from that day, but I honestly don't think I'll be seeing her again.

I hope and pray that I am doing the right thing...because it is so, so hard.


*Bee