I've told my mother when I was sixteen that I was going to give up everything and become a professional hobo. Clearly, I hadn't quite thought that one through. Being a hobo required a lot more discomfort than I was willing to give when I graduated high school. I just remember her looking over her shoulder as she loaded the dishwasher and gave me "the look." My mother has a distinct look she gives my crazy ideas. It is 12% exasperated, 28% encouraging, 30% sarcastic, and 30 % amused. How she manages it in one facial expression is still a mystery to me.

In the last three years I have gotten the look approximately 5 times. I told her I wanted to be a Peace Corps volunteer, a professional hobo, a teacher, a dog owner, and the most recent one, a doctor. I love exploring the limits of my knowledge and so far I haven't found the boundary yet. I'm a firm believer in the idea that you can do anything if you really try. So in being a teacher and choosing that path over so many other opportunities scares me sometimes.

I am still at a point in my life where I have so many different dreams, and I'm young enough and crazy enough to feel like I can accomplish them all in my lifetime, that I don't know what to do anymore.

I recently read a book by Jose Luis Vilson called This is Not a Test. It was an amazing read that half encouraged me and half terrified me. I've never been one to settle into one school of thought. I love to change my point of view constantly. In being a teacher, it is an adventure that can last a lifetime. Every day is different and every year there is a new class of kids to manage, teach, and try not to strangle. Vilson's book gave me real insight into the classroom, especially as a new teacher. Being a teacher is more than just lesson planning. I'm aware that I won't know exactly what to expect because when I enter a classroom for the first time it will be a brand new


experience for everything that might possibly happen.

I have no idea the kind of kids I'll encounter. I don't know what kind of school I'll end up in, what kind of city I'll end up in, what kind of environment I'll end up in. And that terrifies me. The biggest city I've ever been too is San Francisco and to be honest, I felt completely lost there. I never thought of myself as swimming in a small fishbowl until then.

So when I read Vilson's experiences, from his blog to his classroom, I had to really evaluate the kind of person I wanted to be as a teacher. I don't want to walk in with rose colored glasses, but I also want to have some hope. I think the most important thing I learned from Vilson was to make mistakes. They are going to happen regardless, I might as well do my best to make myself a better teacher and a better person because of it.

Dear A. Gariner,

You had medium length brown hair and a sickeningly sweet smile. You were enthusiastic. Straight out of college. Hopeful. It was the 2010 to 2011 school year at Horizon High School. You were supposed to teach world history: nicknamed WAFL. You approached our class as a future, flourishing friendship.

You tried so hard to teach us. Initially, you used PowerPoint's like your lessons were a college presentation. We listened patiently at first. You gained some confidence. You learned a few names, but to this day I'm not sure you knew my name.

You separated our classroom of almost 50 in half and mistakenly used the word gangrene in your explanation. We never let it go. We thought, adamantly, that you believed our half of the class a disease. We took all future words you said out of context. We refused to listen to you after that.

Our seasoned teachers, your mentors, let you drown.

I heard that we made you cry.

I don't remember any of the lessons you taught. I don't remember the methods or strategies you implemented. But I do remember the day you tried to make us silently take notes from the text book. You wrote down our actions that day and shared them with us the next day. You sat on the table in front of our difficult little half of the class and your voice was angry, frustrated. You read to us what the other "good" half of the class had done during the assigned note taking time. They read their text books. They took notes. You launched into a list of what we had done during that class period:

Read the text book upside down
Read a different class book
Did math homework
Made faces at our neighbors
Stared at the wall
Stared at the floor
Stared at our neighbors
Stared at you

By the end I remember that you couldn't keep the scowl off your face. Soon the whole class had burst into giggles.

I remember the end of the year party competition you let us do. I remember us painting you as our own resident Marie Antoinette.

I only say these things because in exactly one year I will be a student teacher, standing in front of a class full of teenagers and trying my hardest not to say the wrong thing, teach the wrong thing, or mess it all up royally.

I only say these things because I've had to evaluate how hard it is to teach a group of teenagers who think they're smarter and more experienced than anyone else in any given room at any given time. I've had to think about how to approach teenagers not much younger than myself and get them to respect me as an authority figure. I've had to say the wrong things a few times, be at a loss of what to do next, and embarrass myself royally to understand how hard it is to be a teacher.

I only say these things because I want to tell you I'm sorry. I want you to know that I admired your courage to come back day after day and try something new, all the way to the end of the year. I want you to know that it wasn't just you. We were a particular group of assholes that had been in classes together for three years. I want you to know that it wasn't your fault that we couldn't respect authority at the ages of 15, 16, and even 17.

I want you to know that you are one of the reasons that I entered the teaching program at my university. I want you to know that you had an impact, even when you were at a loss for words.

Sincerely,
Kelsey S.