My two lovelies,
This week, I will finish teaching an evening class as a stand-in coach. I took the gig because a former teacher and lifelong mentor of mine needed me to take it off her hands so she could focus on penning her dissertation and finally get that hood she's been working so long and hard to earn.
The class is simple: I teach public speaking to sweet little elementary-aged kids. They're adorable, and teaching online is not new to me, so I took the extra hour of weekly work with ease. From 5:50-6:50 pm on Thursdays, I dress up in costumes and practice public speaking with 7-year-olds.
And while I really am doing it for the favor, I can't help but be enticed by the extra money that comes from it. So when the director asked me to continue teaching (and maybe take on a few extra assignments), I have to admit I was tempted.
But not just for the money. There's something so satisfying to me to have someone you don't know acknowledge your work and covet your services. I used to think I was a pleaser (someone who wanted others to be pleased with me: my presence, my contribution, my work), but now I know it's something else.
Five years ago, I might have jumped at the chance to make some extra cash. I'd maybe even claim I took on the extra role because I enjoyed it (and I do). But what 37-year-old me has finally figured out about myself is that I love to be validated for my work. My work is good.
I'm not sure if it's just the puritanical "work for what you want" sense of pride I get out of my various roles or the southern "sweat means you're earning it" mentality, but I like to work. I have always loved having a job - having a role.
It wasn't until we moved to Baton Rouge and I stayed home with little ole you two that I realized I'd wrapped so much of who I was into what I did. Without teaching, who was I? What was my purpose? What was my worth? And when we became a single-income family, I will admit I felt truly worthless. I can still feel my heart plummet into my stomach as I sat in our tiny apartment, boxes still unpacked, with notebooks and reference materials in my hands. Would I ever use them again? What should I do with the life I lived? And then the panic that rose from my belly as I realized I had never really been just myself - just a wife, just a mom, just me. I'd always been something else. It felt like a death or a divorce. And everything in me wanted to run backward and cling to the identity I'd built in my work.
Sam, I see this drive in you. I see you meriting your worth in your work. And I worry because I know what it's like to modulate your own value based on income or measurable outcome.
That move broke me open in a way I know shed light into my darkest spaces. Suddenly, I had a moment to pause, to breathe, and to consider: Who am I? What do I like? What do I want? What's actually true about me?
We're living in a pandemic. Illness, death, fear: it's all around us. As the wisest among us talk about this time, the focus on this moment's fears and anxieties has snapped us sharply into the present: Who are we? What do we truly want? What's actually true about us?
But others are driving the conversation back to productivity and deviating to the American norm of competition, of results, of work being our way to stay relevant, valuable, worthy.
History is an honest teacher. After the horrifying bombings in Hiroshima and Nagasaki devastated the Japanese economy and decimated these two cities' populations, demands from the country's leaders were to rebuild it all: to raise skyscrapers out of the rubble and to reposition Japan in the eyes of the world. And the resilient, proud Japanese people did just that. Were we to travel to Hiroshima today, we'd see a beautiful park built over what was once ground zero.
The surface of this comeback is shiny indeed, and employees were repaid for their sweat with loyalty, monetary compensation, and incentive packages. What was left, though, chills me to the bone. Years after the creation of a comeback plan, the average Japanese worker still suffers. In fact, the labor department had to come up with a new word for a cause of death that had not before existed in Japan: Karoshi. It literally means "death by overwork."
In fact, studies from even as recent as 2018 say that the average Japanese employee works, on average, 80 to 100 hours in overtime a month. This is all held-over practices from that post-war era. The children and grandchildren of those impacted by trauma sought solace and eventually created a cultural norm of working oneself to death.
I see this same mentality in today's America post (and even mid) pandemic. I see this in education. Even before the pandemic and hybrid-model teaching, studies showed that the average American teacher worked 11 hours of overtime a week, which is about 44 extra hours a month. The average today is anyone's guess. And while I truly believe the motive behind the drive to succeed is a pure one (for most who just want to support students and aren't sure how to do it, so we're constantly worried we're "leaving them behind"), what I see is a terrifying and gut-wrenching load on teachers, masked and haunched over glowing screens every single night, calling parents of students who haven't shown up to remote classes, wearing costumes and capes to make sure kids feel engaged and cared for, all while dreading state and local testing that would tell them they are, in fact, leaving some students behind.
And I see it in you: I see you, my dear children, trying to control the uncontrollable and attempting to teach yourself math and science while doing work at home. I see this in you, Sam, when you wake up at 6 am, in the glow of the dining room of an otherwise darkened house, completing one of six math assignments measuring your mastery of material you "learned" for the week by watching youtube videos. I see this in you, Anna, when you tell me you worry you may not "show enough growth" on your test scores to make your teacher happy.
Let's be clear: many teachers do not have to tools to teach remotely; they have the tools to give students work remotely. And our students are equating "working" with learning, and while those two concepts are not mutually exclusive, one does have to precede the other in the continuum of self-efficacy towards mastery of skills. This isn't because your teachers aren't working hard or because they are underperforming: It's because the system was not built to support teaching this way and because they, too, are fighting a pandemic - always in their classrooms, oftentimes in their own homes, and sometimes in their own bodies. Many are, in fact, putting in innumerable hours to learn how to do just this and to bridge the connection gap that occurs because we're not all present with one another. Great work is being done, but at what cost?
Sam: learning is not producing quantifiable outcomes. And your work does not determine your worth. If it takes all of my breath, I will reinforce this truth to you. Despite what you see and how the world looks right now, your worth, your value, your dignity, your being, is not determined by your work.
Anna: you will grow because growing is what kids do. No one can tell you that you didn't grow enough. You are nourished, you are loved, you are given learning experiences, and you will grow. Especially in a pandemic, numbers on a paper don't determine your goodness, your virtue, and your ability to thrive in this world.
So, after my subbing stint with public speaking coaching is all over, I'll turn down that long-term position. It's freeing to know I can come home and just be with you - eat dinner, dance to silly songs, watch I Love Lucy. I can let go of work and know that when I go to bed at night, my priorities are rightly ordered and I, too, am inherently still worthy and good.
