Whenever I tell someone what I do for a living, I almost always get the same exact reaction. I tell them I’m a first-year teacher, and they smile. I tell them I teach middle school, and the smile wavers. I tell them I teach Middle School Math, and they look at me with genuine pity and whisper, “Oh… bless you.”

Ok, maybe not actually that bad, but close.  In the future I might write about how when I signed up to teach math I didn’t know I was signing up to be a therapist for adults and their math trauma growing up.  But I digress.

But “Oh bless you.”  Honestly? Looking back at who I was in September, I might say the same thing to my past self.

The September Blur: Looking back at the first quarter, I have no idea how I survived. I remember the smell of fresh sharpened pencils and the optimistic glow of a perfectly organized desk. I also remember the sheer, unadulterated panic of realizing that no amount of planning and preparation readies you for the “insanity” of your own four walls.

I’ve been building the plane while flying it*—except the plane is full of hormonal 13-year-olds and the flight manual is written in a language I’m still learning.  (*AI came up with that analogy and I’m a little jealous.  It’s quite accurate and I wish I’d thought of it on my own).

What They Don’t Tell You in the Credential Program The learning curve hasn’t just been about lesson plans or the new math curriculum. It’s been about:

• The Social Dynamics: Learning what these kids are actually like has been… “Interesting” (to put it politely). Middle schoolers are a fascinating mix of brilliant, hilarious, and completely unpredictable feral half-grown cats.
• The Logistics: Discovering that a 45-minute lesson can somehow take 10 minutes or three days, with no middle ground.  I still don’t understand the proportional relationship between the number of problems they’re assigned and how long it actually takes them to complete an assignment.
• The Resilience: Realizing that “failing” a lesson on Tuesday doesn’t mean you’re a bad teacher; it just means you have a better plan for Wednesday.

The Halfway Realization We are officially halfway through. The desk is no longer perfectly organized, and my “teacher voice” is much stronger than it was in September. I’ve realized that the “bless you” comments aren’t just about the difficulty of the job—they are a nod to the fact that it takes a very specific kind of person to love teaching math to pre-teens.

I’m still learning, I’m still tired, and I’m still occasionally confused by the slang my students use. But I’m also still here. And in the first year of teaching, that’s a victory worth celebrating.

If you’re a new teacher like me or even an experienced teacher, hydration is something that is easy to miss out on during the day.  I’m finding more and more that I like to have a few packets of hydration powder stashed away in my desk (along with extra chocolate).

One of my favorites is Liquid IV, it’s easy to store in my drawer and helps me hydrate when I forget that I should be drinking water throughout the day (finding bathroom break time is a completely different matter) – https://amzn.to/4t4cmJd

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