“I went to the woods because I wanted to live deliberately. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life. To put to rout all that was not life; and not, when I had come to die, discover that I had not lived.” – Dead Poet’s Society

It was a year. This year has been so overwhelming that even my thoughts are jumbled as I try to figure out what I learned. Not only did I teach full-time this year, but I also continued work on my Master’s part-time and interned at Burning Coal Theatre part-time. How did I do it, you ask? You can find out here, but that’s not the point of this post. The point is to write a genuine reflection. At the end of each school year, I write a reflection on that year. (You can go back and check out my reflection years 1, 2, and 3 if you’re interested.)

I’m tempted to spend this reflection complaining about how the government treats teachers and/or explaining how I know the curriculum standards inside, out, and upside-down, but I won’t. The first isn’t very helpful, and the second isn’t something I feel like holds meaning for my life outside my daily lessons. However, I find myself grasping for something I learned this year, something that matters. I feel so very tired: tired of the government, the grading, the endless times I’ve told students to put their phones away. I don’t want you, my friends, to assume that my year or that teaching itself is all negative though. It’s just so easy to get caught up in a cycle of negativity, to hate The System and want to burn it all down. If I consider these feelings, then it feels like the year was wasted caring about things out of my control.

This year I have been terrified that my career, my education, and–hell–even my life is going to be wasted. I am not going to live fully because I am going to spend all my time worrying about the government and whether getting my Master’s was worth it and if I’m a good wife and am I impacting the lives of my students. Do I make a difference?

Last week, Kyle and I watched Bull Durham and, even though I had seen that movie dozens of times before, this quote is one I never paid any mind to before:

“The world is made for people who aren’t cursed with self-awareness” (Bull Durham).

I feel, often, like self-awareness is a curse, like maybe if I wasn’t so aware of my actions and their direct consequences, I might be happier. Maybe… But, really,

“What horrifies me most is the idea of being useless: well-educated, brilliantly promising, and fading out into an indifferent middle age” (Sylvia Plath).

What if I am wasting all of my talent and never change the world like I dream of doing? Or, what if I spend all my time trying to change the world through teaching, and I never actually “suck out all the marrow of life” (Dead Poet’s Society)? I don’t want to die only to discover I’ve never lived… I don’t mean to get so existential; introspection just seems to be the theme of this school year.

I guess the thing I learned this year is that I do make a difference; it’s just not always in the way I expect or even in a way that’s obvious. On the last day of teaching this year, a wonderful colleague of mine arranged to have my students “O Captain, My Captain” me. First of all, this is my ultimate teaching dream. Admittedly, I cried (like, a lot). Secondly, the class who participated in this beautiful demonstration was one of the worst groups of students I’ve ever taught. For the most part, they were disrespectful and mean but, in this moment, even the student who made my semester absolute hell stood up on his desk and said, “O Captain, My Captain.” Maybe this student didn’t fully comprehend the significance of this gesture, but what he did comprehend was that he was doing something kind for me. He made the choice to participate in something that would make me happy. Whether he will admit it or not, I impacted him enough that he was willing to do this one thing.

I change my students’ lives in small ways; I make a difference in small ways. I alone may not (and may never) change the world, but I can make my students’ lives a little easier and a little better. I am reminded of one of my favorite quotes:

“I alone cannot change the world, but I can cast a stone across the waters to create many ripples” (Mother Teresa).

Even if I never know it, my influence on my students might cause them to change the world, and that should be enough of an impact to declare my life well-lived.

–Mrs. Doss “or, if you’re slightly more daring, O Captain, my Captain”