The Tooth, The Whole Tooth, and Nothing But The Tooth: A Teacher's Journey
You know what they say: life always comes full circle. How big is the circle?! It feels more like a roller coaster. In 2023, I prepared something to say in front of the school board. I had a lot to say! I know what you’re thinking…I had a lot of good things to say.
Public education is far from perfect but I love my job. I wanted to share that with the school board. In the midst of chaos coming out of a pandemic, I still love teaching and I wanted the school board to know that a lot of teachers still love teaching. I typed up my story and was ready to present. At the meeting, each person gets five minutes to speak. I’m a fairly reserved person so I was sure that my story would be less than five minutes. It turns out, my story was closer to fifteen minutes. I edited it so many times and ended up not reading it to the board at all that evening. Sometimes I regret it and other times I don’t. It’s still my story whether I read it outloud at a public meeting or not. Fast forward over two years later, and I’ve found the perfect place to share my story. Here. Enjoy!
I’ve been with the district for over 15 years. This is my 9th year of teaching first grade. I first applied for a long term substitute paraprofessional position. I never thought I’d be doing a job like this. I thought it’d be a great opportunity to get out of the house since my husband & I had just moved to town and my only friend was the postmaster as I’d drop off my Netflix DVDs every 3 days.
I quickly accepted the position and when I started, I anticipated that this would be a cake-walk--almost like babysitting. I came from working in law enforcement as a correctional officer and I felt I was prepared for anything this job would throw at me. That first day, I went into the first-grade classroom and sat down on the rug. The teacher introduced me and one little boy turned, smiled, and wiggled his tooth, it was hanging by a thread, he had some crackers to eat at lunch and then an apple at snack to help it along, he was wiggling it with his tongue–it could practically spin all the way around, making a weird clicking noise, and I was absolutely disgusted.
There is something about the enthusiasm of those 6 and 7 year olds when one has a wiggly tooth—they ALL have wiggly teeth. The energy in the room changed–no one remembers their disagreement on the playground, or who cut in line, or who took the blue crayon or their favorite eraser–there isn’t an enemy as they all share in the enthusiasm of loose teeth.
Well, I was appalled. I can’t stand loose teeth, they’re disgusting and unreal. They’re kind of like bones, breaking off of your body. And I had to listen to every first grader show and tell me about their wiggly teeth. That’s when I knew: there was no way I could do this job.
Somehow their smiles and excitement for all the little things in life won me over. Their innocent curiosity was refreshing and I remained a para for the year, and eventually the position became permanent. The following years I split my time between being a para and a Reading Corps tutor. I continued to love working with kids so I enrolled in a teaching program. I worked full time and completed my Bachelor’s Degree in Education. I had two wonderful cooperating teachers to guide me with student teaching and followed that with two different long-term subbing positions in first grade before being hired on as the first-grade teacher at a preK-12th grade single section school.
It took me a few years of teaching to get used to the wiggly teeth. And it only took 20 minutes to realize that this job is not like babysitting. Not at all.
Then, March of 2020 brought about a change in education, a change in the world that no one could ever have imagined. Teaching in a pandemic. Oh. My. Gosh. Teaching in a pandemic, that’s an oxymoron, right?
I remember discussing with the Kindergarten teacher how impossible this felt. She said, “Kreisa, this is the time people realize that the real job of teachers isn’t just to deliver content but to emotionally support their students. School is also a place where basic needs can be met. There’s equity in the classroom for our students. We are here to teach kids how to read and solve math problems but deep down, we’re essentially keeping track of future generations.”
She inspired me to not only teach content but try to support my students to get through this. I collaborated with a retired doctor in the community and I had my students submit questions about their health–physical, mental, emotional–I recorded my interviews with Dr. Korstad. She was part of a campaign called the Make It Ok campaign. Its purpose was to reduce the stigma of mental health. We were trying to normalize the worry and anxiety from the kids by talking about it and answering questions.
That first spring of the pandemic I worked hard on adjusting my instruction so that students could still learn at home. I worked hard on building relationships with families so that they felt capable of supporting their child’s learning. Messages from parents who normally signed off with “thanks,” turned to, “thanks for all you do, or hope you are healthy and ok.” In trying to support my students and families as much as I could, I realized that their support and encouragement also helped me get through distance learning.
During that spring, I also signed up for the professional development opportunities that the district offered. I completed over 40 hours of virtual training and then began the summer taking the next opportunity, studying the science of reading.
During the fall of 2020, most first-grade students were masked and in person and I was excited but nothing felt normal. Unrelated to the pandemic, I was suffering from a chronic condition that I could no longer ignore. I had a surgery to address it the year before but unfortunately, my situation had taken a turn and I needed to have a more extensive surgery requiring me to be away from work for about 6 weeks. For me, the thought of writing sub plans in a pandemic for a substitute teacher who never taught in a pandemic when I’ve never lesson planned for teaching during a pandemic, was incredibly overwhelming.
My silver lining: the first-graders’ masks would hide their loose teeth. I was going to hold onto this silver lining all year. It lasted a week. I cried regularly to my husband that I missed their smiles. “They’re wiggling their teeth with their tongues while I’m teaching. I can see their masks moving and sometimes I can hear that weird clicking sound. What IS that noise anyways?!” I had to search for the excitement in their eyes. It made me incredibly sad.
One day, the class came in from recess and one boy looked different from the morning time. I asked the para, “Don’t you think Little Johnny looks different than he did this morning?” She said yes but neither of us could place why. After about an hour, I got a little excited and wondered if he lost a tooth at lunch and because I was so informed of the status of all the wiggly teeth in class, maybe I was also in tune with when a tooth fell out. I asked him, “Hey Johnny, did you lose a tooth at lunch?” “No, why?” He asked. “Because you look different from this morning,” I told him. I could see his eyes sparkle as he replied, “I liked my friend’s mask better than mine so we switched at recess.” Oh my gosh, I thought. And chuckled at the innocence of this but also made a mental note to message both parents to let them know of the mistake.
During November, I had come to terms that I could not push off the surgery I needed. The district was flexible and understanding of my situation and I had enough sick days to cover my absence. They allowed me to do conferences virtually and did not question my need for the surgery. I spent a lot of time writing my sub plans for the first week and submitted them about 2 hours before my surgery. I wanted to explain teaching in a pandemic the best I could to the substitute teacher, but then again, there’s no explaining teaching in a pandemic to anyone.
After surgery, I turned on my phone and saw a text from the substitute that said, “Tomorrow we’re going to distance learning. Oh my gosh, what do we do?” Since I was still pretty fresh out of surgery, I wasn’t able to even compose a text response. Instead, my husband messaged colleagues for me as someone else stepped up to help the substitute. After a few days, I went home and began working on my laptop to create lesson plans.
From November to December, we were in and out of in person learning at least three times. I was writing sub plans for both formats from my bed. I couldn’t even sit up without my husband helping me. The interventionist was kind enough to call me on her prep. It was our first year using a new assessment system and the interventionist and I would spend a few days a week on the phone, reviewing data, planning for groups, and adjusting my sub plans.
Knowing that my sub could be utilized elsewhere in the building and missing the students I began to get antsy. Every two weeks I saw my doctor. Everything was fine and recovery was going well but he continued to insist that I take the full six weeks. After about four weeks, I said, “Can you send me back to work on ‘light’ duty?” He smirked and said, “There’s no such thing as light duty for teachers,” and insisted I take the full six weeks off.
In the Spring, I was teaching a social skills lesson that normally focuses on communication. I had done this for about two years and pulled up my digital resources wondering how I was going to focus on facial expressions when everyone was masked. I drew a mask on the character that we were discussing. I asked students what they thought the person was feeling, thinking they’d indicate that they’d need to see a frown or a smile. They said “angry" and I was a little surprised and pointed to the angry eyebrows and asked, “Because of these?” And one little girl said, “No, look at the body. Their hands are on their hips.” Another boy piped up, “One hand is squeezing the paper tightly so maybe it’s homework and they’re mad because they don’t want to do it.” I thought to myself…they’re reading body language. Here I was feeling hopeless that my facial expressions lesson was going to fail and they had adapted…they’d learn to read body language. Throughout that year, I was seeing the little ways they’d learn to adapt. I finally realized that kids are way more resilient than adults. Each class I’ve had since the pandemic, I notice developmental things that I can tell they missed out on because of having to be quarantined during different stages of their short lives. But I also noticed neat ways they adapted.
I also felt that they had taught me to adapt. Teaching is like babysitting, I used to think. If a student has a wiggly tooth you send them to the nurse’s office, I used to think. I can’t teach in a pandemic, I can’t coach high school golf, so many things I couldn’t do, I used to think. My students inspired me to adapt.
I took on more challenges as they made me feel more capable. I get to wear many hats because I am a teacher. I serve on the Endowment Board, am a member of a teacher sorority Alpha Delta Kappa, coach high school golf, am a building union rep, and serve on the Science Curriculum Review Committee. This year, I am completing my Masters in Education in Curriculum and Instruction. I graduate at the end of June. I am celebrating by hopefully completing a half marathon, roller blading, around Madeline Island, Wisconsin. I haven’t roller bladed in about 25 years, but I know my students are excited for me. And I know when I see them in the hall the following year, they’re going to come ask me how it went and bring that same great crowd-enthusiasm as if I was the one with the wiggly tooth.
*Update: At the end of the school year, the very last 5 minutes of the day, I had 1 student lose a tooth and another pulled out their tooth. Life always seems to come full circle.
