A Day in the Life

As a sophomore in high school, I wanted to be a physical therapist when I grew up. I had experienced being a patient because of sports injuries and wanted to be on the opposite side of the exam table someday, assigning exercises that no one would do and icing perpetually sore muscles. I spent six years on this plan, convinced that this was what I was going to do with my life...until I actually got to physical therapy school and spent more time enjoying the fact that I was living away from my family within walking distance of so many cool downtown places than I did studying gross human anatomy. So when the end of the first semester rolled around, it wasn’t much of a surprise that I was asked to leave the program and reapply for the following year. It was definitely a wakeup call.

I took a few weeks to figure out my next steps, deciding whether or not I should continue forcing myself into a medical profession that I really liked the end result of but didn’t really want to do all of the work for. After spending Irish Weekend in Wildwood, New Jersey playing with a cover band, it was very clear: I was not cut out for spending three straight years in a library studying medical information. I had a useless general science degree and no idea of what to do with it until some relatives suggested becoming a teacher.

“Sure!” I thought, “I can do that! I had a ton of great high school teachers, I’ll be like them!”

With no certification, I applied to the local archdiocese on a whim, hoping they would accept that I was working on getting certified. Thankfully they did, and I began my teaching career at Hallahan Catholic Girls’ High School. I wasn’t going to be a physical therapist, but I could help make other people into physical therapists and doctors and politicians and engineers. At my job, I shape the future of the world.

However, my teaching career has been anything but normal. When I first got hired, it was October; already seven weeks into the school year. My students had already cycled through four other teachers who left for various reasons, and when I walked into first period on my first day, I was met with looks that seemed to say, “Oh great, another one. Wonder how long she’ll last”.

Just as we were all getting comfortable with each other and my students understood that they were stuck with me for the year, the COVID-19 pandemic hit. These girls had seen a consistent teacher in the classroom for a total of four and a half months, then were sent home for “two weeks”. We juggled asynchronous learning, Zoom calls, test taking on Schoology, and so many Wi-Fi issues. I had some students tell me they needed extensions because they were now the childcare at home for their younger siblings during the day. Some told me it was because their school-issued Chrome book was the only internet-capable device in the house and four other people needed to use it for school and work. Still others were considered essential workers because they had a part-time position at a local drug store and most of the adults were staying home on unemployment so the teenagers had to go in to cover the open shifts. In those last three months of school, I had to show my students that I was human too; deadlines could be flexible, and being physically and mentally healthy was way more important than learning that the mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell.

When we returned to hybrid learning in the fall, I had so many students that didn’t want to show up on their in-person learning days. “What’s the point of coming in if all my friends are in A-group and I’m in B-group? It’s so stupid, I’m just staying home”, was a frequent utterance both in the building and over Zoom calls. Everyone was so drained from the six-month pandemic that no one wanted to leave their houses despite wanting to do anything but be at home.

To make matters worse, we were informed in November that this would be the last year for Hallahan Catholic Girls’ High School; the archdiocese was shutting us down in June 2021. It was sudden and unexpected for teachers, administration, students, and families. It was a very emotional time on top of an already very emotional eight months. I had a long conversation with my students the following day about everything they were feeling. So many of them were enraged, so many were sad, and so many were unsure of how to express the hodgepodge of feelings they had about everything going on. This was a new section of my job description that no one would ever expect to be included...I had to help my students navigate transitioning to a new high school where socially they would practically be freshmen again. And while still helping them, I had to deal with my own feelings on the matter. I thought of it as a teaching moment; if I explained how I reacted to the news and handled moving forward, maybe my students would learn some positive coping mechanisms as well.

I teach at a new school this year. Still a private Catholic school, still all girls, but a totally different group of kids. Even in this new setting, a day in my life still has the same goal: to teach and empower young ladies with confidence in themselves and their ability to achieve whatever their hearts desire, even when life throws you a whole bushel of lemons.