I Became the Teacher I Needed

I Became the

Teacher I Needed 

By: Erica Battle

      Education saved me.  But not in the way you think.  It wasn’t my experience as a student that helped me understand my passion for fighting for equitable education for marginalized students, but rather my experience as a first-year teacher.

You see, if truth be told, I hated school and everything it stood for.  School, for me, was pleasant until middle school.  From eight grade and beyond, school was not a safe place for me which ultimately led to me not graduating on time.  I dreaded going to school for many reasons. It was traumatizing in a sense because I didn’t feel a sense of belonging with my peers nor with the teachers I saw each day.  I vividly remember my eighth-grade principal vowing to keep me off the cheerleading squad and making sure that I didn’t get to go on any school-sponsored trips.  Not only did she make that vow, but she upheld it and made sure my final year in middle school was memorable and not in a loving fuzzy feeling type of way.   Middle school was the beginning of the end for me.  It was then that I made up my mind that school didn’t matter, and neither did I.

     What I wish my principal knew was at the end of my seventh-grade year, my father’s addiction was tearing my family apart.  As his addiction progressed, his temper became shorter, his outburst became more frequent, and his contribution to take care of his family became less and less.

     Trauma is real, and the side effects may not manifest immediately.  What I didn’t realize is I was traumatized by what I experienced in the home, and it was magnified by the trauma I experienced in school at the hands of my administrator, teachers, and peers.  I was never considered popular, and really I was the opposite.  People that I thought were my friends talked about me behind my back, and I didn’t have the support of teachers, so needless to say my behavior began to match the expectations that were put in place subconsciously by those around me.  I became rebellious.  I began to skip school.  I began searching for acceptance in anyone or anything that showed the slightest interest in me.   I became angry and resentful that my family was going through such a difficult time, and no one even noticed.

It is this experience in middle school that shaped who I became as an educator.  I made a vow that I would try to look past my student’s disruptive behavior to determine what they really wanted me to know.  In some cases, there was nothing to their behavior other than them wanting attention because, as you know, some attention is better than no attention.  But then there were those students who really just needed someone to listen to them; someone to notice that they were hurting. They needed someone to take a genuine interest in them and what was happening in their world.  They just wanted someone to know that their anger, their hurt, and their lashing out was not personal, but they knew no other way to express themselves.  They just needed someone to care.  

  I wanted to make sure they knew I cared.  This work is more than just a job to me.  It is more than just standards to me.  The relationships that I have formed over the years mean something to me.  Education became more than work; it became my purpose, my calling, and my passion.

 I became an educator because I wanted to be to students what I needed most.