Choosing Hope: Moving Forward from Life's Darkest Hours

by Kaitlin Roig-DeBellis

  Most of the teachers I know have willingly stepped into these custodial roles. I’ve watched my peers bring timid students out of their shells enough to be able to make new friends, and give introverted students the confidence to take a risk and speak in front of their classmates, and convert students who were faltering in their schoolwork into students who loved coming to class.

  I watched a teacher work with a young boy with selective mutism, a severe anxiety disorder in which he froze up in class and couldn’t speak. Little by little, she got him to open up, and he eventually not only raised his hand in class, he sometimes even initiated conversations. I’ve known teachers who’ve bought their students warm coats and hot meals. I’ve known them to work late hours trying to come up with original ways to engage individual students who are difficult to reach. I’ve seen cases in which a child who came into school unable to read even a simple CVC (a consonant, vowel, consonant word, such as cat) was reading chapter books by the end of the year, because the teacher cared enough to put the extra time in.

  The good teacher’s job is never really finished. When the afternoon school bell rings, there’s inevitably a student you take home with you, at least figuratively speaking. The child who you worry isn’t getting enough love at home, or enough to eat, or who comes to school in the dead of January wearing only a sweatshirt. You don’t get evenings and weekends off from those children. You don’t stop thinking about them at 3:00 on weekdays. You carry them with you as if they were your own.

  Caretaker may not be part of the job description, but good teachers go where their hearts take them. We become that kind of teacher because we want that kind of responsibility. Teaching isn’t a job. It’s a calling. It doesn’t end when the school day does. We want to be role models for our students, positive influences, adults they can look up to, a difference-maker in their lives. The joy of the job is in the giving, and there is no bigger joy than watching your students grow into independent learners and thinkers who are also kind, caring, and empathetic people.

  What you give to your students comes back tenfold. There is no greater gift than the moment when a student struggling with how to spell a tricky word or how to tell the hour and the half-hour on a clock finally gets it. A handmade thank-you card or a bunch of freshly picked daisies (with their mother’s permission, you hope) from a grateful student is icing on the cake. Then there are those keepsakes they give you at the end of the school year that make saying good-bye a little more bearable, thoughtful little gifts to remember them by, such as signed beach bags and fingerprint plates and letters and framed photos of themselves. As if you could forget. I still have every one of the mementos.

  I love this quote by Mary Bicouvaris, the 1989 National Teacher of the Year: “When former students return to see me over the years, my heart fills up in the knowledge that I have been part of a wonderful accumulation of experiences that followed them through life.” I can’t imagine anyone saying it better. In what other job do you get to see, every day, the difference you have made in a child’s life? How many others get to touch a new set of lives every year? Where else but in a classroom can you impact so many young lives?

  Some of my proudest moments have nothing at all to do with academics, but are those times when you realize your students are just happy to be in your class. I cherish those times when a student has run up to me at the end of the school year and said, “Miss Roig! I want to be a teacher just like you when I grow up!” Or when a student misspeaks and calls you “Mom” because they feel so safe and comforted in your classroom. I have known no warmer feeling than what I’ve experienced when I’m reminded that I’ve made a difference in a child’s life. I have a box of those reminders tucked away at home. Whenever I need a boost of confidence or my spirits lifted, I take it out and sift through the cards and letters inside from my first-graders over the years. Then all is right with the world.

  Dear Miss Roig:

  . . . Thank you for teaching us all the wunderfil things. Self-control, raising our hands, reading our books, walking in line. You are a very nice teacher.

  . . . Thank you for teaching me avrything in first grade you need to know for sekint grade.

  . . . Thank you for teaching me how to read. You are the best teacher ever.

  . . . Thank you for helping me learn about shapes.

  . . . You are a nice teacher, and fun, too!

  . . . You are the best teacher in the world because you help me when I am stuck doing my writing.

  . . . You taught me how to tell time. I love telling time! You made first grade so much fun!

  Miss Roig is special because:

  . . . she is the best teacher. We do fun things like butterflies, personal narratives, and math tests. I will always remember first grade for the rest of my life!

  . . . she is really fun, she reads us good stories and helps us if we get stuck when we are writing. I love school because Miss Roig is my teacher.

  . . . is speshal. She teaches us how to read and write. She teaches us about butterfliwes and 3D and 2D shapes. Miss Roig is nice, too.

  . . . she is sweet. She lets us do crafts. She is a good teacher. I have learned many things.

  . . . she takes care of all the people in our class. Because she is a great teacher.

  . . . she loves all of us. She teaches us lots of things we don’t know. She is the best teacher. We love you.

  . . . she takes good care of us and Humphrey (the stuffed animal, a hamster, that was the class pet). She is very fair. She loves all of her students. She makes teaching fun. She is very funny. I love Miss Roig.

  . . . she makes first grade fun. I liked having Y-O-U for a teacher.

  . . . shehelpsuswithspellingandhanDwritingandeveryonelovesherincluDingmeandIwillalwaysremembermissroig.(heart)

  . . . she is the best teacher. Ever! Good job Miss Roig!

  When I read and reread those sweet letters, those wonderful gestures of appreciation and kindness, that’s when I know I’ve done a good job.

  Mrs. Beaulier

  Everyone, if they are fortunate enough, has had a special teacher growing up. Mine was Mrs. Beaulier in the fifth grade. I’m pretty sure she doesn’t know it, but she was the model for the teacher that I ultimately became. I couldn’t wait to get to her class every day. Mrs. Beaulier was bubbly and full of life. She was tall, with short brown hair and tan skin, and had the kind of smile that warmed you from the inside. She read us great literature and provoked lively discussions, but she didn’t just teach us subjects, things such as multiplying fractions and writing stories and identifying planets in the solar system. She inspired us with her own thirst for knowledge and her eagerness for us to learn, and she had special ways of rewarding us for our efforts, unique ways that were designed to be great motivators.

  We had a reading contest called Book It!, for instance. Every time we finished a book we pinned it on a bulletin board in the classroom. When we’d reached a milestone by reading a prescribed number of books, Mrs. Beaulier rewarded us with a special sticker. But the best part was, with each milestone, we also got our own personal pan pizza from Pizza Hut. That was a great motivator for me!

  For me, there was only one Mrs. Beaulier. She didn’t just teach. She was a teacher. That was her calling. She put thought into everything she did. Her teaching know-how was matched only by her enthusiasm for getting to know us. She had this way of making everyone in her classroom feel so welcome, and she encouraged us to take an interest in one another as well.

  Fifth grade is such a pivotal year, the time when students are transitioning from elementary school to middle school. It’s the bridge between being a child and becoming a young adult. Everything is about to change—allegiances, best friends, the place you’ve gone to school since you were in kindergarten.

  For a fifth-grader, leaving the security of the place you’ve known your whole life for a big, daunting new school with a hierarch
y and lockers is frightening and unsettling. Mrs. Beaulier prepared us well for the road ahead. She gave us exercises to help build our confidence before the big, bad seventh- and eighth-graders got their chance at us, as the lowly sixth-graders.

  I’ll always remember one of the first homework assignments for her class. Our task was to take a box and fill it with things that illustrated who we were. It was our “self-esteem box,” a place where we put things we felt really good about. I was so excited. I had never had a teacher who took such a personal interest in me. The purpose of the box was really a way for all of us to introduce ourselves and start to get to know one another. We had a week to put it together before we shared it with the class. I began with a large shoebox and decorated the outside of it with stickers of smiley faces and flowers and cutouts of fashions from a magazine. Inside, I tucked ribbons I’d won from running track, and photos of the cousins I was close to, and neighborhood kids, and family vacations my parents and I had taken to Maine and Cape Cod. I was so proud when I presented it to the class. I might as well have been performing onstage at Radio City Music Hall, that’s how excited I was. Mrs. Beaulier beamed and, for the rest of the school year, she talked to me about running and asked about my track meets. She made me feel so special, and I’m certain she made each of her students feel the same way.

  Mrs. Beaulier was what I call a “difference maker.” She was practicing what she loved, doing what she was meant to do, and that was easy to see. She taught me, by example, that following your heart and pursuing your passion will lead you to your purpose in life. You just have to pay attention and trust that you are on the right path. She was so much more than someone who taught lessons from a book. She was a dedicated educator, a counselor, a mentor, and a life guide.

  That was the kind of teacher I aimed to be.

  My Friends

  Icalled my students “friends.” It was something I’d learned when I was in college and working at the day-care center on campus. It was a way of putting everyone at ease and making the classroom feel like a friendly place to be. I’d start out every morning with a welcoming, “Good morning, Fantastic Friends!” My students loved it. “Good morning, Miss Roig!” they’d chirp with their happy little voices.

  Teaching first-graders is a gift. Every day is brand new. It’s a point in a child’s life when they are experiencing things for the first time and every lesson feels like an adventure to them. They’re excited to learn and to try new things, and every day is filled with aha! moments. As their teacher, you get to experience all those firsts, too, through their eyes. And the firsts are different with every class.

  I often say that first-graders are the way the world should be. They giggle incessantly, love unconditionally, forgive easily, ask a million questions, and say exactly what’s on their mind—no matter what it is that’s on their mind. If they think it, they say it. Nothing is modified or edited. I once had a student ask if I was eighty years old “like my grandma.” I was twenty-six. Another student asked if I had my own kids, and when I said I didn’t, he frowned with concern and asked, “Well, why not? Shouldn’t you be married by now?” Then there was the little boy who’d apparently overheard me talking about my boyfriend and asked, I should say rather indignantly, “Miss Roig, should you really be living with your boyfriend before marriage? Humph. My mom says . . .” That was just the beginning of his lecture.

  They’re such funny little beings. Tattletales and gossips. No concept of personal space. They think nothing of sprawling out on their neighbor’s desk or draping themselves over the teacher’s lap. They are strict enforcers of class rules, but they never take responsibility when they break a rule themselves—and they always blame someone else (“I didn’t do it!” “He told me to do it!” “It’s her fault!”). They are still losing their baby teeth. They frequently trip and stumble and fall out of their chairs because their balance is not yet fully developed. They ask one another the funniest questions: “How come grown-up people can swear and we can’t?” “Is so-and-so your girlfriend?” (“Ewwwwww.”) “Is so-and-so your boyfriend?” (Hysterical giggles.) You just can’t help but fall in love with them.

  Emerson nailed it when he described a child as a “curly, dimpled lunatic.” Who wouldn’t want to be around that? First-grade philosophy is straight out of a Dr. Seuss book: “Today was good. Today was fun. Tomorrow is another one.” Which is why I always got to school early, bright-eyed, full of energy and optimism, and eager to see what the day would bring. That extra hour or so in the morning allowed me time to prepare for class. Goodness knows that once my students got there I wouldn’t get a minute for planning lessons, or organizing their reading material, or anything other than them. That’s another thing about first-graders. They’re charmingly egocentric and demanding of their teacher’s attention, every minute of every day.

  I always knew when my students walked through the door in the morning. They came in happily chattering and usually greeted me with a guessing game: “Guess what, Miss Roig?” “Guess what the bus driver said?” “Guess what I did yesterday?” “Guess where I’m going after school?” “Guess how much the tooth fairy left me?” (That one was usually accompanied by a big toothless grin!) Once they were settled into their seats, I rarely thought to look at the clock again until they left for the day. When I wasn’t teaching, I was busy tying shoes and blowing noses and sanitizing hands and reminding them to “Please, wash your hands . . . Close the door . . . Push in your chair . . . Sign up for lunch” (and I usually had to remind them three, four, and five times). I embraced each new day as a learning experience, not just for my kids, but also for me. I saw each class as an opportunity to grow as a teacher. If a math lesson didn’t go as intended, I’d change it for the following day. If my students started to squirm or seem distracted, I reeled them in by stepping up my own enthusiasm for whatever we were learning, either that or we’d take a “sensory break” or practice our yoga poses. Tomorrow was the chance to build on what worked or didn’t work today.

  And we always had fun doing it.

  My Passion, My Purpose

  I have always had a love for working with children. When other kids were playing with dolls and dollhouses, or zooming around in plastic cars pretending to be race car drivers, I was setting up my stuffed animals in neat rows in my room in preparation for the day’s lesson. Or, when I was lucky enough, I was able to recruit a couple neighborhood friends as my students while I played teacher. My playroom was my classroom, complete with a whiteboard easel, No. 2 pencils sharpened to razor points, and enough mini-notebooks for everyone. I taught my “students” math and reading and writing, and sometimes I borrowed lessons that my own teachers had taught on that day.

  By the time I went to college, I had been a mother’s helper, a babysitter, a camp counselor, a day-care facilitator, a youth center volunteer, a study hall monitor, and a student tutor. Nothing could deter me from my work. On second thought, let’s change the word work to passion.

  Passion is the fuel that drives dreams. I remember reading that Michael Jordan didn’t make the varsity basketball team in high school, but his passion for the sport drove him to become the greatest player of all time. A newspaper editor told Walt Disney that he lacked imagination and original ideas. Disney’s passion for artistic creation led to an entertainment empire. Oprah was let go from one of her first broadcasting jobs because her employer said she was unsuitable for television news. Her passion for the medium took her to the top of the talk-show industry. None of these celebrities allowed critics or setbacks to interfere with their passion. They believed in their own potential and dared to follow their dreams. I know it took courage and hard work, but the rewards were great. Their passion became their purpose. And by using their purpose, each one of them, in his or her own way, made a positive impact in our world. Who doesn’t want to make her life mean something bigger than herself?

  Recognizing my passion so early in my life came to def
ine who I would become as an adult. I wanted to mentor children, to help them become the best people they could possibly be. Being a part of the process of helping them grow into fine adults seemed so worthwhile. In fact, I couldn’t imagine anything more rewarding than having a hand in shaping young people’s lives. From an early age, everything I did brought me one step closer to my goal. Whether I was potty training a two-year-old boy who insisted that his potty be the tree near his driveway (which was on a main road) or coaching a group of first- and second-graders in a dance routine for an end-of-summer skit at camp, I took the task seriously. Meanwhile, with every experience, I was learning how to be the best teacher I could be.

  In high school, I signed up for a class in which the students basically ran an on-site day-care program. We had two teachers and both of them urged me to apply to colleges with strong education majors. I was a natural for the profession, they said. One of them insisted that the University of Delaware had the best program and she was adamant I apply there. Well, I did and I didn’t get in. I was crushed. I’d had my heart set on that school, but one rejection letter was not going to deter me from pursuing my passion. Three other schools accepted me and I chose the University of Connecticut, the one closest to home.

  My goal was to do well in my undergraduate studies and advance to UConn’s prestigious Neag School of Education. I knew I had to shine academically to be a serious contender. In my freshman year I joined a sorority, Kappa Kappa Gamma, whose members were super-studious, and that really lit a fire under me. My sophomore year was all business. I threw myself into my studies and basically lived at the library on campus. To continue gaining practical experience, I worked at the university’s day-care center and volunteered as a youth mentor and reading buddy for elementary school students. My hard work and perseverance paid off and I was accepted into Neag’s master’s program in my junior year. As a senior, I was inducted into the Historical Honor Society and the Neag Honor Society and named a New England Scholar.