Cincinnati! (and first year teaching)

Looking across the Ohio River with Kentucky on the left side

The railroad tracks that separate one part of the city from the rest

Student artwork

Our classroom during standardized testing

A bulletin board with student artwork during a Science unit on Space

One wall of our old classroom

Graeter's, Skyline Chili, the Purple People Bridge, United Dairy Farmers...all of these keywords have been linked in my mind to the "City of Seven Hills", otherwise known as Cincinnati. It's going on five months since I moved here and started teaching, and has it ever been an interesting experience!

For one thing, I'm happy to have gotten to know a city all by myself, outside of any friends' or family members' opinions about it. No one else I know well has ever lived here, so the city was mine to discover. As far as cities go, Cincinnati has been pleasant. The people are friendly, there is an old-world charm to parts of the city, lots of racial diversity, lots of great restaurants, and so much green in the spring that you can almost forget you are living in a concrete jungle.

I've learned to drive aggressively, plan for inevitable traffic on my commute to work, and navigate the somewhat confusing side streets and little boroughs that comprised make up the whole of Cincinnati. At first, I did end up on some sketchy streets by accident, but now I can at least follow my GPS without getting lost.

I have been renting with a church member who is a music teacher (huge blessing there!), and also happens to be on the board of the school I teach at (another blessing there!). She doesn't work with me, but at least she can tell me all about how her school works and how functional and successful it is. I didn't end up at one such a school, but that's another story for another day.

The first year of teaching is always hard, and mine was made harder by a lot of different factors, but I have learned quite a bit about life and found a certain strength that I didn't have before I started working here. I'm a country girl, part of a racial minority (97% of the school body is African American), and most people that see me say I look too young to be a teacher. I started teaching the day after driving into Cincinnati at 11:00 pm. Didn't know anyone. Didn't know anything about my job except the names of my students.

When my 3rd and 4th graders came in that morning, we sized each other up. I was their third teacher that year; most were below grade level and too old for their grade, it was a new classroom for some of them, and they didn't have their textbooks with them. We spent that morning going on a treasure hunt, looking for their stuff. When it came time for recess they were supposed to line up and walk down the hallway, but I didn't know that. Let's just say those students got away with a lot until I was able to get an idea of how things ran at the school, and I got in trouble with administration a lot.

But now it is May and my students and I have almost made it to the finish line. We have both learned a lot, much of it extracurricular. I have learned how completely unprepared I was to be a teacher, and how God can step in and work regardless. The students learned about the planets, how to convert mixed numbers into fractions, how to count money, how to properly punctuate sentences, how to play Darebase (if you are from the Kentucky-Tennessee Conference of Seventh-Day Adventists, you will understand how legendary this game is), and much more. One student who came from Honduras in January learned how to speak some English and I learned how to explain mathematical processes in Spanish. Another learned how to control his temper, and I learned not to let volatile parents ruin my day. Most of the students learned that they can in fact do math and are not stupid, as a former teacher told them. I learned that I like to teach math.

I think they have finally learned to be quiet in the cafeteria during lunch so they don't get sent to sit and eat silently in my classroom. I think I've learned to anticipate fights before they break out. The kids are learning to clean up their messes and I'm learning to make sure they do instead of doing it myself.

The kids have stolen my heart with their smiles, their philosophical questions, and their brave responses to the chaos in their lives. Many of them don't have present fathers, or any kind of Christian influence in their lives outside of school. They ask me questions about sex, drugs, death, life and God and I have to answer them as truthfully as possible because these kids can see right through a liar. A lot of the time I don't have real answers for them. Sometimes I do.

Their humor is entertaining; sometimes ridiculous, often insightful. One little 3rd grader was trying to learn Spanish using Duolingo on a classroom iPad. She went to ask her hispanic classmate what "yo soy una nina" meant in English and after feigning ignorance, he told her seriously with a sweet smile to just "trust in Jesus".
They may covertly talk about Pokemon and Dragon Ball and Minecraft, but when playing outside at recess, they love to turn over stumps and find worms, play tag, and build little shelters for bugs. The Hispanic boys play soccer like pros every single day, and sometimes the African boys join them.
The girls practice gymnastics, build mud pies, and make treasures out of the trash they find on the ground.

I wish you could meet these kids; the ones who daily capture my heart, tear it up, and heal it.
It's going to be over in just a few weeks, and it used to hurt to think of them being with another teacher. Hardship really brings people together. But I know I need to move on, and I pray that the impact I had on them will be a positive one and that they will be closer to making a decision for Jesus than they were before.