Why is it that we insist upon cutting each other down?

I have been warned that those students who will come to me next year are challenging (my word)
I have been told that they are mean and nasty and don’t care about each other (not my words)

Why is it that we insist upon cutting each other down?

Last year I had students who got pleasure from seeing each other in pain,
Pain caused by excluding,
Pain caused by baring their own hurts by digging in another’s tender flesh
And I was too young, inexperienced to stand up and say,

Why do we insist upon cutting each other down?

This year we have spent hours, days, practicing what it means to be a friend,
To treat even those who are not our friends with the dignity all humans deserve
We still have lapses, but we also know that we are better than that

I have all this in my mind as I face the challenge of next year.
I will not allow my hope to be dimmed by a coworker, who says,
“I feel bad for next year’s fifth grade teacher,”
When she knows it will be me.

Why do we insist upon cutting each other down?

Because that is what we hear,
That is what we learn.

Here I go again...

When I began writing this blog around this time last year, I thought I had come up with such an ingenious title. After all, it was the end of my first full year of teaching, which made me a new teacher all by itself, but then I found out that my school would be going from Catholic to charter, and I felt like the newness came from beginning again, in the same building but with a new principal, new coworkers, and, most importantly, new students. I am beginning to think that my title is not as clever as I once thought. Here I am, at the end of my second full year of teaching, and what do you know? My school is closing. It seems like I am doomed to live the life of a new teacher forever.

I am fortunate in that I was only technically jobless for a few weeks. In the fall, I will be moving to the Petworth campus of Center City Public Charter Schools, still teaching the fifth grade. But once again, the principal, coworkers and students will be new. To top it off, our current art teacher also teaches at Petworth, and she decided to say, "I feel bad for whoever is teaching fifth grade next year, " even though she knew that it was me. I realize now that I should've come back with, "Well, I feel jealous of whoever gets to be a student in fifth grade next year." In any case, I begin again, and, at the very least, I can keep the title of my blog.