Ironman Kindergarten

This past year at work has been boring. Not boring in that I have nothing better to do than sit around all day filing Mastercard bills and eating Little Debbie treats, but boring as in monotonous, repetitive and unmotivating.

Last spring I accepted a position as a literacy interventionist for this 2007-2008 school year. To the educational layperson, that means I help struggling readers to become not-so-struggling. This position can look very different across the state, district and even school level. In my school, it looks like the same lesson repeated nine times over and over again each day. The only variable is the kids in each group. The same lesson. Nine times. Five days a week. Four weeks a month. Six months a year. That is a lot of the same thing.



A caveat: I am not trying to say that this job isn't important in the grand scheme of education; it is. And some people who hop on board The Literacy Specialist Express absolutely love it. And some people don't.

When I accepted this position last spring, one of the benefits I thought I'd reap was the ability to train full time. But this became null and void when I was plagued by overuse injuries the third month into school. Yet even when I found myself in the thick of running 55 mpw in preparation for a fall marathon, I was wishing away the training and dreaming of the taper three weeks before it was actually scheduled. Then with the marathon complete, a job that required very little extracurricular effort and three injuries keeping me idle, I began to discover the dangers of having too much down time. I kept myself "busy" with mindless internet surfing, consuming all things running and multi-sport related (forums, blogs, race sites, you know how quickly this can spiral out of control). My reasoning was such that if I couldn't physically participate in the activity, mental engagement was the next best thing.

I started to realize that I was not put on this earth to be an internet rat. And that I had become rather unproductive. Sure, I like to nap and lounge around, but in order for me to feel good about takin' it easy, I also need to feel like I have earned the right to enjoy some down time. And for me to be productive, I need my days to be packed with back to back activities, chores and to-do list items. When they're not, I procrastinate and put things off until another day, which comes and goes as quickly as the last and I still haven't accomplished the aforementioned errand.

Now I am also a creature of habit. I like to begin each day with a hearty bowl of cereal, a steamy cup of joe and an an uninterrupted 35 minutes of NPR on my way to school. But what I've come to realize about myself is that while I thrive on routine, I also need my days to have variety. I enjoy diversion from the norm, in more ways than one. It's what keeps me alive. Because if I have too much routine and not enough variety, I lose the intrinsic motivation to better myself. I come to rely on that routine rather than myself. It doesn't push me to want to do more than what I have to. I become the status quo; I lose my sparkle.

This year, I feel like I have lost my sparkle.

I miss the creative energy that I used to put into my job as a classroom teacher, not the mindless reading components that I scribble into my lesson template over and over again each day. I miss the cohesion built from days spent together as one unit, not nine separate entities. I miss having to be on my toes, ready to react to the uncontrollable, the unpredictable. I miss observing children in their natural academic and social elements, not one that is contrived and confined to a literacy laboratory. Most of all, I miss the community feel of having a classroom. I miss the one-big-happy-familyness of it all.

So when a second grade position became available at my school earlier this spring, I grabbed at it. But due to circumstances beyond my control, the availability of the job vanished just as soon as it had appeared. Which would have left me in my same literacy position. For one more year.

Trying to remain on the bright side of the issue, my mind began to wander with the possibilities of spending another year not in charge of a classroom:

That's okay. There are a plethora of things I could do next year. I could relearn how to knit, hone my cooking skills, get a part time job at a running store, reorganize my closets, or I could even train like I had wanted to this year...hey, I could train for an Ironman! One can't get much more productive than training for an Ironman. Which one should I do? Coeur D'Alene, Florida, Wisconsin or even Arizona???

But after spending obscene amounts of time administering a full battery of literacy tests, in English and in Spanish, on every bilingual student in the school during the past month and then returning to the Groundhog Day routine of running reading groups, I realized that I just couldn't hack it one more year in this position. So, I did the next best thing: I accepted the open kindergarten position.

I ACCEPTED THE OPEN KINDERGARTEN POSITION!

(I have never taught kindergarten in my life, except in small reading groups.)

Now, instead of doing brick workouts, sculpting abs and learning the finer points of endurance nutrition, I'll be slogging through the challenges of wiping noses, tying shoes and arbitrating tattling matches.

But I must admit, I am excited. Scared out my mind, but excited.

Because I am a person of balance. I am not happy when I am pouring myself into just one entity of life. Instead of doing one thing well, I like to feel "pretty good" at a lot of things. I don't feel fulfilled when I am only training for athletic endeavors or, conversely, working all the time with no fitness outlet. I am not my best if I have too much routine and not enough variety, or vice versa. I have to be balancing it all to feel accomplished. And most of all, I need to feel like I am giving back to the collective whole, and not just to myself.

So this fall I'll be venturing into a new kind of endurance event. To successfully meet this challenge I'll need a devoted heart and an unwavering commitment. I'll have to introspect to be able to improve upon weaknesses and capitalize on strengths. I'll need to push through the hard parts, especially when every fiber of my being wants to quit. And there will be days when I feel like this. Thankfully, training has already prepared me for that. Training grooms us into the solid human beings we are, the ones we want to be. It arms us with the strength to pursue and persevere. And it allows us to reflect and reorganize when things go wrong. In essence, training helps us to figure out how to balance it all while simultaneously moving us towards improvement. And this makes us sparkle, in our own unique way.

I just hope I'll have enough time and energy left at the end of each day to go out for a run or a bike ride or even a swim. Because I'll still need a little of that, too.