King's Daughter's Kitchen

I taught in a small town about an hour from my home. The majority of teachers were from the town and knew everyone. I had a hard time fitting in. I am an Apostolic Pentecostal woman. I don’t just go to church. My faith is my life. I know that if I don’t walk every day with Jesus, I’ll drown in the ugly of the world and uncertainties of my mind.

My first year teaching, I tried lots of things to belong, continuously stepping out of my comfort boat, trusting that this time, I will make friends. I didn’t go to the staff Christmas party where alcohol was served, and I didn’t let my hair down after work on someone’s  porch with a drink. Soon, I was not invited, and distance grew.

In the middle of my second year, I gave up fitting in with grown ups and did my job with my kids to the best of my ability, which is what I was there for and which I  loved. I focused everything on my kids.

I went back to school and got a Master’s degree in Reading because I wanted to become a better teacher for kids who couldn’t read in the freshman and sophomore high school classes. I thought of moving to the town and also teaching adult reading classes. The idea of bettering the future of the whole town one family at a time seemed like a good goal. A goal involving other people has to be something they also recognize needs their commitment to be successful. It has to be something they can see they need. If they can’t see the necessity of learning to read, they won’t want it. Time passed. Others saw my goal and ran with it on their own. I let them.

At Christmastime of the fourth year, teachers walked past my door with wrapped gifts for each other. I also had some for them. No adult said hello for four days, so I took them home and gave them away to my church Sisters. I resigned in May and got a job very quickly in the town where I lived. The school board at my old job hired a lady from the town to replace me.

I still have real, close friends there. I am grateful for them and think of them and pray for them often. I have helped over two thousand students to graduate into our adult world. I would have expected my young ones to act smallminded by virtue of their immaturity, but not the adults. I hope that if someone reads this and realizes he or she is nonpersoning another, allowing him or her to feel unwanted in order to keep one’s original group, that it stops. Be the bigger person, be better, not besties, but a friend.