Sleepless in Jamaica Plain

9.07.10 By Trevor Glode

Although I am tempted to use this space to wax poetic about why I applied to BTR, or about my passion for erasing the achievement gap, I instead want to try and put into words what I am feeling as the first day of school inches closer.  Each night for the past week I have been mostly unable to sleep.  I lay awake each night worrying if I will be able to learn my students’ names, if I will get along with my mentor, and if I really am capable of being a teacher in the Boston Public Schools.  I wonder what it will be like to interact with parents, handle discipline issues in the class, and write a lesson plan.  The list could go on forever.  There is not much about the first day of school and about the coming weeks that does not make me nervous. 

However, I also think about what it will be like when one of my students calls me Mr. Glode for the first time, tells his mother that I am his teacher, or smiles when he sees me in the morning.  I wonder what it will feel like to have twenty gleaming pairs of eyes hanging on every word of the story I am reading to them, to run a morning meeting, or to sit next to a student and watch her figure out how to read a word she has never seen before. 

When I think about all of it, those things I am nervous about as well as those I am excited about, I can’t stop myself from smiling.  It’s how I know I am at the right place doing the right thing.  It is pure joy.