Exceeding expectations in an unexpected career

I graduated from college with a degree in parks, recreation, travel, and tourism not long before COVID-19 hit and shut down parks, recreation, travel, and tourism. I’d never taken an education course and only took enough literature courses to fulfill graduation requirements, but when a friend of a friend told me a nearby high school was desperate for a 9th-grade English teacher, I considered the opportunity. I had often imagined teaching as a profession but had decided against it because my mother, a career educator, repeatedly reminded me, “The work is heart-wrenching, the demands are unrealistic, and the salary is untenable!” But now I was ready to defy Mom, spread my wings, and dive in.

So, in August 2020, I took the job less than a week before I’d meet my students for the first time — online. I’d missed the opening orientations and had to figure out how to Zoom with teenagers whose names I didn’t know, whose curriculum I had no understanding of, and whose learning needs I couldn’t fathom. This, in a Title I rural high school in central North Carolina, hundreds of miles from where I grew up in suburbia.

Our school’s population of 835 students was 60% Hispanic, 12% Black, 24% white, 1% Asian, and 3% multiracial. Only 42% of our students scored proficient in reading according to state tests. A majority of my students had individualized education programs (IEPs) and were English learners (ELs).