The 11-Week Warrior Manifesto

Some moments in life are ready-made “turning points,” moments when we stand on a precipice between a past and future life, moments when we make decisions that will color the foreseeable future, moments that we will look back on as pivotal and life-altering, as somehow different than the countless moments that pass without notice. A first kiss, a break-up, a graduation, a first day at a new job, a decision about what college to attend, a religious conversion: these, and many more, are turning points.

Some moments can become turning points if we want them to be.

I decided this morning that today will be a turning point in my life.

Today, Easter Sunday, April 4, 2011.

I am in the midst of a struggle at this moment in time, and the struggle is set to continue, in its current iteration, for ten more weeks. My current job as a teacher of fifth- and sixth-grade students at an inner city Chicago Public School ends on June 18, 2011. (I got the assignment September 4, 2009, and began teaching September 8, 2009.) I will teach again next year, but quite possibly at a different school and certainly with different students.

Teaching these students, in this place, at this time in my life (and simultaneously going to graduate school at night all year) has been the hardest thing I have ever done; it has been all consuming. I have been overcome with exhaustion, faced with enormous disappointment, struggled with depression and feelings of devastating inadequacy, shocked by the level of absurdity present in the lives of countless children at the hell-hole of a “school” we all attend each day. I have participated in the vicious cycle described by Ruben Navarette Jr. as “students and teachers… competing to see which group is the most victimized.”

I can’t always tell the difference between exhaustion born from worthwhile hard work and exhaustion born from a futile run on a treacherous and malfunctioning treadmill; between switching gears and giving up; between sticking it out and suffering pointlessly; between setting realistic goals and lowering expectations; between being self-aware and being self-centered. I feel sometimes like an impostor, sometimes like a savior, rarely like a teacher, which is what I claim to be and which is what I am.

I have had incredible moments of triumph, certainly. When things go well in my classroom, it is a fantastic feeling, because it is the hardest-earned success I have ever achieved.

Still, I am tired and I am frustrated and I am filled with a wavering yet constant sense of dread.

But here I am. Ten weeks to go. And I am veering dangerously close to a mindset that says, “Survive.”

That’s not good enough.

Fact 1: For the next ten weeks, I will be the teacher of two-dozen students that I have come to know well since September.

Fact 2: For the next ten weeks, I will need stamina, focus, and self-discipline to teach these children to the best of my ability.

In light of Facts 1 & 2, it is important to create for my self, consciously, deliberately, in words, on paper, a renewed sense of purpose.

It’s time for a manifesto.

* * * * *

THE 11-WEEK WARRIOR MANIFESTO

* * * * *

I am a Warrior.

I am fighting a Battle against a pernicious set of forces that I will refer to as the Enemy.

This Enemy is invisible and has a plethora of names. Some of them include: “the achievement gap,” “public schools,” “poverty,” “darkness,” “evil,” “the Devil.”

The Enemy has myriad tools. Some of them include: hunger, anxiety, depression, hypersexuality, low expectations, poor role models, modeling of negative behavior, years of failure, depravity, violence, death.

The Enemy has been at work for years. The Enemy has set in motion a cycle that is circling endlessly in this school and others around the city, state, country, world. The Enemy is so much larger than I am that it makes me feel, to borrow from Mark Haddon, negligible.

I am not negligible.

My students are not negligible.

The next 11 weeks are not negligible.

The next 11 weeks are a Battle.

And I am a Warrior in this Battle.

Strange words for a pacifist, but they are true nonetheless.

Dramatic words for an elementary school teacher, but they are true nonetheless.

Hyperbolic words, perhaps, but in hyperbole we find the space we need to make meaning.

I am a Warrior. This is my Battle.

* * * * *

A digression:

I have learned a few things over time, and one of them is this: the quickest way to prove something is true is to prove that its opposite is also true.

A controversial example: God exists, because the complex and interwoven fabric of the world could never have come into being without a mastermind pulling the strings. Just look at the Alps or a baby’s smile and you will know God exists.

True?

Try the counterpoint: God does not exist. The complex and interwoven fabric of the world could never have been created by a single omnipotent being. It is all far too complicated and full of variation, full of functionality and full of flaws, to have been designed by anyone. Just look at the Alps or a baby’s smile and you will know that the Universe is far greater than any one God could conjure.

Then God can’t possibly exist.

So God must exist.

Whether you agree with any of the above (I would likely fall into the skeptics’ camp), you see my point: true things are true because their opposites are true. People love and hate dessert. Beautiful, longed-for summer days leave you sweaty and sunburned.

Paradoxes are the purest forms of truth.

* * * * *

If truths are proven true by their opposites, then I will focus on the opposites of the truths that have, of late, preoccupied—or rather, consumed—my mind.

The system, without a doubt, is failing these children.
And yet there is incredible growth and progress within it.

The odds are stacked against us.
And yet anything, surely, is possible.

I am a woefully inadequate teacher.
And yet I have done a fantastic job, and have so much more to give.

Each devastating truth holds within it a counter-truth that speaks to the possibility of the work.

It is time to abandon Despair, an emotion I once heard was the greatest of sins, and its counterparts: malaise, self-victimization, laziness, depression, fear.

It is time to fight.

The Enemy will take many disguises. I will need to remember that I am not fighting children, but their habits, their role models, the manifestations of their anxiety. I will need to remember that I am not fighting administrators, but their learned helplessness, their patterns of failure, their long-ago-thwarted-and-now-forgotten attempts to do what I am trying to do. I will need to remember that I am not fighting my own inadequacy, but the inner demons which strive to tear down my potential.

I am fighting only one thing, and that thing is the Enemy.

All of the fights are with the Enemy and the Enemy only.

* * * * *

Victory will look like:

waking up each day and going to work to teach
being patient
seeking to understand
suspending judgment
loving
caring
holding high expectations
preparing
tracking data
sleeping
eating
exercising
children learning
students achieving
sanity
smiling every day from now until June 18, 2010, and beyond.

* * * * *

This Battle has a pre-determined length: 11 Weeks.

(11 Weeks is the length of the Battle, not the War.)

For the next 11 Weeks, I am a Warrior.

I will remember whom I am fighting.

I will remember that the future success of innocent, talented, beloved children is the prize to be won.

I will remember that both the Enemy and Victory will take many forms.

I will work for victory.

If I need to rest, I will rest.

Then I will keep going.

* * * * *

My focus is these 11 Weeks. I am an 11-Week Warrior.

I will be Victorious.