struggle is an open door: on dilemmas, doors, and discovering teacher fellowship in an year of crisis

by Mo Kim

(3:28pm) Mo: Hi, Carla! I’m sorry, but I’m not going to make it to the staff meeting today. One of our colleagues has an urgent situation and I need to help her right now.

Jasmine Ta’ala was never supposed to be part of our English department. She hadn’t even thought about teaching: she had applied as a Student Ally position just one year after finishing her Social Work degree, determined to return to her alma mater and fight for her kids the same way her teachers had fought for her. But the same week she arrived, Kelly left. Now there was no teacher for 9th grade Ethnic Studies, another vacancy in a pandemic school year full of them. And that’s how our second Student Ally ended up becoming Ms. Ta’ala, a long-term substitute based on payroll but a full-time teacher based on her responsibilities. She had spent the last three months making the best of an untenable situation, but now it was January, and she was at her limit.

To catch you up, here’s the story. Teacher assigns a group presentation on a book. Students blow it off because hey, she’s just a sub and this doesn’t actually count. Teacher reminds her students on a daily basis to get off their phones and do some actual work. Students laugh her warnings off; the deadline looms closer. Teacher emails students about the 100 point presentation happening next week. Students flood her inbox with apologies, excuses, and extension requests: I missed the last two weeks of school. My partner and I did all the work for our group, anyway. What if I’m absent tomorrow? If we just turn the slides in, do we still get credit even if we don’t present?

“I’m like, yes, this year is trash and I am truly sorry you don’t have Ms. Palma here to guide you,” she rants to me, sitting at one of the two comfortable desks in A-1, “but I’m here, and I’m tired of being treated by kids like I’m just the Understanding Fairy.”

She hasn’t talked to any of our colleagues about this situation because nobody has taken the time to listen. As a first-year teacher, she should have a coach, or at least a mentor, but the school never bothered to assign her one. The few friends she has made on staff (when she hasn’t been rushing to cover yet another class the office assigned her) are scattered in different corners of campus: there’s me in the English wing, Tommy in the Math wing, Mason over in the portables. But these grades are due soon, and she’s been stuck in her room with her door closed, grappling with this headache all day long.

We sit in silence - struggling to figure out what comes next.

-------

I should be so much wiser now, with four entire years of teaching experience, but the truth is that I’ve struggled for most of my career in the classroom. For most of college, I thought I would spend my life in domestic violence advocacy, a far cry from teaching; it was only through the faith of a few trusted mentors that I ended up landing a post-grad teaching fellowship, fumbling through a miserable summer of student teaching, then landing a 10th grade English position at a small charter school in Hayward. I stumbled into my first year of teaching with so many what-ifs to feast on my ripest insecurities: What if a kid cusses me out on the first day and nobody takes me seriously ever again? What if everyone thinks I talk too fast? What if I don’t want to read the books we have to read in this class? And worst of all: What if I don’t actually belong here?

That first year forced me to grapple with all of those questions, and then some, but I was lucky to have colleagues to remind me I was never alone. There was Sandy Little, my mentor, who spent hours in my classroom gently nudging me to get kids back on track and indulging my wildest conversations about literature, pedagogy, and everything in between during all of our coaching meetings. There was Michelle Lee, who guided me through an entire year of sophomore English (and answered all of my 9PM questions with the patience of a saint). There was Dane Huling, whose stern demeanor belied one of the most inquisitive and caring souls of anybody I’ve ever known. Was I utterly lost, as all first-year teachers are? Absolutely. But did I ever feel isolated or unseen? Absolutely not. I was grateful to have started my career at such a welcoming school community. I was grateful to be part of a team so willing to work through the hard parts of teaching together.

Unfortunately, that didn’t last forever. Over the last few years, the double whammy of pandemic teaching and mismanagement led to a mass exodus of leaders in our district. In the backlash that followed, my school lost most of its veteran staff, including virtually all of our credentialed coaches. As a result of this massive staffing crisis, professional development and coaching took a backseat to plugging holes. Even worse, with everybody being asked to take on more responsibility, my colleagues (and I) all had less time to check in and work together. It was hard to imagine that this was the same school that had allowed me to thrive as a new teacher: the once vibrant culture at our school of everyday collaboration and open classroom doors slowly swung shut. Who cares about mentors or PD for new teachers when two-thirds of the sophomore class are stuck on Edgenuity after their Chemistry teacher walked out on them? Who has the time to pop into the class next door and ask how someone is doing when they themselves are struggling to make it through each day with their sanity intact?

And of course, this isn’t just a story about one school: this is the story about schools in the United States right now. This is a story about 54% of teachers being “somewhat” or “very likely” to leave teaching in the next two years - even more likely if you’re new to the field. This is a story about a first-year teacher asking her mentor “Is it normal for me to cry every single day after school?” This is a story about teacher prep programs shutting down with only three students graduating because who in their right mind would do that kind of job for that little pay? This is a story about what happens when the work gets harder but the workplace gets lonelier; you sit in your room with the lights off, starting to wonder if you’ve lost your marbles, if you’re making the difference you wanted to, and why you even bothered to try in the first place.

And right now, this is a story about my colleague, Ms. Ta’ala.

I don’t want to say that we fixed all of the problems she mentioned in a sixty-minute conversation. I don’t even remember what I said: mostly I remember asking her a lot of questions. I remember listening, nodding, even laughing with her as she recounted every little crack that led her to this breakdown. And I remember that as she left an hour later to catch her ride home, she thanked me for my time - and I thanked her too, because whether she knew it or not, that conversation, as frustrating as it was, had been one of the most life-giving interactions I’d had at my school in months.

Yes: life-giving. I realized why I had been so miserable for the entire year: I, like most of my co-workers, had been siloed in my classroom, stuck to process all of the challenges of pandemic school by myself. I couldn’t imagine how my new colleagues, navigating their first year during one of the worst crises in the history of American education, were feeling. But I was just one teacher at a school that was still trying to hire a full-time Geometry teacher in the middle of January. What the hell could I do?

-------

On their website, the School Reform Initiative has an explanation of Dilemma Consultancies: a group of teachers meet on a regular basis to “think more expansively about a particular, concrete dilemma.” One presenter comes to the table with a dilemma: this can be anything ranging from how to support newcomers with learning the English language to what to do when students keep standing up from their seats. What makes this different from your typical coffee-room conversation, however, is the structured emphasis on helping the presenter clarify their own thinking. After the presenter shares their dilemma, participants focus on asking two rounds of questions: clarifying questions to gain additional context and information, then probing questions to push the presenter to see their issue from multiple perspectives. It’s only after the whole group finishes asking questions that they can actually move into openly discussing the dilemma and (rarely) offering tangible suggestions or advice. Ultimately, the protocol is designed to encourage open-ended thinking and active listening, developing teachers’ capacity to “see and describe the dilemmas that are the essential material” of their work as educators and their ability to “help each other understand and deal with them.”

I myself had experienced Dilemma Consultancies as a first-year teacher: in fact, it was a routine part of my professional development. Every Tuesday, Study Hall became a teacher prep period where my coach, I, and seven other first-year teachers gathered in an empty classroom to discuss different challenges we were facing. I hadn’t thought much about these weekly meetings at the time, but now they felt almost comforting. I thought to myself: Could this be something our staff would be interested in?

So I sent an email and Google Form out, and the response was immediate: next Tuesday lunch, there were six teachers in my classroom, picking at Trader Joe’s salads and cafeteria trays of spaghetti with plastic forks. There was Katy, my plucky next-door neighbor, who had found out two weeks before the first day of school that she was teaching AP Lit and Lang and was building her curriculum as she taught it. There was Adam, who had just made the jump from teaching 2nd grade on Zoom to world history in real-life and wore his reputation as a hard-ass like a badge of honor. And of course, there was Jasmine, who you already know (and who said “yes” about 5 seconds after I asked).

We came from every corner of campus: the one thing we had in common, though, was that all of us had questions. Lots of them. Katy confessed that she was still trying to figure out how to coach her AP Lit seniors, ostensibly the most qualified English students on campus, beyond the “surface-level” literary analysis they were currently stuck in. Jasmine brought up one particular freshman whose grudge against her was starting to derail her entire first period. The timekeeper held us to strict standards: 4 minutes to ask clarifying questions, then 6 minutes for probing questions. (After all, our lunch period was only 40 minutes, way too short for most of the issues we were discussing.) The notekeeper listened carefully, scrawling bullet points onto scrap paper. And the facilitator - a role that I eventually passed onto the other members of the group - gently reminded folks to focus on offering questions before providing answers. Our ragtag group of educators slowly built our rhythm as we met each Tuesday.

As the weeks passed, the dilemmas only got deeper. I still think back to the April afternoon when Mason brought up a story I’ll never forget: over four weeks, four separate students had disclosed incredibly difficult mental health struggles to him, from depression to panic attacks. Although students across our school loved and trusted Mason (a phenomenal AP Psych teacher and a passionate track-and-field coach), he felt ill-equipped, both in terms of knowledge and bandwidth, to provide them with the support he knew they needed. And all of us at that table knew that despite the best efforts of our counseling and mental health teams, our understaffed school didn’t have the personnel and resources to reach every kid.

We may not have had all the answers, but we had questions - lots of them. We asked what things Mason was doing to take care of himself. We explored whether there was a pattern to students’ struggles post-pandemic - were all of these behaviors a result of burnout, or was there something else happening? And of course, there’s always room for empathy: if you were in this student’s shoes, what would you most want or need from your teachers? Ultimately, our discussion yielded no easy solutions, but when Mason shared his final reflection, he expressed how much he appreciated the support and planned out a few concrete next steps: compiling resources for students, reaching out to administrators, and taking time for himself to process his own needs. He had felt heard by his colleagues. He knew what he had to do next.

Then the bell rang, and we rushed to put tables and chairs back, promising each other we’d do this again next week.

-------

It’s only in the wake of this school year that I can see how much these Tuesday meetings meant to all of us, including me. First of all, they empowered us to rebuild teacher fellowship during a school year that felt incomparably isolating, especially for new teachers. I myself didn’t fully realize this until I saw what they had written in their end-of-year feedback surveys. For Jasmine, who had “basically accepted [she] was going to suffer in the classroom because certain people were not available” to help her, our group became a space where she could “hear from other staff and other teachers about their classroom experiences” and “actually get help instead of feeling hopeless”; she felt like she “finally had the support [she] needed.” As Jasmine’s testimony suggests, having a caring professional community plays an integral role in new teachers’ development as educators. When our school did not have the resources necessary to provide its new staff with formal support, our Dilemma Consultancy group became a space where she found the agency and voice to navigate the issues she was facing in her classroom. As other participants note, “having a safe space to not be judged for not being the best teacher” and “[expressing] their thoughts on dilemmas they passionately wanted to share” helped them surface their challenges and work with others towards solutions. I was surprised when most of my colleagues agreed that Dilemma Consultancies would be worth incorporating into school-wide professional development: no one puts it better than my colleague, Tommy, who asserts “Yes, teachers supporting teachers is what we needed this year, and this protocol reminded me that support does exist when the right people are involved.”

Beyond the immediate sense of fellowship our lunch meetings helped foster, they also helped us re-examine our teaching practice from diverse points of view. As Mason put it, “We had a diverse group of participants, so it was really nice getting different perspectives to address our problems. Often, the issues that came up echoed things I saw in my own classroom.” Noam, a fellow participant, added on, noting that “it was helpful to at least be able to voice my concerns aloud and was stimulating to see teachers' heads nod in understanding when I presented various issues.” Not only did Dilemma Consultancies provide an opportunity to feel understood, they also allowed teachers to push each other to think of their experiences from new perspectives….and surface new solutions. As a result, my colleagues unanimously identified shifts in their mindset and practices that supported greater equity for students: Mason noted “[becoming] less reactionary” in the service of “more equitable” solutions, while other teachers reflected on “developing set protocols and expectations” and “[becoming] aware that there is a lot happening outside of school for students.”

Finally, these meetings broke the isolation we often face as educators by pushing us to get back into each others’ classrooms so we could learn from each other. After hearing and discussing Katy’s dilemma about her AP Lit students, I felt obligated to observe her class: as I watched a class of 24 seniors participating in Socratic Seminar, grappling with the James McBridge short story they had just finished, I noticed some of the new strategies she was use to support her students in deeper analysis during discussion. During class, her explicit instruction around academic discussion strategies encouraged students to cite textual evidence, make personal connections, and invite peers into discussion; even her discussion guide supported different entry points for students, increasing equity and engagement. It was meaningful to see how many of the ideas that she had surfaced in our lunch meeting were now coming to life in her classroom. I realized that no matter how busy I told myself I was, it’s never too late to break out of my silo and learn from my peers - something that breathed new life into my teaching when I needed it most.

The issues we face as educators cannot be solved in one 40-minute lunch meeting. But maybe that was never the point. Maybe the point is just to see each other again: from across hallways that feel like oceans. A wave. A nod. Something to remind us that, even when it feels that way, we aren’t the only ones struggling. And maybe that, if we can come together, our schools don’t have to be places where so many of us silently drown.

But for now, I have work to do. I’m making an unexpected leap to a new role at an educational non-profit, so for now, my time in the classroom is on hold. As I pack up four years of memories (a terra cotta turtle, a ziploc bag of birthday party favors, and at least a dozen handmade thank-you cards) I see Jasmine pass by my window, peek her head through my open door. And before I can get out the words caught in my throat - I’m going to miss working with you so much - our arms reach each other and we squeeze in one last end-of-year hug.

Don’t call it a goodbye, though. I know we’ll see each other soon.