Note: This is a more personal response than most of these reflections, so I ask for some grace in the result

I never really fit in. That is true in the past tense as well as in the present tense. When I was growing up as an ADHD only child with very intelligent, well educated parents, we would talk about Shakespeare, read Sherlock Holmes, and ideate on the basis of sentient life from my earliest memories. In contrast, my friends often times would talk about sports or girls or sound systems. In high school, I played field hockey, considered a "girly sport" in my neck of the woods, while my peers played football, the pinnacle of American masculinity. I played the viola in the orchestra, the only instrument in the orchestra written in Alto clef. I loved reading, while most boys either loathed it or weren't as great as the gals around them were, a finding backed up over and over again by research (Reilly, Neumann, & Andrews, 2019); in fact, I was identified as a Gifted and Talented (GT) student, and in reading comprehension scored in the 99th percentile on the SAT and ACT as well as numerous other tests for youngsters like the Iowa Test of Basic Skills and in district assessments. Being a GT student often meant that I just got more work that needed to be done but not the challenge in the work that I actually needed or the classroom environment that I found stimulating, a common issue for GT students in that time and beyond ((Brown, 2015). I was a chameleon, and I could change my social colors to join different groups at different times, but never really felt like I belonged in my own skin or intellect.

In my career it has been much the same at almost every turn. I don't teach like the other teachers around me in my building. I take on projects that are too big. We do things that are too radical. I now teach classes that are on the bleeding edge, and when I talk about what I do with kids people think it's cool but don't really know how to talk with me; I have signed up for multiple professional development sessions recently only to become one of the presenters. I know people from transportation, procurement, contracting, facilities, executive cabinet, grants, the superintendent's office, the commissioner of education in my state, people from the state department of education, members of the state school board, etc. not because they are the kind of people I know well and are friends with, but because in the work we do I have to push on systems those people run in order to be able to do my job for kids; I don't, however, hang out with any of them outside of work, don't have much time for personal friends, and always feel like I am moving mountains when I have to talk with most of these people. Becoming the Colorado State Teacher of the Year brings with it an awesome responsibility, but it also brings with it a sense of duty and a difficulty in just being the same as everyone else.

This reflection is a little harder for me than many of the others, in part because it is strange to be in an internship where I am the new guy on the team while simultaneously being labeled an expert and being asked to weigh in from a position of leadership. It is strange to be simultaneously asked to collaborate with others and also to stand on my own because of the expectation that I got this. It has been interesting to be an expert on one team and a newbie on another, but to be participating on both of those teams within minutes of each other.

That is probably the way it is for everyone, but I can't help but feel like an other again. I realized today that I am actually working five jobs simultaneously...during the summer...when I should be recuperating. I am doing this externship across the multiple teams, while I am also doing this graduate level work, supporting a project for a university that I have been attached to for three years, doing a certification program for my school district unrelated to this graduate program, and running point on a $40,000 grant for my school district that includes creating a job for a former student. Any one of those is enough to be a full time gig, but all of them together have stretched me so thin that I am struggling to be the teammate people need and leader they assume I am. I wish, to some extent that I didn't have to do them all, but in order to make ends meet for my family I have to work three of those jobs to pay for the tuition which provides the privilege of doing an unpaid internship. I feel like something is broken in that calculus - in order to be able to afford to work for free in an industry in which a starting wage is double my take home pay...I have to work multiple extra jobs. When my current colleagues found out that I am working for free on the same content they are with the same kind of experience they were shocked and felt guilty, and I didn't know how to tell them that I have to work additional jobs to pay to be able to work for them for free. It was an othering kind of moment, especially as I was both a colleague and leader in that space.

In my experience collaboration and leadership are intertwined. To be a great leader one has to know one's skills and one's limitations, where one can lean in and where it is better to let others take the reigns. To be a great teammate one has to know one's skills and one's limitations, where one can add value and where it is best to listen and learn. That only happens when one is willing to both step in and step out when it is right to do so. It is a dance that takes a little while to get right. What is true in both roles is that listening is the first step; I have been trying to listen more than I am talking, which has been harder than I thought it would be as I am asked for my expertise. I think this is part of what I need to work on in my classroom, teaching kids how to handle that balance. I have students who have graduated from my program to spend the next two years waiting for their college classes to teach them something new; they are having to navigate the same space I always have - from GT to high school to professional spaces - and this experience is helping me reflect on how to help those students who end up in that space navigate the feelings of otherness when they start to pop up.

I never really fit in...anywhere, and maybe that's okay. I think I could fit in at Unity with a little time; all that it would take is giving up the classroom. Is that what an externship is supposed to teach us? I always knew that working outside of education would be easier in a lot of ways than working inside of it, but seeing first hand that I could make twice the money, support my family better, do the same kind of work, and work a far less unhealthy amount has me truly considering if now is the time to make a change. Maybe its time to stop being a leader in order to just be a teammate, and maybe its time to shoot for normal...especially if I don't have to come up with ways to pay for the opportunity to do it.

Works Cited

Brown, D. E. F. (2015, July 14). Serving gifted students in general Ed classrooms. Edutopia. Retrieved July 12, 2022, from https://www.edutopia.org/blog/gifted-students-general-ed-classrooms-elissa-brown

Reilly, D., Neumann, D. L., & Andrews, G. (2019). Gender differences in reading and writing achievement: Evidence from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). The American psychologist, 74(4), 445–458. https://doi.org/10.1037/amp0000356