Back in 2018, after my teacher colleagues found out I was pregnant, I started hearing about a commonly held theory.
“Just wait until you have the baby,” they’d say. “Your life will go up in flames. Your teaching style will totally change.”
With raised eyebrows, I nodded along, while my brain rapidly calculated the implications of this statement.
What does that even mean? I wondered.
I let the idea marinate, but I found the notion deeply troubling. Would I become worse, or would I improve? Would I stop caring as much about the kids in front of me, since now I had my own at home? Or would I somehow be able to magically connect with children in a new way that was previously unattainable?
Fast forward to present day; I have a six year old and a three year old. I’m exhausted, pretty much all the time. I barely have time to stock the paper towel cabinet in my own home, let alone come up with new and engaging lessons. So, is it true what they said? Has my style of teaching changed?
Yes, fundamentally.
Because, no, I’m not attending exciting and groundbreaking professional development sessions once a month on my own time. No, I’m not spending hours and hours beyond contracted time planning and grading, like I once chose. If I’m being perfectly honest, in some ways, I’ve become a worse teacher.
However, caring for children of my own has given me a new perspective. Perhaps it has made me more approachable and slightly more empathetic, especially toward other parents.
My teaching persona, pre-kids, was much more abrupt. I remember taking myself very seriously. Every second counted. I was a woman with a mission, and that mission was to milk every ounce of teaching and learning power from every instructional minute. Kid, you don’t have your homework? Kid, you’re two seconds late to class? Those are big problems!
But after I had a couple kids of my own, that sense of urgency faded, partially out of necessity. I no longer had the bandwidth or mental energy to be that intense.
I look back at the students I taught during my first few years in the classroom. The years when I ran around to each desk like a chicken with my head cut off, clipboard in hand, frantically meeting with every kid, every block-period, every day, which was typically around 70 kids per day, which added up to around 350 mini-meetings per week.
I’d check in, see what they were reading, check off their reading summaries, or whatever I had them do the night prior, and that was only in the first 20 minutes of class! I still had an hour more to go, and I barely broke a sweat.
This manic energy I brought into the classroom certainly wasn’t sustainable. If I had to guess, it probably made some kids feel unnecessarily anxious. In fact, students over the years performed impeccable impressions of me, coffee cup in hand, hastily rattling off the daily directions, barely taking a breath, and then sprinting to check in with everybody before some impending timer buzzed.
After I had my own kids, I lost part of my edge. But I am not sure that is a bad thing.
Now I start many days by breathing deeply and asking students how they’re doing. Mondays and Fridays, I typically start class with a weekend-recap conversation. Or I might ask: does anyone have any fun plans they’re looking forward to? Students are people, who knew!? They have real lives outside of my classroom.
Obviously, not everyone has to become a parent in order to understand and retain that students are humans, with fears and dreams. The teachers I know who have elected not to have kids are highly empathetic and understanding. For many educators, this evolution is natural, and happens with age, experience and maturity.
But for me, this newfound understanding — I can trace it to the moment I became a parent.
Parenting deprioritized me. It knocked me down a few pegs. Now that I have kids, I am no longer the sole protagonist in my own life. Our kids are. The students in front of me are.
I wish I could slip into a time-loop continuum and send this piece to the 25-year-old version of myself. Drop this article right into that old inbox.
Reading this, she’d probably be mortified. Scared of what was coming, the loss of her edge. She’d never believe me when I said that things were actually great now. That in some ways, I might be doing more good for kids, even though I’ve lost a little bit of that intensity.
It’s all a process, I’d tell her. And you’ll get there when it’s time.
Simone Larson: When teaching meets parenting is from Evanston RoundTable, Evanston's most trusted source for unbiased, in-depth journalism.