[Editor’s Note: I wrote this about a month ago, near the end of May. I have gotten a bit lax with my posts and writing for various reasons but I hope to pick that back up soon.]
My current school goes all out for field day, something I experienced for this first time this year. (Obviously, the Covid induced spring shut down precluded holding one the previous school year.) While I love competition, I refrained from hyping up the homeroom competition to my students, well aware of the effects that disappointment can bring. A few of my sixth grade colleagues did not do the same. While they speculated as to who would win, I kept my mouth shut, not wanting to engage but also secretly hoping to surprise them all to take the win.
You see, for me, the competition between these homerooms took on a different hue. Some people never leave high school cliques behind; I never fit into one. Then comes this school year and my transition into a group of teachers who fall into the above description who have worked together for a while. Human nature does not incline us to want to change. So, I have spent this year on the outside of my grade level group, as I have described before.
My coworkers have consistently persisted in passive/aggressive actions towards me throughout the year, making clear without verbalizing how much they dislike me or simply what they think of me. It’s hard to describe this while remaining respectful so I will leave what I have described and move back to Field Day.
Throughout the day, I ended up playing by ear since all the other teachers knew the schedule having participated in Field Day before. I never learned the schedule and even when I asked, I got an answer that did not help and turned out to be inaccurate. I also noticed that throughout these various events, none of the other teachers joined me in spectating and cheering on their homerooms. I found this odd since so many of them had talked up the competition beforehand. Um, to compete don’t you need to participate?
Then my homeroom started to win some events. My kids started to get hyped up. Of course, I did as well. I’m naturally competitive and their energy rubbed off on me. When I realized that the grade level lead, the ring leader of sorts, was in second place right behind me, and also knew the scores down to the exact point which was never communicated to me, I thought of how good it would feel to win.
Since I did not know the point spread, I did not know that we had locked up the win before the final event, the kickball tournament. My class got hyped up for the tournament even though they got to play only one game. (We got a by in the first round since we were in first place.) When our competitors won the tournament, which included some suspiciously biased calls, my students got really sad.
Their joy when we found out about our win made me so happy. I also caught some looks from the other teachers who declined to share in the celebration. Honestly though, I reveled in it more than just a little bit. There’s definitely power in support and teamwork.