first name: Beth

age: 35

current state: North Georgia

living situation: I live with my husband and our two daughters, who have recently turned seven and four. We live in a 1960’s brick house on a street with big trees and old neighbors. Our other family members are a miniature dachshund and a terrier.

occupation: public school reading teacher

how do you structure your time and space? I taught elementary school full-time until our first child was born. At that point, I began a job-sharing arrangement with another teacher. I teach four hours each morning, working with students who are performing below grade-level in reading. I feel a strong calling to my vocation as a teacher, and I enjoy maintaining a professional identity in a job that I love while also being present for so many of my girls’ day-to-day activities and experiences. It’s an unusual situation for a public school teacher, and I feel incredibly fortunate to have the opportunity to structure my job in this way. Practically speaking, my type-A, list-making self loves knowing that, five mornings a week, I can go to my classroom, prepare for my teaching day in relative quiet, and spend the next few hours immersed in quantifiable tasks that do not involve quibbling over who got more Goldfish crackers or why we can’t watch another episode of Curious George. 

My older daughter is in first grade now, and my younger daughter attends preschool at our church for the hours that I’m at school each morning.  Before they were in school and preschool full-time, the girls were cared for by several wonderful sitters in home daycare settings. My husband’s schedule as a museum director is more flexible than my own, so he does the morning school drop-offs and is the usual parent to stay at home when the girls are sick. Our afternoons are fairly unstructured. The girls participate in church choir and gymnastics, but we otherwise spend a lot of time after school riding bikes on the driveway, playing with friends, and enjoying downtime. Errands, cleaning, the grocery store, et cetera are done mostly on weekends, or in snatches of available time during the week. We have always put our kids to bed early at night, and I relish the several hours of “me” time this affords me on most evenings.

using the metaphor of seasons to describe the phases of women’s lives,

-what are the particular challenges and highlights of your current season? I suppose this is spring for me, in both the literal and metaphorical sense. I feel like I have finally emerged from the often exhausting and isolating winter of having infants and very young preschoolers, and it feels good to be in the warmth and sunshine with children who are a tiny bit less dependent on me for their every need. We are at a stage as a family when it’s possible to do more activities together. No one requires naps or diaper changes these days, and the increased maturity and longer attention spans of our children are allowing us to enjoy lots of fun pastimes and events that were not possible even a year ago. 

Professionally, I have more energy for teaching than I did during my girls’ baby and toddlerhoods. I feel increasingly confident in myself as a teacher, and I love having an opportunity to positively affect the lives of my students by helping them become better readers. In working part-time, I definitely do struggle with the demands and balancing act of teaching and home life. There are days when I feel as if I’m not doing either of my jobs as well as I’d like, but I guess that can be said for most careers!

-What season(s) preceded this one? The season of having two very small children was a difficult one for me. While I loved so many aspects of being present for my girls in their early years, I also experienced the stress of feeling like someone needed something from me nearly every minute of the day (and night!). 

Going from one child to two was a challenge for me as I learned to balance the needs of two kids with my teaching job, and also struggled to find a few moments in the day for myself. I experienced a period of mild postpartum depression following the birth of my second child. She was a fussy, high-needs baby, and so very different from my “easy” first child. It was emotionally painful for me to have a baby whom I often could not comfort. Thankfully, she mellowed considerably as she grew (and medication for reflux also helped), but there were some dark moments for both my husband and myself during the first few months of parenting two children. 

Seasonally speaking, I feel like we were in a period of late fall.  The vibrant, colorful leaves of expectation were off the trees, and the reality of cold winter months set in for us.

-What season(s) might your future hold? In many ways, I feel like the next season is one of uncertainty, though not in a negative sense. I know that I will return to teaching full-time, but I don’t yet know when that will be. My hope has always been to be at home part-time until my children are in school. Suddenly, that time is sooner than later, as my younger daughter will begin kindergarten a year from this fall. The state education budget continues to shrink by the minute, and this is stressful in terms of teacher employment security. Coupled with these factors is the question of whether or not we will have a third child, and how that dynamic (logistically and financially) would affect my teaching plans and our lives as a whole. Despite the uncertainties, I am hopeful and excited about the season to come. We are settled in a town, jobs, schools, and a church that we love, and it feels good to think that we could be in this setting for many years.

favorite family activity/activities: spending time together outdoors (playing in the yard, hiking at local parks, bike rides), involvement in our church, reading together, enjoying the arts and musical opportunities that our town offers

favorite solo activities: photography, reading, blogging and blog-reading, time and connection with friends and family members

sources of inspiration: Professionally, I have a lot of gifted teaching mentors and role models. I’m also inspired by the students I work with at an after-school program for at-risk children. Most of them are first generation Americans and are struggling against a variety of factors to obtain the educations that they hope will give them opportunities in this country and in life. Personally, I’m inspired by other mothers who are honest and brave enough to admit that parenting, while unbelievably wonderful, is also full of moments in which you wonder why you ever got yourself into this madness in the first place!

best MakeShift moment: During the first few months of my younger daughter’s life, she needed to be held/nursed/worn in a sling constantly in order to be somewhat content. By evening on most days, I was at the end of my rope just as she reached her fussiest time of the day. One night, in an act of desperation, I placed the baby, tummy-down, on a towel on the dryer as it was running. Magically, she stopped wailing and settled. From that night on, my husband and I took shifts each evening sitting in the laundry room with our “drying” baby. He read several books, and I mostly sat and enjoyed the hum of the dryer and the absence of crying. After a few nights, we realized it would be safer (though we never left her unsupervised) to place the baby in the laundry basket. There, she cozily enjoyed her hours on the gentle cycle while we cherished a few precious moments of peace and quiet.

[if you know someone who would make a good “mothers of invention” feature, check out the nomination process detailed on the sidebar pages to the right.]