Ep. 4 - Nichole's Story, Part 1: Career Crossroads and Teaching Challenges

0:00:15 - Melissa

Welcome to THIS IS MY STORY, where everyday women share their stories of struggles and setbacks that have shaped their lives. I'm your host, Melissa Teutsch. In today's episode, Nichole Smith, a communications coordinator, former English teacher, wife and mom, shares about significant chapters in her life story, chapters where she had to make sacrifices, face the trials and challenges of teaching in public high schools, and the strength it took for her to leave a teaching position after just three weeks. Nichole's story reminds us that life's journey isn't always a straight line. It's about finding the courage to pivot and listening to that inner voice that guides you. Before we dive into today's episode, don't forget to follow us on our social media and subscribe to us wherever you listen to your podcast. You can find all our social media links, as well as more information about us at ThisIsMyStoryPodcast.com. 

0:01:11 - Nichole

My name is Nichole and this is my story. 

0:01:18 - Melissa

Thank you for agreeing to do this. I'm excited to talk to you because you know, I was thinking when I came into this. I was like I know that we've commiserated on having husbands going through PhD programs and just the sacrifices and just the waiting that goes along with that and just not knowing you know what if it's going to all work out in the end and is it worth it, and all of that, and just you know, I know all the feelings behind that and I know that we've had we've had similar feelings and experiences with that, and so I was thinking, coming into this, that's probably what we're going to talk about, because I don't really. You know, as it's true for everyone, no one is just one thing and unfortunately, we all don't end up with one challenge only in our life and then, oh, that's it, we're done. I wish it was that way. You telling me all this other stuff, I was like, oh, wow, there's a lot more here than I expected, which is exciting, because I was like this is some good stuff to talk about? 

0:02:23 - Nichole

Yeah, Because it's like, do I write her a novel? Do I write? Do I start at birth? 

0:02:30 - Melissa

We'll just jump in. You got your bachelor's and master's in English and was teaching as an adjunct instructor at a couple of colleges. Y'all got married, Cody and you did, and you worked in the public school system for a little bit and then went back to teaching at the university level and during that time Cody says I want to go back to school, and you guys ended up in Spokane. So tell me a little bit about that. You said that you kind of got into something that led you to wanting to make a career change while you were there. So what were you doing? 

0:03:09 - Nichole

So when we got to Spokane, I started working remotely for a court reporting company back home, and when I say home, I'm referring to Monroe, Louisiana I was working for when I was in Spokane. I was working for them, and what they did is they were a company that did audio recordings, and video recordings too, sometimes, of depositions, of court depositions, and so what? What they would do is they would provide, they would be there with all their recording equipment and then they would send the audio file to me, and then I would type it all up, and they wanted an English major, someone who could at least figure out how to spell a lot of the words and and be good with punctuation and things like that. And while I was doing it was very it was just mundane typing away at things. But in doing this, though, I became really really, really interested in a lot of the stories, and being a deposition transcript transcriptionist as opposed to seeing the trials all the way through I became super curious, like how is this going to end? Because at the deposition phase it's just at the very beginning you're getting the witnesses like first recorded testimony, really, and so I always wondered how it would end up, and I became more and more interested, and I did that for two years. 

And so during my first year in Spokane, we were there for two years, and during my first year I started discovering an interest in it and I was like I think I could do this, because before working for the court reporting company, I never, ever, I don't even think once, ever said I want to be a lawyer one day. Never even occurred to me. It never occurred to me that it was something that I was even capable of doing, let alone actually wanting to do it. And when I listened to the depositions, though, these were attorneys from Louisiana and they just seemed like people I knew they didn't seem like these hotshot lawyers on all that you see on TV, on suits or whatever, and I thought this is something I think I could actually do. And not only did I think I could do it, I was super, super interested just in the legal system as a whole and just seeing how those things turned out, and also so I was interested in it intellectually, but I've always been attracted to fields where I can help people, so I was imagining myself being an attorney and helping people with their whatever case it was. We did a lot of divorce cases and so, being the product of divorce and kind of hearing what some of those cases involved from a legal standpoint, from a financial standpoint, I really related to those in particular and kind of could see myself as a divorce attorney. 

And so while we were there in Spokane, not only was I continuing to do the deposition typing, I started studying for law school. So I had a very set schedule every day that was a self-imposed schedule. I would go to the coffee shop first thing in the morning and for the first four hours of the day I would study for the LSAT, because my mind is sharper in the mornings, and then at noon for the rest of my workday I would do the typing for the court reporting. And so for four hours every day for about four months I studied for the LSAT. And then I took the LSAT and I applied to, I think, four law schools. I got into three of them and I was kind of all set. Maybe I'm going to go. But there were no funding offers, except for one which was at Loyola and it was only for half. And you think, oh, that's great, but when it's expensive as it was, I really needed full coverage for that. But my husband was simultaneously applying for PhD schools and when he got into he applied for three programs and got into three programs and was offered full funding at FSU and maybe even at the others, I can't remember. But when we knew the funding was there, we knew we kind of had to follow the money because that's just our reality. And so I was like, well, in a couple of years, if I still want to do this, I will. 

But the longer I was in Tallahassee, which was where we went after Spokane, the more I started to slip away, and perhaps that's partly because I was no longer in the field, like I was in Spokane and didn't feel as connected to it anymore. Plus, I spoke with an attorney in Tallahassee who met with me one day. She basically she's probably in her fifties or so she basically talked me out of it oh my gosh, because she seemed to have it all together. I actually saw her. I saw an advertisement for her firm on a TV commercial and I was like you know what, I'm going to reach out to her because she was amazing, she was beautiful, she was gorgeous, she was tall, she had blonde hair, she was on all the billboards and I just I loved the commercial and I was like, ah, I'm going to reach out to her and I did. And she called me and she said, let's meet for lunch. And I was just blown away by it. 

And the more she talked about it, she talked about it in such a real way, not in a like trying to get me to do it sort of way, but in a okay, this is the reality. 

And I'm like, oh, and I'm a person who really values and I don't know that she was trying to talk me out of it but the more I heard her talk about what everyday life was like for an attorney and the hours required, I started to kind of back away from that dream, simply because I've always valued a work life balance and I knew that that was probably going to bring me into direction that I didn't necessarily want to go. And I also went and visited a law class at FSU and that kind of solidified my decision not to do it. It just didn't feel right, something about it. Just I've always kind of gone by my gut feeling. Maybe that leads me astray sometimes, I don't know, but that's kind of what those two things really kind of made me want to go into a different direction. Plus, I was enjoying teaching again and I was in a good place. So I decided if I do ever want to do it one day, it'll be a long ways down the road, not now and now. I don't think I'll ever do it. 

0:09:38 - Melissa

So, going back to when you guys made that decision to go where the funding was for your husband, that brings back for me and Matt my husband the audience members that don't know his name that was the decision we had to make because I was working in publishing. I had a career that had a good like you know, I plan to be in that career, like make it a lifelong career. Right and when, when he decided to go back to get his PhD, that I pretty much you know I got, I lucked up because I was able to still work in publishing at this for the university press where he went to school. But after that I had to give it up and I thought I'd had to give it up for good. I'm actually back in an adjacent publishing position now, which I did not know that. 

Yeah, so I'm working. It's not. You know, I was in book publicity and sales and marketing for publisher and so now I'm working for a book publicity firm, but not as a publicist because I'd been out for so long. So now I'm on the business management side, the operations side, but I'm enjoying it being back in that adjacent field and feeling like you know, okay, that all wasn't a waste those 13 years that I put into my career. 

So you know, it was a little hard for me, you know, even though I knew like we need to follow him, because PhD takes a lot of time and money and effort and sacrifices and if we're going to do this, I got to be all in like I have to support him. He needs my support. But also, if we're going to put all this effort into him getting a PhD, then I, then we have to make that decision because for right now it has, you know, you know how it is A lot of people think that you can just say I want to go work at that school and you can get a job there and you can't you get. You have to go where the jobs are and you don't get to decide where you get to go. It's whoever hires you, right? 

So you know I knew that going into it and I felt, like you know it was a little hard, but at the same time, you know, I felt at peace about we're going to follow him. He has the potential to be to make more money. Up to up until that point I had been the made more money, but I was, like you know, we're going to go all in on his decision. So did you feel that way or did you feel like some animosity or like maybe some resentment? 

Yeah resentment towards you know, I have to give up my dreams because this recently kind of came back to us, kind of came to a head where, you know, my kids are older now and so that gives me a little bit of freedom to be able to do some things job wise that I haven't been able to do before with traveling or just working longer hours. And I had a position and I really liked it, but it was really stressful, really long hours, and I went back and forth on six months. This was before I took the job. I went back and forth six months Like it was like a daily dinner table conversation about am I giving up my dreams, am I giving up my career to take something that I might not be as excited about, you know, because at that time I had not found a job. 

I was just like you know I think I should go look for a job because this isn't working out. But you know, it kind of was like I want to do, like stop my feet and be like it's my turn. I get to do something for myself now. You know, I've had to put everything on hold. 

0:13:11 - Nichole

So I actually said but it's your turn, somebody that yeah. So I would say there was a range of emotions. I remember FSU was the last school that we heard back from and that was his dream school, the one that he thought, oh, surely I won't get in here. He had heard from the other two already and they were waiting on an answer from him, but he was waiting to hear back from FSU and so there was a part of us for like, well, it's not going to matter anyway, if he doesn't get in there because he's, he can go to these other two places. Lsu was one of the places that accepted me and that's where I wanted to go, and he had been accepted to UL, so we could theoretically both go to school. If we decided to do UL and LSU, because they're close enough together to where you know we could, we could commute from the middle or something. It would have been kind of. It would have been tough for both of us to be in school, because it's tough enough for one person to be in school, but that's kind of where we were. And then he got the acceptance from FSU. 

I had also applied to FSU and it was the one law school that I did not get into. I called them and I said why? Why didn't I get in? Because you know I'm not going to take. I'm not going to take no for an answer very easily and they said they said, well, let's look at your file. And they pulled up my file and I said, well, instead of Florida State University in your application letter you wrote Louisiana State University, so that kind of put us off from the get go. Oh no, no. Well, maybe that's because that's where my heart was or something I don't know. But yeah, they suggested not to do that in the future. I'm sure there were other reasons why they didn't want me whatever. 

But when FSU accepted my husband, I remember being very happy for him because it was his dream school, but also I knew that that meant that I wasn't going to go to law school at all. If we decided to go there just because FSU had already turned me down and so any of the other places that he would have gone, we could have found a way for me to go at the same time. But when they offered full funding and I knew that was his dream school and then I wasn't offered any funding, I don't well, except for a minimum amount, minimal amount. We just made the very objective decision to do it. And yeah, there was. 

I remember when I cried I was like, no, no, no. I didn't feel like it's my turn necessarily, but I felt that it's. I felt like I had been putting my dreams on hold for long enough because I don't think it's either, or I didn't think of it as either him or me. I thought we could both do it. And when I saw that that may not work out, yeah, I did have some feelings of God why can't I do it too? And so that was kind of hard to come to terms with hindsight 2020,. 

0:16:08 - Melissa

right, like you just said, you, you get into it. You've had that those years away from that experience and now you're like, probably for the best. How long did it take for you to get there? 

0:16:20 - Nichole

I would say just in the first couple of years that we were in Tallahassee and I met with that attorney and I knew that wasn't what I wanted to do. In hindsight, especially now, I'm like I absolutely could not see myself doing that, not because I don't think I would enjoy the work itself, but I know me and I know that, like my current job, I leave it four o'clock and I'm done and I value that a lot. I value that almost more than having a job that I like. 

And I love being able to leave it four o'clock and I'm done for the whole day, until the next day. And I know that about myself and I think I would have resented working for if I would have worked for a company that insisted that I stay late. I don't think I could have done that and I think I would have been pretty miserable. Also because I like to do a good job and if doing a good job requires me to put in lots and lots and lots of hours, I'm going to be unhappy because it's I'm not getting everything that I want, which is work-life balance and enjoyment. I think my generation probably expects too much out of a career. 

0:17:29 - Melissa

We can talk about that later, once you guys were in Tallahassee, you took a position as an English teacher at a high school and you quit after three weeks. Can you share what challenges you face? You alluded to some challenges that you had there and what prompted that? 

0:17:49 - Nichole

So this was a job that very much fell in my lap during the summer between Cody graduating with his MFA from Eastern Washington University and before starting at FSU. During that summer we stayed at Cody's mom's house. She lived in Baton Rouge at the time. 

And so while we were staying with her, while we were looking for an apartment in Tallahassee, and one day Cody received an email from someone in his department at FSU saying that oh, there's this position for someone to teach dual enrollment at this high school. If you know anyone who is interested, anyone have a spouse who is interested. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. They basically had sent it to the whole department just looking for anybody who might be willing to take the job. And so I applied immediately and didn't know anything about the area, didn't know anything about the school itself, but just knew that I needed a job and I needed something that was going to pay better than what I did when I was in Spokane, because that didn't pay very well and we were really struggling financially to make ends meet during that time. So I knew I needed something more substantial. So, boom, I took it. They interviewed me over the phone, I accepted the job, so I had the job waiting on me when we got there, which felt really, really nice. I enrolled at the time Edith was seven months old. I enrolled her in daycare and then I enrolled thatcher in elementary school and he started school. Gosh, I want to say that we. We moved in on a Thursday, on a Friday we took him to meet his teacher and then Monday he started school. Wow, very quick, and I started the same day. So it was, there was a lot on my plate. Emotionally, moving, as you know, is very tough. Not only are you having to and a lot of people think it's, you know the emotional toll of leaving everything you know. For me it was not really as much that, as much as stressful having to relocate your life. You're having to find new schools, new daycares, new jobs, new doctors, new everything that you know and that you're plugged into. You're ripping everything that's familiar and you're trying to find it in a new place. And so I remember being super stressed out about the fact that I was going to have to start my job the following Monday. Boom, just like that. Or sorry, mine was actually two weeks later, but I was out. The school itself started, but they were having to. They started with a sub at that school and for two weeks I was kind of training and doing all that and getting ready for the class while they ran background checks and all that stuff. So it all happened really fast and they got me in the classroom as quickly as they could, and so all of that trying to juggle, not knowing what I was getting myself into, that alone was a big stressor for me, and just everything changing as quickly as it did. I didn't have time to process all the changes that were happening really, really fast. And that was starting kindergarten. So it was not only was he no longer in daycare, but oh, this is real, this is school. So it's all these stressors, plus Cody was starting his PhD program. So it was a lot. And then I started working at this new school and it's a title one school, high poverty area, high crime area and when I went into the school the class sizes were very large, I want to say about 40 students in each class. Oh, wow, and it was. 

The behavior problems were more than anything I had ever faced as a teacher. I had only taught at the college level and then one high school. I taught at West Monroe High School and never had I faced anything like this before, just the behavior issues. From the get-go. I had students throwing things at me and I really wanted to make a difference and there was a part of me that wanted to stay and a part of me that like felt guilty over the idea of leaving. But every day that I was there like I started having panic attacks. And I didn't have panic attacks because I had had issues with anxiety before, a few years before that, in a similar situation where I had been moving a lot. I was super itinerant. This was even before I got married. 

I'd had panic attacks during that time at this, so that wasn't a new thing, but it had not happened to me in a very long time. And every night I was waking up in the middle of the night and I was having trouble breathing and like something is not right. It's not compatible with me, and I was very fearful when I would go into work and the students were not respectful. There was no sense of you're the teacher already. I was never used to. I'd never had before had to earn or gain the respect of my students. That was just always already there just because I was their teacher. In the past, there was always a certain level of respect that you have just when you walk in the door. But at this school it says, though there what was the default was distrust and and their fear of me, and I didn't know what to do or how to handle that. And I reached out to several of my peer teachers at that school and they all had great advice, but I was not in an emotional place where I was ready for that. 

And then a hurricane came. This was, I forget the name of the hurricane, but a hurricane came and we were out of school and Cody and I actually evacuated to Louisiana. During that time this was all. Within those three weeks that I was working there, a hurricane came, we evacuated because it was a really, really bad one, and then we were back in Louisiana and then I remember calling in and saying we're in Louisiana. I evacuated to my supervisor and she said well, tomorrow is a professional development day, which you know means you don't technically have to go. But she told me that I did. I get there and there's no other teacher there. So we drove back from Louisiana to this school in Tallahassee, back from being evacuated. It took us 18 hours to get back because of traffic and we were driving back for 18 hours with our two children. 

And then I get to this professional development day or whatever it was, and there were no other teachers there, including the supervisor who told me that I had to be there. And so I just took that time to sort of re-center and try to get everything, um, all my ducks, in a row with a class, because, keep in mind, they had a sub the first two weeks of school and I still was just in this weird headspace of trying to know how to reach these students and also take care of myself and learn how to effectively teach my classes. And then, um, the next day, I mean I was so ready, I felt like I was ready, I had that time alone, without interruption from other people at the school, and then the students came and it was all over again just the very, very loud classes, never getting a word in edgewise, um, trying to assign an assignment and getting complete pushback and the refusal of 100 of the students to do anything, and I didn't know what to do and I felt very lost. That night when I went to bed, I woke up and I felt like I was having a heart attack. In the middle of the night I woke up from a deep sleep and I said to myself I can't do this. I I cannot do this. So I decided that I was going to take care of myself. 

I took my daughter to daycare that morning and then I drove to the school and I walked into the principal's office and I said I'm not going back. I wanted to come in here and tell you in person but I'm not going back. And she said okay, okay. She said can you go in there long enough for us to find us up? She looked terrified and I said I'll do that, because my first period class was actually a really good class and it was my dual enrollment class and they were actually a class that I cried over having to leave them because they uh they were very sad to see me go my first class, but it was the rest of the classes for the day that gave me such a challenge. But I said, okay, I'll go to my first period class and then when you bring a sub in there, I'm getting my things and I'm not coming back. 

So I went in there and then, one by one, the students took turns giving me a hug in my first period class and they said I can't, I can't believe they did this to you. Talking about, you know, the rest of the students that I had today, because they knew it's the school had very high turnover rate in terms of the teachers coming in and out. They felt bad for me and I and I for them. I hated to abandon them and then my peer teachers never spoke to me again and I texted them, told them I was sorry, but I never heard back from anyone. That was super challenging on a personal level because I felt like a failure, that I didn't know how to reach them or how to, how to be effective, because I felt that those students didn't see my heart and I think that hurt me worse than anything that they didn't trust me and that they were skeptical from the get-go that I was there to help and not hurt. But you know it took me a while to. I had decided at that point that I was in, my mind was made up, that I would never go back to teaching again. I had already left teaching once not for the same reason I tried to get a job in teaching when I was in Spokane, but nothing ever turned up, so that's why I had to take the job in court reporting. But once I was at this school in Tallahassee I said I will never. I will never go back to teaching again. 

And what's funny is that I decided to take a job at Edith's daycare just to give me some time to clear my head and figure out what my next move was going to be. And about four months in I received a phone call from a principal of another school I think it was a school I had also applied for wait at the very beginning and she was calling me four months later and said that there was a teacher on maternity leave. I think this was someone that I had just reached out to. I don't think I had technically applied for a job there, but she asked me if I was available and I said because I was making daycare wages, yeah, and needed more money. So I was like, okay, fine, and I wound up loving it. 

And it was just a temporary job to take the place of a woman, a teacher who was out on maternity leave, and I was only there for two months, but it helped reinvigorate me and made me want to go into teaching again, and so after that semester, when my time there was up, I applied for a job at another school in Tallahassee that had a full-time position open and I got that job and that's where I worked for four years and my time there was wonderful. I absolutely loved it and my students were great and I felt like I was making a difference and that was one of the things that kind of helped solidify my decision not to go back to law school. 

0:29:33 - Melissa

It's been? How many years has it been since you quit that job? The? 

0:29:37 - Nichole

first one in Tallahassee. Yeah, that would have been 2017. 

0:29:44 - Melissa

So it's been like six years, yeah, do you feel, like today, that you would have handled that job differently, or do you think it would have had the same outcome? 

0:29:53 - Nichole

God, that's a tough question. I don't know. I think I have a few more tools in my tool belt, but I think I would, if presented with that again, knowing what I know now, and if it is a job I would have to take now, I would have some things that I didn't know then, like classroom management, things that I learned as a teacher at a different school from other teachers. And you know when, when you get a master's in English liberal arts and not a degree in teaching, you don't learn a lot of those tricks because you don't have to. Yeah, people just kind of college students, just kind of do what they're supposed to and you're, you know, not 100 percent always, but you don't really have to deal with behavior issues. You can just send somebody out if you have to and that's it. But yeah, so I think I learned some classroom management strategies that would be helpful. 

I think I would also stand up for myself in the beginning to administration and say, look, I'm not going to enter two weeks after a sub. 

They're, you know, they already had not only made up their minds about me, but they had made up their minds about the class, because having a sub for two weeks communicated to those students that this class is not one you have to take seriously and it was very hard coming in after a sub when you know that's all they had had in that class. 

If they had had a regular teacher from the get-go and then a sub for a couple of days, I think that would have been a little different. 

But never having any structure in that class allowed their behavior to sort of run amok for two solid weeks and, and I think I would tell administration look, whatever you got to do to get me in that class early the start of school you know the other school when I went in halfway, like as a as a temporary teacher, it wasn't that. It wasn't that difficult, I think mainly because perhaps I had learned some things about coming in and communicating very early on that it was a class to be taken seriously because the teacher before me not the teacher who was out on maternity leave, but they had another temporary teacher covering for her before me who didn't have a whole lot of rules or anything like that, and so I had to kind of come in and wreck shop a little bit and but that was easier for me for some reason because they took me seriously and it worked out and maybe I'd learn some things along the way at the other school those three weeks that I was there. 

0:32:17 - Melissa

So what would you say to a teacher who is going through that right now there? You know, I know they they often think of I have to just get through this year, like I can't quit mid-year, I can't just walk out in the middle of all this. So somebody who's like, really like I can't go another day, yeah. What would your advice be? 

0:32:38 - Nichole

I'm very pro listen to your body and to your heart. I'm not. I don't even make my own children if they're in a situation, because I know there are a lot of people out there who say finish the baseball season or finish this or finish that. I don't think that's realistic to expect kids to do things that we're not willing to do ourselves. So when Edith my, my daughter, when she asked me one time she had one soccer day left at school, she played like after school soccer. It wasn't like a she wasn't on a team that, it was just like a soccer club. She had one day left and she said, mom, I don't want to go. And I said why not? She said I don't like soccer. And she knew, she knew in her mind what she knew. And she said do I have to go? And I said, well, if you want to tell them that you're not going to do it, fine. And so the next day and she told me this later she said when they came to get her after school to take her to soccer, she said I'm not going today. And I was really, really proud of her when she told me that, and a lot of parents I would probably make them cringe to think of that, but I was so proud of her for standing up for what she felt was making her to get out of a situation that was making her uncomfortable. It wasn't any sort of weird situation, it was just she didn't want to be there. And I want to teach both my kids to to listen to their, to pay attention to their feelings and to get out of a situation that's unpleasant. If they don't want to be there, I know a lot of teachers probably feel that way. When they get in a situation similar to what I was in, that they would, that they have to stick it out. 

That's kind of the old adage, I think, about teaching if you can, if you can survive a year. Sorry for me. I'm not about being in survival mode. Perhaps it's, I don't know, maybe it. Maybe that works for some people, but for me I did stick it out one year to school that I was very uncomfortable with and I wish I would have quit sooner because it never got better and and maybe some people can figure out a way to make it get better that first year. Uh, but my advice and I'm probably not a conventional person of wisdom, I'm not going to offer any conventional advice, but my advice would be to get out, get out of the job that's making you unhappy. Get out of a situation. Get out of teaching. If you want to, you can always go back. The degree is still there and you can reassess, regroup, go back if you want to, if it's pulling at you again. 

I think staying till the bitter end of something just to say that you did is the most toxic thing that we tell people to do. If you don't like it, get out. Because when I got out, I'm telling you, I didn't know what my plan B was going to be. I had no clue and I had a family to support. I think things have a way of working themselves out and because, you know, my husband was in PhD school. I was making more money than he was and um, but I knew I had to listen to what was going on in my in my life and I couldn't feel guilty about it. And what was nice is that my husband was fully supportive and he fully supported me quitting and reassessing. And to someone who's in a similar situation get out of the job. 

If you have to get out of teaching, get out of teaching and go back. I've had I think what has some people can say in teaching for 30 to four years. I think what's contributed to my longevity is my ability to get out and get back in, get, get out and get back in and to be resilient in that way maybe not in a conventional way I'm no longer in teaching now but if I ever want to go back, I'll do that. Um, I don't feel like I'm locked in anywhere. If, if I want to change my mind at 50, at 60, if I decide it's 70, that I want to go back into the classroom after already retiring or something, I'll do that. 

I don't really have a life. I think that is structured in in a traditional way. I kind of just do what I want to do along the way and I can't worry and get bogged down with what people expect or what society expects of me as a, as a woman, as a mother, as an employee, as whatever. So, yeah, listen, I would say, listen to your feelings, and I think a lot of people stick it out for the year because they feel like they have something to prove. Prove something to yourself during that time and prove that you can get out and do something different. That's what I say so. 

0:37:12 - Melissa

You've been teaching in Florida. You've put in. What about five years in Florida? 

0:37:18 - Nichole

well, if you count the year that I was at the. So for my first year in Florida I was at that school for three weeks, then I was at the the daycare for four months and then the rest of the school year I was at the other school for temporary. So I guess you could say I was technically a teacher that year sort of. It's kind of a weird year. I had three different jobs that year, so, and then four years after that, yeah, so five years in in Florida, four years in a Florida, four solid years in a Florida school system so how has it been being a teacher in Florida? 

0:37:52 - Melissa

you know we hear a lot on the news, the governor makes the news a lot about education in Florida, but you know I haven't actually talked to anyone who's an actual teacher in Florida. So what is your? What has been your experience with education in Florida? 

0:38:11 - Nichole

The recent changes haven't had an impact on me because I haven't taught in over a year now, but I was starting to see some of the impacts of, you know, book bannings that are going on in the state and, from what I understand, it's getting pretty bad in the public school systems to where, even if a book isn't banned, schools and teachers are under such scrutiny that they don't feel comfortable assigning anything. And this was I can relate to that on a certain level the first school that I went to after the Title I school, the one where I was a temporary teacher at I was I assigned a couple of things that alarmed the principal. A mother had called to complain about something I had assigned. Granted it was yeah, probably shouldn't have been assigned in a high school class, but keep in mind I'd been teaching college all those years and never gave it a second thought whatsoever. So then I became after that incident, after the mom called and complained and the principal called me in. What I had to do then was I had to get approval for the rest of the semester for every single thing that I taught. I had to get the stamp of approval from our curriculum coordinator for the rest of the year and I was only there for the last quarter, so I was there for 10 weeks Having to constantly get her approval. I just went, I went through the motions because I was enjoying my job still and I just got everything approved. 

But I think that time period of having someone looking at me that closely and looking at the materials that I'm teaching students under a microscope, like that was. It was kind of icky. And then the next school year it just made me that experience made me really really insanely careful about what I talked, to the point where if it had even a mention of sex or any profanity or anything at all, I was like nope, nope, can't do it, nope, nope. And it got to where I was teaching things that were. They were so clean that they weren't relevant and they didn't deal with any deeper issues because of how careful those stories and those books were. So I felt that my teaching became less edgy as a result. I couldn't talk about anything that I felt that students were really talking about. And then I even would start to hear things from students like Gully, we never, we never read anything that's not old or we never read anything that dealing with anything that we're going through, and I felt his pain, but I was. I was scared. I was scared of losing my job, and the fear of losing your job is going to be greater than your need to change the world from a practical standpoint. When you're trying to keep your job and raise a family and pay for your kids livelihood, you're going to make decisions for your kids every time, and so I reached a point where I was like you know what I'm, I'm not going to do anything controversial ever, and we're going to play it safe all the time, and I played it safe for four years, and after I left that school, that school that I was at for four years, I never had any issues there, but I was really, really, really careful, never had any complaints about anything, but it would have been them complaining about Emily Dickinson. That's pretty safe. 

I've talked to some friends, though, who are still in the public school system in Florida, who say that, basically, they feel that they can't teach anything anymore, and it's gotten to where they're no longer even. A lot of teachers are no longer even teaching fiction at all, because a lot of the fiction just contains things that they feel is just too, could potentially be too controversial and so they're reading books or like from textbooks it might just be articles that are information based and it's stepping away, and I can't speak for all of Florida or all of schools, but just the teachers that I've spoken to have told me that there seems to be a movement away from literature, from fiction, simply because the nonfiction is safer and they want to keep their jobs. To take away the ability to teach fiction and to show people the humanity through fiction is one of the most tragic things I can even imagine, because my kids go to a private school here and they don't have the same rules as the rest of the state and to think that they because my son just entered middle school and the jump from fifth grade to middle school in terms of the literature that they read is huge they are suddenly discussing things that would never be discussed at the lower level and I really welcome that with open arms. I love the topics that he's discussing because now our bedtime routine we're used to I would read him stories. Yes, he still has me read to him at night. Don't tell his friends, but at night we now we're talking about much deeper issues because of the things that he's reading and and the things that he's being exposed to. 

So and I, I, when I think about parents and teachers not being able to have that experience with their students, or with parents being able to have that experience with their children, who are reading these things at school. If you're not reading things that are making you think more critically, if you're not reading things that are opening your eyes to situations, and you're not, it takes away opportunities for parents to connect with their kids on those subjects. That's a reality that I don't want to be a part of and I'm glad that we're kind of sheltered from that here in Florida and there seems to be a sort of I don't know reverse. Usually public schools have the more, I guess, liberal curriculum and there seems to be it seems to be that that the curriculum and the public schools are now becoming more conservative than the private schools. 

0:44:22 - Melissa

Do you think you know the public school system or the state? Do you think that they should have control over what you're teaching to that degree, or like, do you? Do you see where some control is needed? I mean, I know we have grade level expectations for a lot of things, you know. When it comes to books, do you think that it should be that control? 

0:44:43 - Nichole

Yeah, no, I mean, of course I would object to you know anything pornographic, or there would be some things that I probably would not want to be taught at the high school level. There are some things that I would probably want to reserve for college, I'm sure. But I think those decisions need to be made by people who have been in the classroom but at least have been in the classroom before, not by someone with not a governor, who might have an agenda to, I don't know, to a textbook company or something like that, to fulfill the wishes of some textbook company. 

0:45:22 - Melissa

Do you think that teachers are indoctrinating kids? 

0:45:26 - Nichole

currently or ever. 

0:45:28 - Melissa

I know that's one of the things that is said a lot that teachers are indoctrinating kids. 

0:45:34 - Nichole

Well, I think indoctrinating is probably a strong word. I think it's more enlightening, and when it goes in the direction of progress, I think of it as enlightening. The ones who usually object to indoctrination are the ones who would prefer that they be the ones to indoctrinate and they want to take that indoctrination backward. They want to reverse progress. They would rather you know only religious texts only. They would prefer you know no real science. Let's do this approved science, not science. That's actually you know what the scientific community is doing. And so, yeah, I mean the ones who scream you're indoctrinating our kids, they're the ones who, to me, are the ones who actually want to indoctrinate. 

I feel that teachers who want for students to be exposed to certain novels that deal with deeper raw issues are not trying to indoctrinate but to sort of open their eyes from probably being too sheltered from what the real world is actually like. And I think that's the agenda of probably maybe most high school teachers is to want to children to see so that they can think critically. And it touches not just literature teachers, but it's, like I said, science teachers, it's history teachers. A lot of conservative parents want their kids to get a whitewashed version of history and to take away. And what's funny is that they say let's keep the monuments up because we don't want to erase history, but then they're the first to erase history by, you know, whitewashing slavery and saying that you know that masters were good to their slaves and things like that. And I just think there's a high level of hypocrisy there. 

0:47:33 - Melissa

Thanks for joining us today on This Is My Story for Part 1 of Nichole's Story. Be sure to check out part 2 of this episode, where Nichole shares about her ADHD diagnosis at age 37 and her struggle with self discovery and learning who she is. If you'd like to be a guest on our show or know someone that has an inspiring story they'd like to share, please visit us online at ThisIsMyStoryPodcast.com and fill out the contact us form. If you enjoyed today's episode and want to hear more inspiring stories, make sure to hit the subscribe button, and don't forget to leave us a review on your favorite podcast platform. This has been Nichole's story. What's yours? 

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