Finding Rewards in Embracing My Femininity
“One of my deepest insecurities is the fear that people will think I’m weak because I am a sensitive, gentle, empathetic woman.”
Photo by Emily Fletke Photography
Two years ago, I made the decision to start my career as an English Language Arts teacher in the Bronx. It was a leap of faith, and a decision I felt God had led me to. As my first days of teaching drew closer, I experienced bouts of doubt and intense anxiety.
What if the kids were super mean? What if they were disrespectful?
I had flashbacks of my own years in middle school and remembered how cruel children can be at that age. I replayed the horror stories that I’d heard from seasoned teachers: bricks through car windows, breaking up fights, and students cursing at teachers.
As those first days of teaching inched closer and closer, I was convinced God was setting me up for failure. I started to believe I was too soft-hearted, thin-skinned, and sensitive to teach, especially in the Bronx! What had I gotten myself into?
To make matters worse, on one of the days of my orientation, the superintendent of schools told all of us first year teachers, “Don’t smile until November.”
Don’t smile? But smiling came so naturally to me!
Heeding the superintendent’s advice, the first day of school came and I didn’t smile. I remember walking into one of my first classes strong, fake-confident, with my tough-girl persona on. I kept it up for a while, but I kept butting heads with my students. I would correct them often and try to maintain order, but it didn’t seem to be working. I tried not to show a bit of weakness, not a bit of softness (and I was successful!), but my classroom just didn’t have the atmosphere I hoped for.
My kids were tough. They resisted their English Language Arts instruction and they resisted me when I attempted to discipline them. At the time, I was working with a substitute teacher who seemed to have more success connecting with the kids. I watched her laugh and joke with them, and I watched how they responded positively to her. I wanted that. I wanted them to respond well to me, to feel comfortable around me. Eventually, God showed me that there were some adjustments that needed to be made before this could happen.
My mindset around teaching began to change as I learned more about my students, and about myself as well. As a first year teacher, I had many weaknesses. I was disorganized, inconsistent with discipline, and I was tired. (So, so tired!) Yet, God had given me one strength: I was passionate about my students. I realized I had to become the teacher God wanted me to be, not the teacher that my professors thought I should be, or the champion teacher that my textbooks illustrated. As I became that teacher, I learned that I had to become that woman.
One of my deepest insecurities is the fear that people will think I’m weak because I am a sensitive, gentle, empathetic woman. There have been times where I’ve been ridiculed and taken advantage of because of these traits. However, these were the very characteristics that God desired during my first year of teaching.
As I embraced the qualities of my womanhood, God enabled these traits to permeate my teaching. I was more nurturing with my students. I laughed more with them, spent extra time after school with them, shared food and snacks with them, and now referred to them as “my kids.” They responded more readily to this ‘honey’ than the ‘vinegar’ I had initially served up.
One of my favorite memories from that first year of teaching was when one of my students didn’t want to participate in an activity. I asked her if she’d rather stand next to me and hold my hand, to which she readily replied, “yes.”
As I yielded to God’s call toward femininity with gentleness, softness, grace, and mercy, I began to stand out more as a teacher.
My assistant principal thanked me one day for liking the kids.
One of my students told me I was like a mother figure to him.
Another one of my students thanked me for helping him make progress toward graduation.
I had the honor of helping one of my students find his voice as a poet.
And on more than one occasion, I was able to hear my students say, “I love you, Miss.”
And none of those accolades was forced. They didn’t come from withholding my smile. They came from surrendering the soft, “weak” parts of myself into this God-given role, and trusting Him to work it all out for the best.
God possesses the same attributes he wanted me to embrace as a woman — gentleness, softness, grace, and mercy. In a world where femininity and womanhood are constantly under attack, it is an act of courage to embrace femininity. Yet, I assure you that the rewards for doing so are worth it.