My name is Tamika Owens. I'm 23, I grew up in West Baltimore, and last December I became the first person in my family to finish college (English major, education minor, and a whole lot of student loans). This fall I started my first real job: teaching seventh grade English at a city middle school, Room 114, for about $26,000 a year before taxes.

My methods professor told us to keep a journal our first year, because later we would not believe what we lived through. So here it is. I keep it online because I type faster than I write, and because it helps to know somebody out there is reading.

House rules: I only ever use a first initial for my students, and I will never say which school. If you know me in real life, especially if you work in my building, please be kind, and please don't forward my entries.

Church with Mama this morning. She has told every single person at church that her daughter is a teacher now, and today she told the pastor's wife that I "turned a boy around with a poem," which is not what happened, but I have learned you cannot edit Mama. She held my arm all the way down the church steps like I was the one who was sixty.

After dinner she asked how much the loan payment is and I told her the truth, $212 a month. She was quiet for a while and then she said, "You'll pay it. We always pay." When I was little she paid off a couch for three years. I remember the envelope on the refrigerator with the dates written on the front.

Now it's 10:40 at night and I have 58 personal narratives to grade and a week of lesson plans for Mrs. Harmon, my mentor teacher across the hall, to look at by Tuesday. I made a pot of coffee I know I'll regret.

Three weeks down. Thirty-three to go. Not that anybody's counting.

Listening to: Lauryn Hill, The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill (still, always)

Something good happened and I want to write it down before I talk myself out of it.

We're starting poetry. My 1st period has been a room full of heads on desks since day one. I had a whole lesson ready with the overhead and a handout. Instead, and I don't know why, I just stood up and read "Mother to Son" by Langston Hughes out loud. No handout. I read it the way my grandmother talked.

Well, son, I'll tell you:
Life for me ain't been no crystal stair.

When I finished, nobody said anything, and it wasn't the bored kind of nothing. Then D. picked his head up off his desk (see Tuesday) and said, "Read it again." So I read it again. K. asked if she could read it the third time, and she did, and she did it better than me.

We never got to the handout. I don't care. On the way out D. asked if he could take the poem home. I gave him my copy, coffee ring and all.

It's one day. I know it's one day. But I'm going to let it be a good one.

Mood: like I might actually be a teacher

About D.

He's in my 1st period, and since the first day he has slept. Not dozed. Slept. Head on his arms, jacket over his head. I tried calling on him, tapping his desk, moving him up front. Last week I was about ready to write him up, and I said so at lunch in Mrs. Harmon's room. She put her fork down and said, "Before you write him up, find out why he's tired."

So today I asked him to stay two minutes after class. I told him he wasn't in trouble. He didn't believe me for about a minute. Then he told me. His mother works overnights. He gets his little brother and his two sisters up, dressed, fed and walked to the elementary school before he walks here. He's twelve. He's been doing it since summer. He told it like he was telling me what he had for breakfast, except he hadn't had any.

I kept a straight face until he left. Then I sat at my desk for a while.

After school Mrs. Harmon walked me down to the guidance counselor, who knows the family and says she'll help me figure out what the school can do. Meanwhile there are granola bars in my bottom desk drawer. That's not a plan. It's what I've got until there is one.

I was one form away from writing up a twelve-year-old for being tired from a grown-up's job.

It rained sideways all day from what's left of that hurricane. Half my kids came in soaked, the ceiling tile over the pencil sharpener started dripping, and the trash can I put under it was full by 6th period.

At lunch I finally opened yesterday's mail: the loan coupon, and my pay stub showing what the state and the city and Social Security take before I ever see any of that $26,000. I did the math on a napkin. I'm not putting the numbers here. I'll just say rent, the car, the loan, and the part of Mama's phone bill I help with, and then there's what's left, and what's left is what bought the rug and the books in Room 114.

After school I sat in my '88 Corolla in the parking lot with the wipers going and cried for about fifteen minutes. The kind where you can't stop, and then you stop. Mr. Earl, our custodian, knocked on the window to see if I was all right. I said yes, I'm just a first-year. He laughed and said, "Oh, well, then." He said he's seen a lot of first-years cry in cars in that lot, and the ones who cry are the ones who stay.

I don't know if that's true. I drove home and graded anyway.

Weather: hurricane leftovers. Mood: rinsed.

First week done. Things I have learned:

1. Seventh graders can smell fear, and also Doritos from forty feet.
2. My "teacher voice" lasts until about Wednesday. After that it's just my voice, but lower.
3. Twenty-six anthologies for thirty-two kids means somebody is always sharing, and the sharing is always a fight.
4. Mrs. Harmon has taught in this building for twenty-nine years and knows every kid's older cousin. She stood in the back of my room Wednesday for five minutes and afterward only said, "Stop asking them if they're ready. Tell them they're ready." She was right.
5. K. reads under her desk during everything. Today it was Harry Potter. I should stop her. I have not stopped her.
6. It is possible to be this tired and still not sleep.

Mama called to ask about my week. I said "fine," and she said "That bad?" and I laughed so hard I had to sit down on the kitchen floor.

First day.

I got there at 6:45 with a seating chart, name tents, a welcome letter, a "Getting to Know You" survey and a speech I practiced in the bathroom mirror. The speech lasted about forty seconds before a boy in the back asked if I was a substitute. I said no, I'm your teacher. He said, "For real, though?" Everybody laughed. I laughed too, which I think was right, because they settled down a little after that.

Five classes, 147 students. I know maybe twenty names. By the end of 6th period my feet hurt right through my good shoes, and I had chalk on my new skirt in the exact shape of a hand.

T. stayed after 4th period to tell me she liked my room because "it looks like somebody cares about it." I said thank you, and then I went and stood in the supply closet for a minute.

Too tired for more. Tomorrow's plans are done. I think.

Cookout at Aunt Bernice's. Everybody asked if I was nervous. I said no. I have ironed the same blouse twice. In bed by nine. Ha.

Room 114 is on the first floor at the end of the hall, next to the stairwell. Three tall windows that don't open and one that won't close. Thirty-two desks, two of them missing seats. A radiator the building engineer says "has a mind of its own." A chalkboard erased so many times it's gray all the way through.

Today I tried to make it somewhere you'd want to be. Mama came and stapled border for four hours without one complaint, then complained about her shoulder the whole ride home. We put up a bulletin board that says EVERY VOICE HAS A STORY, in letters I cut out Thursday night in front of the TV. I bought a rug at a yard sale for $15, a pencil sharpener that actually works, and two boxes of paperbacks from the used bookstore, so there's something on the shelves besides dictionaries from 1984.

I added it up in the car. $314 of my own money, and I haven't seen a paycheck yet. Mama said, "That's what it costs to start something." She would know.

Ten days.

Listening to: Whitney Houston, My Love Is Your Love