On Being a Fat Preschool Teacher
This started out as email I sent a podcast I love in response to a call they put out for fat people across professions, specifically teachers, to share their experience. They never got back to me, but I decided to rework it a little bit and post it here. I’m very proud of it- enjoy!
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To be a teacher is to be hyper-visible. You are on display all day in front of a group of children who spend a lot of time looking at you. As one of the few adults they consistently interact with, you are a role model for these kids. This means they will study you and immediately notice, and comment on, everything and anything about you. I am a preschool teacher in New York City, and my students are not shy about sharing their observations with me. I’ve heard things like, “Why does you belly wiggle when you dance?” and “You have a big tummy.” I have come to understand that remarks like this are children’s way of exploring the world around them, and seeking connection by sharing their discoveries with me. In other words these are not judgments the way they would be if they came out of the mouths of adults.
The reason for this is that three and four year olds are at a developmental stage where they are beginning to notice similarities and differences and want to talk about them. Young children are largely (pun intended and relished) unaware of the negative associations and judgements many adults hold with regard to fat bodies. As such, my student's’ questions and noticings could not be more genuine. My work then was, and is, to find ways to respond to them that accomplish three things simultaneously: protecting my vulnerable feelings in the context of a world consistently views my fatness as a deficit, honoring my students’ curiosity and not dissuading them from future question asking, and communicating to them the belief that fat bodies are just as valuable as any other.
I am still practicing and it is not easy, but so worth it. Since the beginning of my teaching career, nearly 8 years ago now, I have done a lot of work on my relationship with my fat body. I read books, listen to podcasts, talk to friends, attent retreats, and unpack it all in therapy. I have done a lot of healing, but I by no means finished. I am still very much on that journey, and I suspect I always will be. This continual growth is, to me, far preferable than the stagnation that is its alternative. There are days when I think my fat body is the absolute shit, and other days when I resent and blame it for any number of hardships I encounter. Sometimes, I am still jarred by how much an innocuous comment from a child can hurt me. In these moments all of the self-consciousness and shame that I had been conditioned to feel about bodies like mine during my own childhood bubbles up to the surface.
I remind myself that I have the power to be for my students what I needed so badly as a kid: a role model for radical body acceptance- and in my best moments- for fat joy and pride. I read books to my students about many different kinds of bodies. I mention the belly when discussing body parts (even naming adipose tissue) and give my own a gentle jiggly pat for reference. I incorporate it into songs and games to normalize its presence. And even with all that, I sometimes have to fake it. I stand by this choice because to me, it is more important to provide children of this age with an example of a proud and capable fat person than it is share the darker moments of my relationship with my body. These feelings are not theirs to carry, so why burden them with prejudices they don’t yet have? They will receive enough negative messages about fatness from the society beyond my classroom over the course of their lives, if they haven’t begun to already. Let their experience of me serve as a small piece of counter-programing in the fatphobic world in which they find themselves.
My students continuously teach me that in order to provide thoughtful loving responses to their genuine questions and observations, I need figure out a way to feel, and present as, comfortable in my body. For me looks like appreciating its functionality first, and appreciating its beauty in the moments that I can. It is important to me that I am able to have conversations with my students about bodies, if that is something that they are wondering about, and I can’t do that if I am not genuinely working my hardest toward believing own body is valid as it is. In having me their teacher during these early formative years, my students are seeing a competent fat person in action, living a successful and fulfilling life, and hopefully forming an association that extends beyond me to the other fat folks they encounter.
My experiences in the classroom with curious young children have profoundly shaped my relationship with my fat body by providing me with opportunities to practice publicly loving it.
Also- little kids don’t care that much about what you look like. They are much more perceptive to what you show them you feel about what you look like. That is what is going to give them to tools to embrace their bodies and enable them to lead fulfilling lives of their own.