Fly

I woke up at 4:30 AM, suddenly freaking out.

"Clearing Out" helped me come to terms with the end of (hiatus from?) teaching in schools.  There was something I hadn't really processed, though:  I no longer had a job.

I knew that in theory, of course.  But the summer was coming to a close, as was the income that teachers in this state got over the vacation months.  I didn't know what made me break out of my sleep (I blame my dog's stomach's growling), but I suddenly thought about the rent and the utilities and gas and food.

Oh my goddess!  Food!  Me and my babies are going to starve to death!   Whose stupid idea was this, anyway?!  Why strike out and try to do something that may go terribly and not even get paid for it?!  Millions of people send their kids off to school, go to their nine-to-five, do the evening routine, then get up to do it the next day.  Seems boring?  Maybe.  But it also seems like a steady paycheck, Kelly!  Oh, this is going to fall apart around me!  Why am I doing this?!  With the job market like it is, what kind of idiot quits her job?!

Shit just got real.  Really real.  And it was scary. 

I clutched my Raggedy Ann doll (BFFs since 1985!) like a scared little kid, assumed the fetal position.  Funny how fear makes you revert back to childhood patterns.

I tried to surmount the sudden panic by thinking of the reasons that my family was going to unschool.

My oldest child's teachers often reprimanded her for reading "too much": during direct instruction, standing in the lunch line, walking through the halls.  While my daughter's voracious reading seemed a testament to her studiousness, I knew there was more to it.  She wasn't just interested in the stories.  She was escaping, using a book to hide herself from an environment that was too loud, from girls that alternately (and confusingly) complimented and teased her, from a classroom culture that hinged upon yelling, intimidation, and disrespect.


My middle girl, happy to shine away from her siblings, excelled in school.  She frequently received student-of-the-month awards, performed well in every class, and was often asked to be the teacher's helper.  But one day she came home with cuts on her arm.  Apparently, another student brought something sharp enough to cut skin to school and experimented on my daughter.   Her teacher hadn't even seen it happen, and I understood why: with a classroom of two dozen children, I couldn't -- and didn't -- expect one teacher to see everything.  

Another kid hit one of my daughters while they were riding the school bus home.  Neither of the girls could seem to tell me who was hit (Were they protecting each other?  Were they both hit?), though they knew the assailant.


My son moved at his own time and pace, and I couldn't count the times that I fussed at him in the mornings, trying to push a five-year-old to do what many adults even have trouble doing: to have cleaned, dressed, and fed himself and be ready to leave by 7 AM.  And once he got to school, the frenetic pace didn't stop: a full schedule of indoor lessons with a brief period of recess... but without a nap.  He had about an hour of homework each night.  The schedule was just wearing him out.

But all of that seemed like distant memories of a time from way back when I was employed and sane.  It couldn't have been that bad, could it?  Bad enough to quit a job over?  I was still panicked. 

Then I remembered something that happened the previous morning.

My oldest daughter came in my room to tell me that she had found a math workbook from school, and she was wondering if I could help her practice finding the area of irregular polygons.  She had carried a C in Math all last semester because she had a hard time finding the area.  Her teacher, though very nice, intimidated her.  He'd get frustrated with my daughter because she was so smart, but couldn't seem to get this particular math concept.  

I'd get frustrated with her, too, because I felt she was too smart not to understand (like that's an acceptable reason to get angry with a child -- or anyone, for that matter).  In addition to that, I was stressed out and tired and overwhelmed from everything else I had to do just to keep the family afloat each day.  When we practiced at home and she'd make mistakes -- trying to work quickly so that she'd have time to play on the computer or outside before the dinner/bedtime dance -- I'd get irritated.  And I showed it.  In my daughter's mind, finding the area of irregular polygons must have equated to finding how quickly she could piss off an adult.  Anxiety City for her, I'm sure.  

And, to top it all off, that concept was to appear on the state-mandated standardized test determining whether she'd go on to the next grade.  

Even better.  

My child wouldn't touch math with a ten-foot pole.  Or any pole, for that matter.  She wouldn't even try to figure out the length of the proverbial pole; she hated math that much.  Worse, she was convinced she was bad at it.  My and her teacher's frustration, that C in Math seemed to confirm her conviction.

So when she asked if I'd work with her, I was shocked.  I wondered, Why did she want to work on it now, when there was no test, no pressure to learn how to do it, and there wouldn't be for the foreseeable future? 


Oh.  Maybe that was why.


We spent about an hour on the math exercises.  And it was fun.  When she got something wrong, I just sat there and smiled at her.  She worked on figuring out the right answer, and was proud of herself when she did.  When she wanted to check out what her sister was doing on the computer, she'd take a ten-minute break, then come sit back down next to me.  We went over "tricks" for figuring out the right answer (or, as smart people call it, estimating).  I didn't fuss at her for using her fingers when she was adding.  She was eager to work out each problem.


And she was thinking.  Really thinking.  There was no anxiety behind it.  She wasn't nervously chewing her nails or glancing at me every ten seconds, waiting for me to blow my top.


When she completed the last problem, she said, "You know what, Mommy?  You're a pretty good math teacher."  And then ran off to play with her brother and sisters.


What a great kid.

What a great kid. 

I was calm.  I had turned on the computer to do some checkbook-balancing and to send emails regarding my final paycheck and some job opportunities, but found myself writing this instead.  I need to remind myself, to see it in print.  

You're doing the right thing, Kelly.  This is the right time, and you know it.  Regardless of how things end up, you'll never forgive yourself if you don't try.  

Remember that dream that you had of a little girl jumping off a cliff? You ran to the edge to save her, then realized that she suddenly grew wings and was flying.  Remember that?  Fly, little girl.

Fly. 

Clearing Out

I didn’t cry often.  I did a lot of other things instead: yelled, growled, fussed, sighed, and, occasionally, hit or broke things.  Even when life had gotten really, really low, I would not deign to shed tears.  I figured, “What’s the point?  It won’t change anything.”  When a former lover asked my oldest child about the last time she’d seen me cry, my child responded that she’d only seen me cry once, five years ago.

Oh. 

My recent, disastrous relationship with that disastrous ex did teach me one thing, though:  It was okay to be emotional.  I didn’t always have to be “RoboKelly,” as she affectionately (and annoyingly) liked to call me.

I guessed that explained why I was standing behind the desk in my former classroom a few days ago, tearing up.

“Lord,” I thought, “if any of my former students could see me now, they’d fall over in their chairs.”

I couldn’t help it, though; as I was peeling tape off of all the little notes and cards I had gotten from students through the years, I realized how much I was going to miss teaching.   

I should be specific here: I won't miss schooling.  I had little problem throwing out old worksheets and test templates for recycling.  I didn’t sigh when I ventured into the bookroom, remembering all of the novels that I had to strong-arm the students into reading (or into using Spark Notes while pretending they were reading).   I would not be nostalgic about all the cursing and student-teacher arguments that I used to hear in the halls, always what I took to be young people’s way of asserting their independence in a world that simultaneously expected very much and very little of them.  

And the meetings.  Oh my damn, the meetings.  I would not -- I repeat -- not miss required attendance at meetings led by some person that taught fifteen years ago (or never taught at all) and was now getting paid to teach teachers about teaching.  I skipped many, many meetings.

The schooling machine quickly started to feel like a project in figuring out what to do with teenagers for eight hours in a day, rather than a project in helping them become better humans.  I admire my colleagues that have taken and still take on the latter project, even while teachers are being forced to focus on the former.   Standing behind my old desk where, in a few weeks, a different teacher would be sitting, I knew I wouldn’t miss the eternal tight-rope walk that teaching had become, the constant struggle to answer your calling to edify humanity while playing customer service rep to administrators and a public that see you as a babysitter.  Good riddance to that.

But I had to hold back tears tears when I took a student’s watercolor off the wall.  She used to come into my class a few times a day to greet my co-teacher and me last semester.  She’d then rush over to rub me on the shoulders and back.  I never asked for the violent mini-massages, but they cracked me up each time.

And when I was taking down a student’s depiction of a person being dragged away by the police during the Holocaust.  I had the student nearly a decade ago.  I thought he never read what he was supposed to and he slept too much in class.  I was so ready to get on him one day about his performance, then he produced this stunning drawing.  It turned out that while he had his head down, he had been listening to all the class discussions.  He didn’t like reading, but was still fascinated by the story.  Fancy that.

And when I was trying not a rip a hate note written to me by a student that transferred out of my class (because I “gave too much work”) but would come sit in my room to (not) do work for his other, “easier” classes.  Because that made sense, you see. 

And when I was taking down my Safe Schools Coalition stickers,[1] remembering that, as a group, teenagers have been so much more accepting and appreciative of my sexuality than adults have ever been.

I realized, again, that the teenagers that I have met over the years were the most talented, most honest, most dynamic people that I have ever known.  They told fantastic stories.  They were wise beyond their years.  They did things that they shouldn’t have and then quietly handled the consequences, unbeknownst to the adults in their lives.  They were amazing artists, friends, athletes, listeners, entrepreneurs, lovers, parents.  They made me remember the mine field that is high school, reminded me that I wouldn’t go back in a million years, wowed me by the relative ease and agility with which they navigated it all.

I never said these things when I was in the classroom, of course.  How could I?  We had short stories to read, essays to write, final exams to prepare for.  We had other adults coming into the classroom, sniffing around for the slightest hint of anything that smacked of being “off-task.”  I felt I had to strengthen their work ethic and its endurance to prepare them for a world that would just as well eat them alive.  And, to those ends, there were certain truths I didn’t say.  I should say them now. 

I loved you.

You were the best part of the job, the best people I have known.

There was no other job outside the home that I would have rather been doing.

I have a secret to tell you: Grades mattered, but you mattered more.  So much more.  And if I didn’t make that clear in my own twisted way, that is my personal failure.  I am sorry for it.

It was my supreme honor to teach such excellent human beings.  Whether you got a 94 or 49 in my class, it was the honor of my life to laugh with you, argue with you, be proud with you, push you to do better.

Thank you.  Thank you.  Thank you.  A thousand times over.

See you around.

 

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[1] http://www.safeschoolscoalition.org/

Inspiration

Check out https://www.facebook.com/theUnschoolBus for inspirational tidbits on unschooling!
Whenever I feel unsure, the site helps me remember why we're unschooling.  The Unschool Bus family reminds me how confined I knew I was as a teacher, and how my children weren't able to truly be themselves in school.  While the schools that we've encountered have been better than many, I still knew what was missing.