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/