Teacher, Interrupted

Who are we without our students?

Last spring, in 2019 B.C. (Before Covid), I received an Instagram message from the mother of an old student of mine; a bright-eyed, auburn-haired second-grader (in 2007). She attached a picture of his high school graduation and a nice note about his time in my classroom, with the line “do you remember him?”

Me at age 22 in my first classroom, wearing a skirt I bought with my boyfriend’s mom’s Banana Republic card.

Did I remember him?! I could sketch his eight-year-old face from memory, freckles and all. I could rattle off 20 of his best quotes, including when he criticized George W. Bush because “something reaaaaally bad happened, and he just kept reading a book!” I could conjure images of him crying, laughing, the way he chewed his shirt collar when he was nervous, the way his face lit up when he finally starting learning to read.

Yes, I remembered him. I loved him. I still do.

As we round the bend into our second-month of corona-quarantine, with many schools closed until at least the end of the school year, teachers are doing a one-eighty. There are armies of educators (and companies) out there now sharing tools and resources for distance learning and online homeschooling. With a wealth of ever-changing advice, and even with many sweet messages of kindness and self-compassion, the world’s teachers are thinking and talking about how to support the millions of children holed up in homes and apartments, living on the streets, being supervised by “parent homeschoolers” or not being supervised at all. Kids are certainly going through tough times, experiencing antsiness and anxiety, loss of learning, and even increased abuse.

But what about the teachers? Who is looking out for us?

From a young age, I often felt uncomfortable in my own skin, unsure of how to interact with my peers. Even in first grade, I would quietly finish my math worksheets and sneak down to my old kindergarten teacher, Mrs. Lund’s classroom. I would help the younger kids do puzzles, open their pudding cups. I dressed up in a head-to-toe Kermit the Frog costume and read to them. Since then, I have taught or tutored or aided or counseled or adjunct-instructed every year of my life.

Like most of you, I’ve been having fantasies these past weeks - of braiding my nieces’ hair, pushing my two-year-old in a swing, sitting in a warm, buzzing restaurant and ordering a steak (medium rare) with whatever the bartender wants me to drink. This week, my daydreams are all about teaching. I wander around my class as my students wrestle with a complex problem I’ve given them. I see their eager, curious faces. I watch one explain something to another. I encourage and challenge and add on until they’ve cracked some kind of code, opened a new door into understanding. I make them feel at ease in this place of learning-but-not-having-learned-it-all. I am proud. I am humbled. I am my best, best self.

Like so many others, teaching is my happy place. I don’t, as they condescendingly say, do it for the money. I do it because I need to do it. I could not live without it. And now it’s been taken away. A minor misdemeanor in the long list of crimes this virus and the people who have mismanaged it have committed. I see my students each week through my computer screen, and like all educators, I know it is not the same. I don’t smell them. I don’t sense them - when they need a joke and when they need inspiration. I know they are suffering. I’m suffering too. I am unmoored.

Maybe we will find a home in these strange new classrooms we are in. We’ve certainly made do with fewer resources and taught with less of a plan. Maybe not. Until then, I’ll keep remembering. Looking through old school pictures, reliving old victories, aching for a part of me that has been put on hold.

For a taste of that teaching sweetness, check out Tiny Teaching Stories