On Being Thankful - A Poem of Thanksgiving inspired by Karen Hesse

I just finished reading Out of the Dust by Karen Hesse with my middle school students.  If you have not yet read it, do yourself a favor and check it out over break.  It is written for young adults but I find so much wisdom in it about hope and perseverance.  I read it for the first time 15 years ago before really having had to persevere much and loved it then.  Now I love it even more and still cry at the end (even after reading it with kids for the 5th class period in a row.)  Near the end of the book the main character shares a poem of Thanksgiving called Thanksgiving List.  Using her model, I decided to write my own to remind myself how lucky I am in the hustle, bustle and stress of the most wonderful time of the year:

Thanksgiving List by Danielle Johnson

  

Baby skin, the laughter of girls, the bell

ringing,

the smell of lemongrass

and freshly baked cookies,

co-workers like family, the flowers picked by little hands,

sun shining on the sand,

the ocean so

massive, so full of

peace and adventure,

the faces on cards

that fill our mailbox.

Seph’s strength,

and his loyalty,

and his patience.

Brothers.

Shelter when it snows,

parents loving me like I’m still a child,

needing protection and spoiling,

the rare days when I get eight hours of uninterrupted sleep,

the heartfelt notes from will be teachers so thankful and full of promise,

the sound of breathing,

my car (or house or desk) staying clean

for more than one day,

the smell of cold,

of wide awake,

of calm returning to our evenings.

The walk I hope

to take across the stage this spring,

the students with so much energy, so full of life

my friends

of understanding, of full social calendars, of companionship.

And the daughters at the center, my lessons, my heart

My shout into the future

My tribute to my past. 

And because I think it would be super fun to read all of your lists, I will potentially break all copyright laws and share the original as a model.  Send me yours if you are so inclined:) 

Thanksgiving List from

Out of the Dust by Karen Hesse

Prairie birds, the whistle of gophers, the wind

blowing,

the smell of grass

and spicy earth,

friends like Mad Dog, the cattle down in the river,

water washing over hooves,

the sky so

big, so full of

shifting clouds,

the cloud shadows creeping

over the fields,

Daddy’s Smile,

and his laugh,

and his songs,

Louise,

food without dust,

Daddy seeing to Ma’s piano,

newly cleaned and tuned,

the days when my hands don’t hurt at all,

the thank-you note from Lucille in Moline, Kansas,

the sound of rain,

Daddy’s hole staying full of water

as the windmill turns,

the smell of green,

of damp earth,

of hope returning to our farm.

The poppies set to

bloom on Ma and Franklin’s grave,

the morning with the whole day waiting, full of promise,

the night

of quiet, of no expectation, of rest.

And the certainty of home, the one I live in,

and the one

that lives in me.   

On Growing Up Instead of Old

I turned 36 this past September.  It didn't bother me.  Getting older never really has, but it's getting harder to deny that I officially have entered adulthood.  And in adulthood time seems to spend itself exponentially faster.  

I thought about this last week while staring at a co-worker at a district meeting.  This coworker turns 40 this year. His first year was my first year.  Our children are less than 4 months apart and currently 2nd grade classmates.  Ten years ago I helped throw his 30th birthday.  Two weeks ago we started plans for his 40^th.  When I first met him he still wore a large gold band on his finger, and I hadn’t even met my would be husband. As I stared at his hair peppered with increasingly more gray I felt like I was looking at a mirror. I began questioning my comfort with aging. 

            Then I stared around the room.  Catty corner from me were two teachers I once mentored who went on to become teachers of the year.  A few tables over were teachers I knew first as students.  Downstairs was a colleague I adopted when he was new to Oakland who now sits in an office that makes him my boss.  At my table were people who I watched become wives and then mothers.  There were people who sent kids off to college who once walked the halls of our junior high.  There were people who knew the pain of divorce and the comfort of healing. 

            I thought about what these same people had watched me go through.  They made me laugh after my miscarriage.  They cleaned for me when I lost my mother-in-law.  They brought food to the hospital so we could eat during our ICU vigil.  They filled my fridge when I brought new babies home.  They covered for me so I could pursue new degrees.  As I stared at these people two thoughts came to mind.  First, if you love, truly love the people you work with like they are family then you know the blessing my work community is to me.  Second, there was no denying it.  I wasn’t as young as I was when I first met these people.  Then I started to wonder if this bothers me. 

            It occurred to me after brief reflection that these people I was surrounded by have watched me grow up.  And I have watched them grow up.  They saw me go from someone who constantly worried about what people thought to someone who knew that you can’t blossom without getting in a few people’s way.  They saw me go from someone who loved a good story to someone who understood which secrets really are.  They saw me go from someone always on the defense to someone who could step back and see the role I played in conflict.  They saw me try to become someone who talks less and listens more.  They saw me grow up not grow old.  I think I can live with growing older because growing older really means growing up continuously if you see the lessons around every corner and the richness life has constantly in store for those who embrace it.  Up is a word with inherently positive connotation – old is not.  I hope those I surround myself with will keep helping me grow up. 

            This reflection came full circle for me last night when a college professor of mine shared a memoir written by Dr. Lucy Stanovick as she battled cancer.  He read a paragraph out loud, and I heard her voice.  (Writing is a gift.)  I wanted so desperately to talk to her.  She was a true coach to me.  We could sit face to face and share teaching struggles, and she heard me without judging or fixing.  She put her struggles out there for me as well.  I remember sitting with her for hours outside of Val Garton’s house while we watched her daughter as Val underwent cancer surgery years before Lucy knew she would follow a similar fate.  These two women played such a role in making me the adult I am today.  I miss them.  As I laid in bed I realized that I get to be them now for many new teachers.  This is a blessing, but it doesn’t make me stop needing them or people like them.  We can’t grow up without people who ask the right questions, offer the right amount of pause, and who love us fiercely.  I want to continue my upward journey in the trip called life by making sure I get as much as I give from those I encounter.  This requires a childlike need of others.  This requires admittance that we can learn from anyone because we don't know everything yet.  We simply aren’t old enough to.  If all goes well, 36 isn’t even a half point.  I’m not old at all, and I have a lot of growing up left to do. 

On what really matters in the classroom...

            It’s no secret that I am not loving my job as much as I normally do this year.  It’s no secret because I shout out into the void and to anyone who is listening in brief moments of passing.  Part of this is due to the fact that my job is lonelier than normal this year.  I love the people I work with, but I rarely see them and don’t get to draw on them in a professional intellectual way that inspires, challenges and fulfills me.  I’m not on a grade level team; I’m not on a PLC.  I don’t get to creatively problem solve challenging students and write plans for success.  I simply find those plans in my  email and do my best to enact them in my class.  Technically I am “on everyone’s team” as the school literacy coach (for a whopping one hour a day), but teachers are often too overwhelmed and busy to be “coached”, and in all honestly, I don’t push the issue because I’m just as busy and overwhelmed.  Part of it is not having a chunk of time off like I did last year.  There is a surprising amount of errand running needed in the strange variety of positions I hold at my school, and I used to be able to do those during the day.  This year I can’t.  Instead I have these little chunks of time that are too short to really tackle anything so I often hide behind the disaster that is my desk and stare at it noting how much needs to be done and in crippling anxiety, do none of it.   Part of it is taking part in one more year of reading instruction to students in need of intervention.  Year after year I work with these students and year after year our numbers stay relatively stagnant  - as do the nation’s reading scores.  Apparently, we have not had a national improvement in reading averages since the 1970’s.  It’s hard to do something that can feel so futile.  Though I claim to adopt the growth mindset needed for genuine success I sometimes find myself looking at a bad day of teaching and thinking, “no big deal that my lesson flopped.  It’s not like what I do really makes a difference anyways…”  I assume that those few who happen to get out of my class do so of their own accord. 

            Lest this post get any more negative, I wanted to share that all my shouts into the void were apparently being heard by someone or something because the universe responded twice this week and reminded me about the joys this job holds if we are patient and if we are willing to open our minds to what counts as progress and growth. 

            As more or less the only regular ed reading intervention teacher this year I got back all my students from last year that I was not able to release from reading.  In some ways it is great to start on day one with a relationship already built, but on the other hand, neither of us is too happy that the student still needs the class.  It makes us both feel like failures.  In my fifth hour I have three students who have returned to me for yet another year of trying to get on grade level.  During class on Tuesday one of the students new to the room noticed a crate full of picture books.  I keep a collection of picture books with powerful themes and images and integrate them throughout the year.  Because of my personal interest bias, a lot of these are on the Civil Rights Movement.  The student looking at the books asked why I keep so many books around about slavery.  I informed her that they aren’t about slavery;  they are about the Civil Rights Movement which launched the complicated and confusing conversation about how blacks were technically free and yet not.  Middle School students almost never completely get this (heck, I don’t completely), but suddenly one of my students from last year piped in. “they were free but couldn’t swim in the same pools and stuff.”  Yeah, I thought… but that’s a funny detail to hone in on.  Then the two other students from last year piped in and in perfect unison they verbally recreated the powerful plot of one of my favorite picture books of all time, Freedom Summer by Deborah Wiles.  They remembered every detail of that book and the powerful implications of those details.  I honestly hadn’t even remembered that I read it to them last year, and they remembered EVERY. SINGLE. DETAIL.  The new student heard those details and then turned to another book called Freedom on the Menu and devoured it eagerly.  She was so engaged she couldn’t contain her inner voice and gasped and yelled, “now that’s just wrong” as she took in a historical and visual account of the lunch sit-ins.  I often wonder if anything I present to these kids really matters and this moment made me realize that they do listen, especially when the content is compelling. 

            Today after school the universe called to me again.  For the past two Octobers  I have prepped the students for a Scary Story Showcase which involves weeks of practice reading the same scary story all in preparation for our scary story showcase which involves as much of an audience we can piece together, snacks, and a chance to have a moment of confidence at a task these kids have been told they are bad at most of their lives.  It’s not the easiest of units, for those of you who have read with a loved one as they learn how to read out loud and have wanted to just grab the book and say all the words faster and correctly, imagine a whole day of that.  However,  I do this because I believe in it.  I have tried to create experiences like this because I feel like we put our honors students on parade and put our intervention classes in trailers or in hallways off the beaten path.  I want them (and selfishly me) to feel like our work matters – and I really want them to have a purpose for reading out loud.  The audience achieves both of those goals.  All week I have told students that they could stay after school and help me decorate for our guests if they wanted to help out.  I knew it was a waste of energy.  The kids in my classes often don’t really do school during the regular school day, let alone stay after for bonus school experiences.  In fact, I knew that my simultaneous department meeting would be no problem because the few stars that showed up could work silently around our chat about district assessments and walk-throughs (all attempts to help us “fix” the kids we haven’t been able to “fix” in this district yet.).  I was wrong.  They showed up in droves.  Kids of all grade levels, races, genders, cliques and school performance levels entered my room ,and it looked for a moment like mass chaos might break out.  My hallway neighbor popped in and took over so I could run a shortened 20 minute meeting and then get back to the kids that packed my classroom.  Under no guidance or instruction they transformed my room from four white walls into a Halloween Extravaganza.  They made signs directing the guests they hope will show up to my room.  They staged scenes with store bought décor.  They wrote catchy two line poems around the room as messages to guests.  They measured paper and cut it so that that they could black out windows.  And in a stroke of genius, they used crumpled up butcher paper to create a fake campfire to tell their stories around tomorrow.    In other words, they showed that they can work hard, problem solve and create when the task has meaning.  They practiced real life skills today.  All this was done by a relatively motley crew.  Several teachers walked by in shock and pleasure at who showed up and what they did. I looked at each of those kids and saw someone who could have a meaningful career. I looked at my career as meaningful.  

            The whole experience warmed my heart.  It reminded me that “kids who can’t” really can more than we think.  It reminded me of an article I had published a few years ago in which I worked with kids to understand social justice issues.  They blew me away with the thinking and compassion they began to display over our weeks together.  One reviewer demanded that my edits address whether any of this actually raised test scores – as if that’s the only thing that matters.  My dissertation, should I ever finish it (make me!  Make me!   I have until May!) looks at the intended and unintended consequences of assessments that more often than not tell teachers and students that they are failures.  Someone has to hear and see and feel what these children and teachers are experiencing day in and day out – and more importantly, what they are capable of despite what numbers on a page say.  I am so thankful that the universe did this week. 

            Thank you to whatever it was that breathed passion back into me this week .  Thank you to my students…  I’ll try to shut up now in my complaining – at least for a little bit. 

On Grief...

The Journey to Paradise by Danielle Johnson

“When you’re going through hell, keep going.” – Winston Churchill

In the summer of 2004 I found myself in Aruba with my husband and his family.  By no means compact people, we decided to save money by renting a compact Toyota to drive around the island in search of rougher beaches.  Our goal was to body surf.  Earlier in the morning we had studied our tourist map and set our sights on Boca Grande.  It was known for exceptionally rough waves, and my husband and brother-in-law had grown tired of the cool, calm, blue, waters outside of our timeshare.

            Aruba is the A in the ABC Dutch Islands (B standing for Bon Aire and C for Caracao).  The island is nineteen miles long and six miles across.  For such a small place the environment is incredibly diverse.  The west coast is highly built up for tourism, which became the countries’ main source of income when the oil refineries left.  Here the island looks like any other in the Caribbean, with the standard Holiday Inn, Hilton, and Embassy suites scattered among the shorter pink and yellow resorts hosting names like Paradise Inn or La Cabana.  Each hotel sits on a sandy white beach surrounded by turquoise water.    The middle of the island is a desert, scattered with cacti and roaming goats.  The Northeast coast is trademarked with rough coral that meets the wild ocean. The water here is the color of midnight and foams white as it crashes against the black rock.  The Southeast section of the island is almost abandoned.  The sand there is blackened with oil and home to a fence that catches trash blown fiercely across the horizon.  Although the temperature is a perfect 80 degrees daily, the winds that allowed for successful trade in the 1700’s make is almost unbearable to be outside at times.  Trees bend over halfway at the trunk from years of abuse.    

            In Aruba, the end of the day is the most beautiful time.  The sunset streaks the sky with lavender, bubble-gum pink, and orange sherbet.  The palm trees look black against this canvas.

            After breakfast we piled into the cramped white car.  My husband was still too young to rent a car; I was afraid of driving stick shift, and my in-laws had never owned a credit card – so my brother-in-law was stuck obtaining and driving this vehicle.  With Roger at the helm, over one thousand pounds of passenger took off on a voyage.

 We soon left the tourist coastline to find ourselves among the run-down shacks owned by locals.  The discrepancies in living conditions for visitors and natives were jarring.  Tattered clothes hung out to dry.  The purple, orange, and green homes looked abandoned and impoverished.  As we drove they became fewer and farther between.

  Within thirty minutes we reached the edge of the island and got out to see if we had found what we were looking for.  Near our condo people were everywhere, but here we mostly had the beach to ourselves.  We tried to approach the water for swimming but found ourselves stuck in sandy oil.  My mother-in-law and I laughed as our feet turned black and sticky.  A couple approached us, and we decided to ask where we could find Boca Grande. 

            “Baby beach?” they repeated in rough English. 

            “No…  Boca Grande,” I said.

            “Baby beach?” they repeated.

            “Thanks…” we said and headed back to our car. 

My uncle’s girlfriend had told me to visit baby beach.  Apparently you can wade 100 feet out and still be only waist deep in water with few waves.  This sounded worse than our home beach.

            We drove for a bit until we came across a car appearing to be driven by locals. 

            “Can you tell us how to get to Boca Grande?” one of us asked.

            “Baby beach?” the driver inquired.

This scene repeated itself about three more times.  We knew if we were going to find the rough waters, it would be on our own.     

            Aruba is home to 100,000 inhabitants representing over 40 different nationalities.  Twelve native languages are common on the island, so though most residents speak English out of commercial necessity, most do so with such thick accents it is almost impossible to understand.  However, the people who live here are some of the nicest you will ever meet.  I asked one local why people were so hospitable.  He asked how I would feel if I woke up every morning in paradise.  It almost never rains and the sun is always shining.  You are never more than minutes from a beach.  This place makes people happy. 

 I got to know one local rather intimately while getting my nails done as my mother-in-law was getting a massage.  She told me that her goal was to make people enjoy their vacations.  She works seven days a week because she never wanted to deny someone their enjoyment as they escaped life for awhile.  The woman explained that it made her especially happy to provide services for guests like my mother-in-law.    

            “How bad is she?” she whispered in my ear as she leaned over.

            “Bad...” I said.  “She is not receiving treatment anymore, so it’s just a matter of time.” 

All trip I’d wondered if people knew Debbie had cancer.   I thought of how I once heard that the worst part about losing your hair is that your disease enters a room before you do.  Now I realized I was an idiot.  Of course people knew she was sick.  Her bald head bobbed up and down in the water as we snorkeled, she would run off to the bathroom several times during some meals, and her eyes sometimes looked sad and distant even in this paradise.    

We knew that the road system basically stopped outside of the tourist section of Aruba.  Jeeps were available for rental to roam through the sandy hills in the desert section of the beach.  My brother-in-law was headstrong and determined that our car could make the trip.  With no map we decided to just get off the road and head north until we found something we liked. 

At night Roger, Sephus and I go swimming in the ocean.  We are alone.  It is almost pitch black except for the glare of the moon off the water.  As we wade we move our arms back and forth to skim the top of the water.  It is serene and therapeutic.  This trip is for Debbie, but it is for us as well.  We have grown closer than ever this summer but talks have centered around Debbie’s calorie intake, chemo options, and opinions of doctor competency. 

            Whether or not to come was a big debate.  This was supposed to be my husband’s and my real honeymoon to celebrate our one year anniversary.  We could hardly afford to take ourselves let alone the rest of the family.  Was she too sick to travel so far?  Could they accept their kids paying for an extravagant trip?

            I thought we had made the wrong decision when we got to the airport and they would not let her on the plane because she had a hospital, not state issued birth certificate.  It fit the Murphy’s Law curse that had followed her during this illness: “This is completely curable in all but five percent of patients…” “Only three percent of the two percent that have a severe reaction to the first medicine react poorly to the second…”  “She is seeing a burn doctor in addition to her oncologist because the anti-seizure pills have caused her skin to chemically burn itself from the outside in…”

            One morning Debbie and I sit underneath a palm tree hut.  We laugh while watching Sephus and Roger build sand castles.  Until I met my husband he had never been to the beach.   Now he and Roger kneel, swim trunks brushing the sand, seeming like children.  Big brother tells little brother to get more and more water for the creation.  Debbie smiles, closes her eyes and puts on her headphones.

            As I hear her humming, “Aruba, Jamaica, ooh I want to take ya,” I know we have made the right decision.  

            Once we were deep in the sand ruts made by the drying sun, we found ourselves bobbing up and down as the car slipped in and out of the holes.  The car would get stuck from time to time.  We discovered that the best thing to do was have several of us get out and walk next to the car to change the weight distribution.  This was not easy.  Eighty degrees along the coast is not the same as eighty degrees in the desert.  The sun would beat down through the cloudless sky and scorch the earth.  The hot dirt seeped in through my flimsy black flip flops, along with the occasional cutting rock.  We were thirsty and sweaty.   My mother-in-law was a nervous wreck.  She figured we would get stuck and not be able to get out. 

            Although there was something obviously risky about taking a car off the beaten path, I never really worried.  Roger had always been cautious, and I believed he would not lead us into danger, especially in a car whose owners had his credit card on file.  I tried to champion for him when the arguments started about turning around and not risking our lives.  As my reward he would sometimes let me stay in the car when his dad and brother had to get out.  Of course, none of the cars in Aruba came equipped with air, but the roof offered a slight shade.  Plus, I could soak in the beauty of the strange landscape.  I had been to several tropical islands but could not get over the amazement of seeing cacti in a small area surrounded by beach.  It seemed strange to me that the two could coexist so close together.  However, never could you really see both the beach and the desert at the same time.  Each made the other hard to remember.    

           

            The one rule of the trip is that we were not allowed to talk about it.  But Debbie broke the rule as she and I sat alone on the patio the last morning of our trip.  We had sat outside everyday after swimming and dinner.  The water that evaporated from our legs left abrasive salt which chafed me in my regular clothes put on for the plane ride home. 

            “I don’t worry too much about Sephus,” she said.  “He has you… plus he has always been better about moving on.  Roger worries me.  He seems to get stuck in the past.” 

            I know it is important that I let her talk but I am not sure how to validate her comments.  I say something… but now I cannot remember what.  I try to imagine something poetic I can use to fill the missing holes in my memory but come up blank.  There is simply nothing beautiful to say in response to worries like this. I guess a mother knows her sons. 

           

            As our tiny car struggled up the washed out road to top yet another rocky hill, even I started to convince myself we may have made a bad decision. At this point the novelty of the uniqueness of the tropical desert had worn off.  I was no longer snapping pictures of cacti or goats.    I was done.

But at the crest of the hill, the most beautiful thing I had ever laid eyes on popped into vision.  A tiny crescent shaped cove lay hidden at the edge of this dessert.  Large cliffs of coral created a hideaway just for us.  We parked the car and ran for the ocean.  The waves were more than the boys had hoped for.  They jumped in with reckless abandon and let the tide pull them under time and time again. 

            I enjoyed it for as long as I could but found the abuse to be too much after awhile.  The seaweed that collected in my swimsuit as I was knocked down became obnoxious.  I headed off to the blanket to sit by Debbie and admire this haven.

Although we knew this private body of water to be part of a much larger ocean, the circle made by the cove caused it to appear as a sanctuary.  Perhaps this land and water truly touched no other.  I wish desperately to describe the whole landscape but no words exist.  All senses were appealed to.  My skin was sprayed with water that beat off the coral.  The roar of the ocean and rush of water calmed and beat out the sounds of all else.  We felt like kids who had stumbled across something they were not supposed to find. 

       Debbie and I found ourselves nostalgic.  We talked about trips to the beach from her childhood.  She told me how her sister Susie would always get seasick and how they would sing Beach Boy songs while they swam.  As we conversed, water washed into the mini holes created by sand and rock.  We swished our toes in the clear pools and listened to the shouts from the boys in the distance as they disappeared and reappeared.  We bathed in the sun.  We were happy. 

            I have always found grief to be a bit like the ocean.  It knocks you over from behind.  You are not sure how you will ever survive these falls.   You suck in salt water and your nose burns as tears well up in your eyes.  The sand scratches your body.  You paddle and struggle to get your own two feet back on the ground, but you are not in control.  Then suddenly you find yourself standing.  You may even admire the power of the ocean.  You brush tiny seashells off your legs and convince yourself you can handle this when another wave sneaks up behind you…   

            Eventually some hard core local surfers pulled up in Land Rovers.  We visited with them and found they snuck out here daily but rarely saw a tourist unless one wandered away from a jeep tour.  They seemed happy to share their secret for a bit. 

They asked us how we got there and laughed when they saw our car in the distance.  There is no way you will get out of this they assured us. 

We assured them we would.  

On The Romance of Teaching

            I don’t usually romanticize teaching.  Most days I don’t feel like I change anyone’s life.  I feel like I misfire more often than not.  Much of our time is spent wrestling copy machines, asking students to stack chairs, reminding adolescents not to run in the hall, and dodging groans as you torture kids by requiring them to read eight pages on their own.  It’s kind of like parenting in the mundane repetitive tasks required to care for little people.  But every once in awhile I have a moment where the magnitude of what I do on a day to day basis takes my breath away. 

            I started this year a little grumpier than I would like to admit.  Twelve days before the students showed up I learned about Amendment Three which will show up on Missouri's ballot come November and which will allow many people with very little understanding of how teacher tenure really works to vote to eliminate it while tying teacher evaluation to student performance.  As someone who solely serves students who perform below grade level this scares me.  Because you know I love a good medical analogy, I quickly decided that being a reading intervention teacher is kind of like being an oncologist.  Yes – success feels that much better when the stakes are high, but it’s harder to come by, and we fail more often than we would like because of factors often out of our control.  I spent the next few days talking to Sephus about the absurdity of the assumption that there were these amazing potential teachers who could save us all waiting in the wings foiled by sucky teachers with tenure standing in the way…  Nine days before students showed up I found out that I would not have the salary step that was frozen in 2009 restored despite believing all summer that this would finally be made right.  Many of my colleagues will finally be earning the minimal amount more that they should have been making for over four years now, but I won’t.  I am being punished through a technicality for taking a little bit of time off to better myself through earning my PhD.  This came on the tail end of six volunteer days for the district during what should have been my last days of summer with my own children.  Four days before the kids came I realized that the set up of my classes would prevent me from using the units I worked so hard to plan last year.  All this plus a lack of time to really get my room and lessons ready left me feeling stressed and under-supported and under-appreciated. 

            Don’t get me wrong.  I was not grumpy with the kids for a second – well except for maybe once during my overfilled seventh hour on a brief occasion when I had to ask too many times for their attention.  I truly enjoy my students.  I lit up when my advisory students returned to me a year wiser and taller.  I fell in love all over again with 6^th graders who asked me adorable questions like “what do you do for a living” and “are you new around here because I don’t recognize you” (after setting foot in the building for the first time).  I smile and exuberate energy all day, but when the kids leave I slump in my chair overwhelmed by what the year holds for me.  Some of this came from juggling Maggie being sick the first week of school, but a lot of it came from how incredibly unromantic and taxing teaching can be,

            I often sit at teacher of the year presentations and think how desperately I want to win a recognition like that some year – not because of the accolades, but because as I hear the winners described I want to be them.  I want to care that much and work that hard.  I teach classes at MU each year  about being a teacher, and I share all the secrets to being great  while knowing how impossible it can seem to be all those things at once.  It was easy to talk about when I was not in my own classroom.  But this year, I am teaching five hours a day – I haven’t done that since 2006 – and I have about twenty more students than I did last year.  I decided this would be the year that I gave it my all every hour.  I lesson plan for two hours a night after my own children go to bed; I have already conferenced with my students one on one to give them formative feedback; I implemented cooperative learning that required a new room set up during week one; I have asked for letters from parents about children and read them voraciously.  I am trying to be the teacher I would want for my daughters, and it’s exhausting, and I came home grumpy today…          

            Then I went to Avery’s softball practice.  She has the sweetest coaches.  They exemplify the passion I hope to emulate in the classroom.  They are cheerleaders, and instructors, and buddies.  They redirect with kindness.  And the best part is that one of them was my student my second year of teaching.  I watched him today as he (in my opinion) gave Avery the tiniest bit extra attention as her coach.  He was concerned when she didn’t get to bat when it was her turn.  He quietly offered suggestions after each swing with a voice that implied he wanted her to make a hit as badly as she did.  It occurred to me that he did this because of a relationship – the relationship between teacher and student.  Maybe she means a little more to him because I knew him at age 14.  He is not a student I have really thought about much after he left my room because he came in and did his job without making a big splash.  Plus, after 15 years of 80-100 or even more kids a day it is easy for them to run together.   We meet too many students to maintain ongoing relationships, but for the year we have them they are ours and we are theirs.  I started thinking about how wonderfully unique teaching is, and I was moved beyond words.  You see your doctor once or twice a year, your banker maybe once a week, your waiter maybe only once period…  but teachers and students are together five days a week, 180 days in service.  Who else can you claim that about?  I felt so blessed this evening when I realized I am in the business of building relationships and therefore, building people.  And I looked at this student and the good man he had become – not because of me or Oakland, but because that’s what most of them go on to do.  They become good people, people who are kind enough to volunteer coach ten little girls in softball, and we get to meet them and spend meaningful time with them along the way.  Someone that lucky has no right to be grumpy. 

What a blessing my job is.  What a joy teaching can be.  What a beautiful romance to be a part of.