“And there's a million things I haven't done.
But just you wait, just you wait...”
~ “Alexander Hamilton”, Hamilton
For me, a calling is an intense belief that God requires me to embrace a vocation in order to make the world a better place. At one time or another, I have felt one of four callings: to become a healer, a soldier, a priest, and a teacher. Some times they have appeared strong and forceful, revealing an obvious path. Other times they have been subtle, even nested in other callings. Or, they have been all together hidden, emerging after years of contemplation. As I have grown older, I have begun to realize that each one of the original four can take on many forms.
Finally, as I enter the second half of my life, it has been made clear to me, I need to combine all four into a single path.
I am alone in a room, on the second floor, near the corner of my house. While sitting upright, in a comfy recliner, typing away at a laptop, I am searching for a direction. A fan hums next to me, a bird chirps outside, and people act out their own stories in other rooms. At the moment, I am struggling to express my thoughts on teaching. My mind has been turning the pages of my memory searching for inspiration. And, just as the light from an early summer sun fades, and the room begins to surrender to shadows, it has settled on the following.
(Please forgive any inaccuracies or disjointed imagery: such is the way of recollections.)
I hated my first year of teaching. Disliked my second. But by the third, I began to figure things out. And now, I miss it so much.
Yet, I almost quit that first year. Between the morning showers that filled with soapy water mixed with tears, lunch breaks spent composing myself in the janitor’s closet, a headmaster who was kind and patient, but unable to provide constructive advice, and meandering drives home on country back roads wondering if I had picked the right job, two things saved me.
The little devils in the third, seventh, and eighth grades wanted to see me quit. I did not want to give them that benefit.
And then there was that sweet little first grade girl, who would spend nine years at the school before graduating and moving on to high school.
The way this particular school worked meant I would have her as a student starting in the third grade and each year thereafter, until the eighth when she graduated. Also, each teacher was required to participate in the after-school program one day a week, which included observing and correcting a dozen students as they waited for their parents to pick them up. For some of them, including this little girl, it could mean up to three hours.
Thank God she was around for those three hours each week, or otherwise, I would never have made it.
I met her during my first after-school program experience, which included me yelling at the same boy for nearly two hours, chasing down reluctant and defiant older students, trying to keep parents from witnessing my lack of classroom management skills, and fighting the exhaustion of my fourth full day of teaching. (It was so bad, at one point, I threw someone’s backpack across the gym floor.)
She had long, lanky legs which wobbled when she ran, like a gazelle that had just been tossed out of her mother’s womb. And a naivete and ignorance of the world to match. But a sweetness to melt away the disappointment and disillusionment of a rookie teacher. (The first two would be true of her until about the sixth grade, and the last would continue afterward and beyond.)
I stole what moments I could to play with her, which meant bouncing a ball, larger than her head, back and forth between us. (Her parents were over six-feet tall, and I had heard that her mother played college level basketball.)
Besides those moments I was at home, time I spent in aftercare was the only occasions during a weekday that I felt happy and content. The rest of the school day was spent enduring anger, anxiety, frustration, and doubt. (Not entirely true, there were moments when plans fell into place, students were calm enough to learn, colleagues listened, and parents and students shared praise and forgiveness—just not as often as I needed.)
Then she grew, and I persevered. She would meet, embrace, and say goodbye to three dear friends; I would witness the hiring, firing, quitting, and resigning of at least a dozen teachers during that same period. Her academic and intellectual skills, as well as her grasp of the world, would lag for a few years more; my classroom expectations and personal patience would evolve at the same pace. Then by her seventh year, and my fifth, we thrived. In class, she was a model student, doing her homework, answering questions, reading and writing above and beyond the assignment. Outside of class, she was kind, compassionate, humble; respectful of teachers, and younger students; willing to volunteer with extra-curricular tasks. And, in the school’s annual musical stage production, she would move from meek chorus member in several productions, to a chatty girl in Tom Sawyer, then on to an engaging main love interest in a Polish epic, and wrap it up, in her last year, with a hilariously nervous and delightfully nagging Mrs. Bennet in Pride and Prejudice. I would end up becoming, to quite a few students, the following: a caring older brother; dorky, but wise uncle; generous cook; willing chauffeur; attentive therapist; and inspiring mentor.
In other words, she became a good student, and I, a good teacher.
I owe so much to that bright and silly little girl who wanted to play ball with me so many years ago. That is what happens: students affect teachers as much as teachers inspire students. It is a meaningful, memorable relationship that cannot be easily forgotten.
And it is the reason why I cried when I received the news. Why I am tearing up right now as I type these words. And why, on an overcast day in mid-December I did one of the most difficult things I have ever done in my life.
I stood and looked at that little girl’s parents right before turning around and bowing my head toward her casket. (Before reaching the age of twenty-one, that little girl chose to end her second battle with brain cancer.)
No, she was not my daughter.
But she was my student.
And for me, that was close enough.
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