“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 on a couch. A faded yellow haze fills the room: an extended awning filters the bright afternoon summer sun. The buzz of the AC system intermingles with muffled music, pierced occasionally by the screams of excited children playing in a pool. As I begin to type, I am interrupted. A child walks into the room, asking for assistance with an iPad. When help is finally given, she retires to the basement. I am alone again, with my thoughts. The sounds of summer bliss fades away further into the background, as softened shadows of memories billow out from my unconscious.
(Please forgive any inaccuracies or disjointed imagery: such is the way of recollections.)
Some teachers will admit that students change you just as much as you change them. I am one of those teachers. And, for me, there have been quite a few of those moments. One such experience involved a group of high school students, Halloween, a question, and a dose of humility. It was probably three to four years into my teaching career at the school, just after I realized how wrong I was about the art and practice of teaching--yes, it took me three years to figure it out. But my rapport with the students was still not as strong as it would become by the next year. That is why, when my high school students devised a surprise for me, they had to ask the headmaster for permission, who in turn had to carefully present the question to me. It was one of those queries that could unravel a relationship, or improve it. Both sides have to communicate their intentions effectively.
This was around the time when the high school was created as an extension to the well-established elementary school. The latter, which covered grades K-8, educated, at most, eighty students. Total. So, it should not be a surprise that the addition of grades 9-12 saw an increase of only ten to twelve new students. That situation created a close-knit group of teenagers. And gave them ample opportunities and incentives to hatch wild plots of mischief.
However, that mischief was tempered (or inflamed—depending on your own tolerance for that age group) by an intense amount of creativity that ran through the class. Among them were teenagers who could sing opera, play the piano, draw and paint, and spin tall tales during class presentation. Oh, and one particular student who had a knack for, and a desire to, impersonate me.
Because their teachers were literate, artistic, passionate, and patient, these students possessed an arsenal of quotes and allusions, plots and themes, characters and stories from which to draw when planning their devious machinations. And their bonds of friendship and general free spirit, gave them the courage and will to execute their conspiracies.
But our relationship had not fully developed, yet. We were unsure of each other's limits. Also, they knew best not to involve a teacher without the headmaster’s permission. And he knew I had progressed only so far. I needed a nudge in the right direction in order to grow more. He had to tread carefully; therefore, he asked me one question.
“Mr. Enna, are you comfortable with them impersonating you this Halloween?”
Like I said in the beginning, your students change you as much as you change them. At times they inspire you to transcend your fears and anxieties. They can also reshape seemingly intractable rules and expectations that you might have had about teaching. For example, that making fun of a teacher is a sign of disrespect or an act of unkindness. Sometimes, however, its how people show affection, demonstrate understanding, and accept change. The strength of the relationship will determine the consequences.
Because of their time at the school (and a little guidance from another teacher) my students observed the fine line between having fun and mockery.
Because I had matured as a person and a teacher, I said “yes”, and remained in suspense until that fateful Halloween day.
One last fact about me I need to share: because of my childhood experiences, I hated Halloween, and had no desire to celebrate it even with my students—my costumes sucked. However, the school I taught at embraced the holiday, and encouraged all the students to participate. They came up with creative ideas: a dust bunny, the floor of a movie theater, a bookworm, among many others. In addition, the students had to present skits to the parents and teachers. Lasting a few minutes, they were usually adaptations of stories (The Tell Tale Heart, Frankenstein, Euripides’ Medea), or recitations of poetry (”The Raven”, “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner”, Shakespearean sonnets).
That year, a freshman boy decided to dress up like me, while his classmates acted out a morality play on stage.
This is how the scene unfolded. Being the oldest, the high school students were the last to perform. The three young ladies of that class, dressed up in butterfly wings, acted as the Muses, sharing a series of stories with the audience. I stood on a table in the back filming (one of my many hats while teaching at that school), unaware of exactly where all this was heading. With each new tale, a boy from the class would come out on stage. Apparently, each one was some sort of monster. Though, after all these years, I must confess, I did not pay too much attention. For some reason I was distracted (to this day, I cannot remember why). That was, until, I managed to focus in on the last few lines the Muses were reciting, in terrified tones. It went something like this, “And the worse of those nightmarish creatures to inspire dread in the hearts of students…”
And that’s when it happened. Dressed in khaki pants, a blue long-sleeved, buttoned-down shirt with a tie, hair stiffened with gel and combed to the side, arms and hands positioned like a Tyrannosaurus Rex, the freshman boy marched down the middle aisle from behind me, straight towards the stage. But neither those girls’ narration, nor this student’s costume would have sealed the deal on that most memorable of Halloweens. It is what he said--correction, what he shouted--repeatedly on his way to infamy that drove the whole scene home.
“No. NO. NOOOOO! NOOOOOOOOOOOOO!”
Apparently, that is what my high school students found most quotable from my daily history lessons. (Apparently, I had a habit of saying "no" so often, that the class presented me a Christmas gift in the form of a large red button stamped with "no". When pressed, six different recordings of people saying variations of "no" would play.)
Sigh. I’ll confess one more thing before closing out this tale of teaching. Having just written all this out, and knowing my students so well, a small part of me is now realizing that they might have in fact been mocking me. How I took it that day and up until this moment, and how they meant it, may end up being two different things. It will not surprise me that the next set of emails and texts from them will start out with “LOL”, “OMG”, and “ROTFL”. Followed by the sympathetic “Oh, Enna…”
But the joke is on them, because I know in the end, that a good part of who they are today (and that group especially, have a lot to be proud of), stems partly from my commitment to teach them something, anything, despite their every attempt, as teenagers, to challenge me.
Why am I so sure I influenced them? Because, otherwise, one of the Muses would never have had lunch with me in early January after returning home from her teaching excursion in China. Another of the Muses, between providing singing lessons and studying for her masters program in music, would not find time to talk for two hours on the phone with me at least four times a year. And one of those boys, who played a lesser monster, both on stage and off, would not bother to use me as a reference, share his work and life experiences with me, and have invited me to his wedding. Finally, that awkward little freshman, who had the audacity to impersonate me (or was too scared too say no—those Muses were good at getting what they wanted), would not include me in his ongoing projects.
So, yeah, maybe they were mocking me that day. Maybe not. No matter what, all of us walked away from that Halloween experience much better for it.
(To be continued…)
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