Optimism and Cherry Blossoms

I normally hang out in my classroom for awhile at the end of the day so students can come and see me for help -- or just to check in and say hi and eat chocolate from the not-so-secret stash I try to have around. I know exactly when I need to head to my car to pick up my daughter at her classroom door; I have it timed almost to the minute.

Today, though, when no one appeared in my room after the last bell, I thought briefly about catching up on a few details for Monday -- and then I shoved everything haphazardly in my book bag and dashed to the parking lot. I think I beat a couple of the kids leaving school, even. The afternoon was cool and irresistibly sunny, and I decided in that moment that I would drive home, throw on my running clothes, and jog for thirty minutes before Suzannah was let out of school.

It was the right decision.

I’ve spent the entire week recovering. Last week I felt the beginnings of allergies, the telltale sniffles and phlegmy cough, and instead of resting sensibly over the weekend I chaperoned an all-night lock-in at my school. I felt pretty terrible the next day, stuffy and wheezy and exhausted and disoriented, but I was running on pure adrenaline for the entire night, and it was actually a really phenomenal experience. I spent all of my blurry waking hours on Saturday yapping about it to my husband. Was it worth the weekend I lost? Absolutely, because what I lost in sleep and brain cells and productivity I gained in newfound awe of the kids at our school and pure love for my job.

But then in the midst of all this renewed energy, I coughed and sneezed and took a lot of Nyquil, and I completely lost my voice by Tuesday. I drank a lot of tea. Today I felt more or less normal again, and the beautiful sunshine called. The cherry blossoms are bursting along the streets. I’m a girl who loves the winter, but I am so ready for spring.

A year ago exactly, I was serving on a jury for two weeks following a seemingly endless stretch of fevers and colds and senior IB orals and lots of time out of the classroom. Two years ago, my daughter was sick with a flu that kept her limp and listless and refusing food for several days. Three years ago, my son had a kidney infection that kept him feverish and frighteningly ill for well over a week. I’ve been a little afraid of March, but so far, this year, I’ll take the cherry blossoms, the cool afternoon sunshine, and the general optimism that hits me right around this time.

The truth is that March can seem like a long, draggy month in which we still worry about colds while we’re trying to shake off the last remnants of winter. At heart I’m still a Montana girl, so in my memory it’s all about dirty, melting snow and deceptively beautiful days, followed by a last blizzard or three and more melting snow -- the earliest spring days in the mountains are not the loveliest. I’ve traveled home over Spring Break a few times in the last decade, and sometimes it’s lovely and warm -- last year I jogged up the highway in nearly seventy-degree temperatures, matted brown grass at my feet -- and sometimes it snows. We spent Matt’s April birthday several years ago pulling our daughter around my parents’ yard in a sled.

But no matter the weather, late March is a turning point. Spring Break is just barely around the corner, and the rest of the year just flies after that. March is the month in which sophomores undergo the magical transformation from crazy little minions into cool, thoughtful humans who can have sophisticated, insightful conversations but who are still willing to play. They stop testing every little thing I say, but they don’t have Senioritis yet. Today I thought about my most challenging class of the year, about how three months ago I had to step outside just to breathe a few deep gulps of fresh air and put on my game face and as much of a smile as I could muster before they all came charging into my room every afternoon. And today I realized I haven’t felt like rushing home to frantically drink wine straight from the bottle or just skip that and run screaming into the woods in...awhile now. In fact, I told my husband tonight that it’s sad that we’re so close to the end of the year, relatively speaking, and I’m just now getting these kids where I want them. A week or two ago they were, frankly, acting like little shits, and I threw up my hands and said, “You know what? You guys make this hard. I’m trying. And honestly, when you act like this it really sucks to stand up here and care this much when you obviously don’t.” I wouldn’t have bothered with that line four months ago, but they’re at the point now where they might act like little shits but they really don’t want me to be unhappy with them. I sort of stormed back to my desk and said, “I can’t make any of you work. So it’s up to you. Work, or don’t -- it’s your choice.” They spent the rest of the period swarming my desk, literally pulling at my sleeves, and doing dumb things like telling jokes just to get me to smile. It wasn’t like they were suddenly on fire to write literary analysis, but they seemed to not want me to be sad. That’s something.

Last semester one of the kids in this class did quite literally nothing. He made no secret of hating school; he let me know within the first week of the first semester that he’s always hated school. He can be a smartass and a pain in the ass, but he also has this goofy little smile and an endearing sort of mischief without real malice. This semester, for some reason, he decided to see what would happen if he did an assignment or two. Just for kicks, I imagine, or because he’s been in enough trouble outside my class that he actually has to be on pretty good behavior. What happened is that he found himself with a passing grade. When I showed it to him, his eyes widened.

“I’ve never had that grade in English before,” he said.

And I’ve had a really great month or so with him. I am eternally optimistic, which is the reason I can keep doing this. But then we had a day in which he reverted to his maddening first-semester behaviors and acted like a little shit, and finally I said, “Look, if you can’t manage to be respectful for ten minutes while I explain your final project, which, I might add, is actually fun and creative, then you can find someplace else to be.” He shrugged, all attitude. “I’ll just wait outside,” he said. “Whatever.” And we glared at each other and he flounced out.

And it was easier to teach what I needed to teach to everyone else in that room, but I knew right away that I’d handled it badly. I was in a bad mood; he was in a bad mood. I can almost always redirect (or at least temporarily quiet) mildly assy behavior. I don’t really need to kick anyone out of my room. But I let him go. I let him opt out. And I let him hear that I didn’t need him, and that it wasn’t important for him to be there. Of course, that wasn’t my intent -- I was merely impatient and frustrated -- but his body language was pretty easy to read.

I didn’t see him for the rest of the week. When he came slouching through my door today, I pointed to my desk and said, “Pull up a chair -- let’s chat!” He did, without arguing, because I think he still knows I like him. Right away I said, “Look, I’ve been bothered by this all week.”

He interrupted me. “Because I didn’t do my essay?”

“No,” I said. “Because I made a bad call last time you were in class. I sent you outside because I was frustrated and, frankly, a little mad at you. But here’s the thing. That was a mistake, and I’m sorry. Because it’s more important that you’re in here, even when you don’t want to be, and it wasn’t okay for me to let you opt out. That’s not happening again.”

He pondered this, still trying to figure out if he was in trouble or not.

I pulled up the gradebook on my computer. “Look at this,” I said. “Look at what you’ve got. It would be ridiculous. Ridiculous. If you quit now. You’ve put in half a semester and you’ve got this. It’s just not acceptable to be done now. You’re going to finish the semester with a passing grade.”

He started to smile in spite of himself.

“And,” I continued, “I don’t care how much you bitch about reading. I don’t care how much you bitch about writing. I don’t care how much you bitch about school. I don’t care how much attitude you give me. I don’t care how pissy you are with me, or how much you grumble about what I’m making you do. This is my job and I care about it and I care about you and it’s pretty much all I know how to do and you are stuck with me and you are going to do this. Opting out isn’t an option. I’m going to be here, and you are too. Are we clear?”

He had an ear-to-ear grin at this point. I could have hugged him. I didn’t. I kept my Very Stern Face on.

And honestly? I don’t know if he’ll come through. I can’t control that. I can’t control much of anything that goes on in my students’ lives once they walk out the door of my classroom, and that’s part of the constant, daily heartbreak of this job. The thing is, though: I really, truly believe he just might, and that, more than the sunshine of this beautiful afternoon, is what propelled me through the blossoming streets of my neighborhood after school.