The complicated, irrational in-between

Monday ended terribly this week. I write this down to remember, to remind myself that all Mondays after the long Thanksgiving weekend are terrible, just like all Mondays after winter break are terrible. I try to remember this, so I don't take it so personally when these days just suck. It's just that I ended this particular Monday with my toughest class, and it didn't go well, at all. It's not that these kids are awful, or that they're awful to me; it's not like that. But they're tough in other ways, and it means that I've felt completely unmoored all year in my seeming inability to teach this class well, when it's normally a class I could teach in my sleep. But also, there's my wake-up call, right? If I think I can teach a class in my sleep, clearly it's time to shake things up. And I've tried. I've tried to think of this year as an opportunity to resist complacency, to practice what I preach.

Still, it's hard sometimes, and on Monday it was really hard, and I was so angry and frustrated that I just shut down. I shut the class down. I think it's probably safe to say that every one of us in that room was fairly miserable by the time the bell rang. I was barely holding back tears. I couldn't bring myself to listen to my favorite Christmas music in the car on the way home; I just drove, in sullen silence. I'd thought I might try to squeeze in a jog before I picked up the kids, but suddenly I felt so drained and defeated that I merely changed into pajama pants.

And on Monday night, I didn't sleep. I couldn't turn off my brain -- that dumb old hamster wheel thing again. I mean I really didn't sleep. Sometime around, I don't know, 2:00? 2:30? I left the bedroom and curled up on the living room couch, worried that my tossing and turning would keep Matt awake. Sometime past 3:00 I just gave up. I sat at the dining room table and graded papers, angrily. I crawled into bed forty-five minutes before my alarm was set to go off, and I think I dozed some.

I felt crazy on Tuesday morning. I tried to run a meeting. I think I did a terrible job. I had a somewhat undignified meltdown in front of a colleague/mentor/friend, and she rolled her eyes and sent me gently on my way to teach a couple of sophomore classes. The sophomore classes were fantastic, but not because of me; it's because I've simply been blessed with some incredibly fantastic sophomores this year. I have to remember this, too. I teach about a hundred sophomores and I'd say about ninety-eight of them are really wonderful, and the other two are kind of a pain right now but I also suspect that they will be pretty great by the time they're seniors, and that they will wish they could go back and kick their sophomore selves right in the butt.

Later I learned that my colleague/mentor/friend went to a senior girl that I've taught since her sophomore year and said, "You know how Ms. Winslow was there for you every day last year when you were all, I quit I quit I quit I quit I quit? Well, now you need to go take care of her." And I'm not exactly sure what she told her about my eighth period class, but this girl recruited a friend of hers (also a completely wonderful girl I was lucky enough to teach last year) and they appeared at the beginning of that eighth period class to deliver an impassioned speech about sucking less at their education, respecting themselves and each other and me, not wasting their time, and the importance of giving a damn. It was beautiful. I have no idea if it made any difference to the kids listening to them, although you could have heard a pin drop when they left the room. It did, however, fill me with such deep gratitude, because I have been able to watch these girls grow into fierce young women. And it's beautiful.

The class didn't go terribly after that. All told, it went pretty well. I felt that it might be possible to go on.

On Friday, one of my kids wasn't in class. She's one of my toughest, for sure. She made it clear on day one that she absolutely did not want to be there, and I thought she'd find a way to drop. But she didn't. She stayed, and it turns out I liked her, and she seemed to not hate me, and even though all I'd ever heard about this kid was that she never went to class and never really tried, she never skipped my class. And because I teach with this stupid, unkillable optimism, I kept believing she'd buy in. Not right away, but eventually. Maybe not even this semester, but eventually. I told her recently that I expect her to pass. I just expect it. And she nodded, because I said, look, if I leave that door open you'd damn well better walk through it.

She wasn't in class on Friday, but she poked her head in after school. She didn't have her cell phone in her hand for a change. She walked over to my desk slowly, shyly. I think I greeted her warmly. I hope I did. It's kind of my personal rule for myself: no matter what, when a kid walks into my room, even if they're a perfect shit, I smile and say hello. And this kid isn't a perfect shit; she is, in fact, a good girl who has some things to figure out. And part of her figuring things out right now means that she's dropping out of school to pursue her GED. I felt inexplicably sad. I'm not sure why, because her current high school situation isn't working, and maybe she just needs something different. All the same, I can't help but believe I could have tried to provide that something different. But then she said something that just leveled me.

"I just wanted," she said slowly, "to thank you for trying with me, until the end. No other teacher has kept trying to help me for this long. And I just wanted you to know I really appreciate it."

I had no idea what to say in that moment, other than that I'll miss her, which happens to be true. But as soon as the door closed behind her I lost it. This surprised me. I'm still trying to figure out why, to be honest. Tears leaked out of my eyes the entire way home. I said to my wisest friend last night, "It just feels futile sometimes. I've been crying for a damn hour and I don't even really know why." He replied, "Tears for wins, tears for losses, and sometimes tears for the complicated, irrational in-between." That's about it, I suppose.

But I slept last night. And I know that even if I couldn't help this girl, I can't stop trying to help the ones who show up in my room on Monday, because the fact that it's hard, whatever it may be, doesn't give any of us permission to quit. The fact that none of us can ever be or do enough on our own doesn't mean we get to step away.