I cried at school today. Twice.
It's funny, kind of. Two days ago I started a Facebook post like this: "Sometimes teaching is hard because kids are hard. Hey, moms, you know how there are days when you want to just lock yourself in the bathroom and cry? Teachers have those moments too. Sometimes it's just incredibly defeating and demoralizing." But it wasn't the kids today, at all. Today it was the world in general, the absurdity of social media, the absurdity of adults on social media, and fucking ants.
I stepped into a bathroom stall at work today and permitted myself about thirty seconds of actual, honest-to-God, am-I-really-sobbing-in-a-bathroom-stall-at-work crying.
So, I mean, let's just jump right into it: this week my colleagues and I learned of threats of guns and shootings directed towards our school. My school, where I show up every day, where I've shown up just about every day for my entire adult life. This is my home. I don't take kindly to folks fucking with it. But look, I also do trust the police when they tell us they have investigated thoroughly and found no credible threat. They investigate far more threats than most of us ever hear about. So while I was pissed, I didn't go home and wring my hands about going to school. As my friend Kailey said, it literally never once occurred to me to not go to school today.
Which was perhaps why I was so furious when an elementary teacher at another school posted on social media last night that if she taught at my school, she'd for sure call in sick.
Well, isn't that nice for you.
And also: how dare you. You don't work there. You don't get to speculate about a situation you know nothing about. I floundered in my rage, which was all twisted up in my rage at the world in which we live, a world that includes this country where our students expect this anyway even though it doesn't have to be this way except for the fact that we refuse to even try to do anything about it.
Becky, one of my colleagues and dear friends, responded right away, far more eloquently than I could have in that moment: "The e-mail [to parents] says we have systems in place to keep school safe. I'm part of that system. Unless school's cancelled, my students will be safer and more comfortable with me, learning, than with a sub or with a stressed-out colleague covering my class during their planning." I chimed in then, to say that I'd be there too, of course. And then a bunch of our colleagues and friends followed in kind. Me too. I'm there. I'll be there.
My friend Shonda followed up with this: "Speculating about other people's work environments is not helpful. It's just like teenagers stirring up drama. We shouldn't be doing that to each other." At that point, the teacher from the other school deleted her post. Which, good. I was heartened by two things: that my co-workers instantly jumped in with a show of absolute love and solidarity, and that today my students called out the hysteria of adults in our community as precisely that: unhelpful and, frankly, ridiculous.
To be clear, I do not judge anyone who decided to keep their child home from school today. I received more than one e-mail from a parent who said, "I know it's probably a false alarm, but..." Six years ago, when Sandy Hook happened three thousand miles away, it took absolutely every ounce of human strength I had to not abandon my seventh period class and drive across town to pick up my own first grader. What I take issue with is inflammatory nonsense on social media, especially inflammatory nonsense spread by adults, inflammatory nonsense that fuels hysteria and spreads inaccuracies. This can cause real harm and it is not okay. I have no patience for the adults in my community who have jumped on social media to accuse our schools and the police department of not taking this seriously. What would "taking it seriously" look like? Canceling school for every threat? What? What information do you think you're entitled to, exactly?
Anyway, it literally never occurred to me (to many of us? Any of us?) to stay home. And Becky's response reminded me why. This is our job. Full stop.
And I wasn't scared to go to school today. I felt unsettled, but not out of fear -- more out of sadness. I felt overwhelmed by not only the reality that a great many of our students weren't coming to school because of threats of gun violence, but also by the backlash, and the feeling, once again, that somehow I've got to defend...something. Everything. Why I teach in public school, why I send my kids to public school. Things are pretty terrible sometimes, but also, teaching fills me with hope in a way that I'm not sure anything else could. Last week I read Pam Houston's beautiful new book, Deep Creek: Finding Hope in the High Country, and I found myself writing notes in the margins everywhere, things like, "I love that she is both an optimist and given to worst-case scenarios. I love you, Pam Houston." (Note: she wasn't writing about public education, she was writing about fires and climate change, and I know I'll likely reach for that book again in August when I fully expect to spend yet another summer reading about my homestate burning and breathing toxic, smoky air here at home, too. Because I'll need the hope in a different context.)
And it was a quiet day. Even on normally low-attendance days, like, say, the day before Thanksgiving break when we have our emergency earthquake drill and classes are short and almost nobody comes to class so we make hand turkeys, kids are still skipping all over campus, and the disruption in schedule makes us all the more aware of kids and their energy, somehow. Today, the walkways were silent and empty in a way I've never seen them during a school day. Ever.
So there weren't too many folks around to witness the moment when I cried over the ants I found in a great seething mass in my classroom. There were so many ants in my recycling bin they could have carried it outside themselves. One of my kids informed me that they were all over the floor near his desk. The floor itself seemed to be moving. Kids have been absolutely trashing the computer lab with food and that doesn't help, but the ants had already infested the classrooms around me and I've been strict about food in my room. It wasn't enough. They attacked. My principal sent an e-mail to those of us teaching in those rooms letting us know that they'd be sprayed over the weekend, and also, she will be enforcing a ban on eating in those rooms for the next month or so.
I found ants crawling on my desk. I took absolutely everything off of it and wiped it down with Clorox. I almost didn't even have it in me to put everything back on my desk. I thought that possibly the only thing I would be able to do in that moment was say, "Ah, fuck it," and just go home after all. It didn't help that I'd just come from a meeting I'd had scheduled for weeks, one that reminded me that I don't think I'm very good at working with adults. I played a solitary round of "What other job would I even be good at?" which is a thing I do when I'm all out of perspective.
I didn't go home. I walked to the staff bathroom and cried pitifully in the stall. Then I washed my face and brushed my teeth and went back to class, because what else was there to do?
*
I'd planned a fairly quiet teaching day anyway. It's April, and my kids are stressed. I know they need some space to breathe. Most of my kids did that somewhere else today, but the kids who showed up in my room -- well, I was glad to see them. I asked them if they were okay and if they wanted to talk. For the most part, they did seem okay, and they also wanted to talk. They asked me what would happen if. If. If. This, friends, is a conversation I have with my kids every single year now -- a real, immediate, in-the-moment conversation. This is the country in which we live. Tonight I talked to my own daughter about it. (It. What a giant It.) Her school had received a similar threat, though she hadn't heard anything about and she said everyone at school seemed fine. But she has already shared that she's had these conversations in her classes with her teachers too, bless them.
Near the end of the day, one of my students asked me if I'd considered staying home, and I said, "Not for a single moment." (I'd stopped weeping about the ants and my meeting by then, and I didn't tell him I had considered fleeing for entirely different and stupid reasons.) He asked me if I was scared. And I said, "Today? No. But that's not really the point. If we have school, this is where I need to be." Then he asked if I'd keep my own kids home, and I said, "Well, my daughter is sitting in her own English class right now, because I trust the systems we have in place to do they best they can for her, too. And I know her teachers are having the same conversations." I did not tell him these conversations break our hearts and fill the cracks with pure rage. I did not tell him that I pray for my children's teachers in a way I never thought I'd need to before I understood that this country sees a mass shooting just about every day.
"That's why I trust you," he said. (By the way, show me a teacher who says, in my presence, "At least the parents of the honors kids care enough about them to keep them home today," and I will show you a teacher who will not ever teach one of my children. Nope, no thank you MA'AM.)
Sometimes teaching is hard. Sometimes it is disheartening and demoralizing. I really wish I didn't cry so easily, and I wish I had thicker skin. I'd be healthier, probably, if I wasn't given to worst-case scenarios. At the same time, I'm a stubborn optimist and dammit, teaching still gives me hope. Sometimes there are these moments that are hard, and they are the moments that remind me that I want to be exactly where I am.
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