Teacher Appreciation Week

Last Sunday night, I called in for a sub. Suzannah seemed perfectly fine when she woke up that morning, but by mid-afternoon she was sniffly and flushed. She took a nap in her room, which is just not a thing she does, ever. So by Sunday evening, knowing how tough it can be to actually get a sub on a Monday morning, I went ahead and made the call. I tucked my daughter into bed early and wrote a lesson plan.

Monday morning at dawn, Suzannah emerged from her room sobbing. “Do I have to stay home from school?” she cried. “I’m fine.”

I took her temperature three times over the next half-hour. Perfectly normal. She was sniffly, although how much of that was from a cold and how much of that was from her tears wasn’t clear. Anyway, I didn’t fight her; I sent her off to school.

“She’s weird,” I said to Matt.

Really, though, she just loves school.

Thursday night was Kindergarten Jump Start, and Suzannah couldn’t wait to show her brother the ropes. She ran to her kindergarten teacher for a hug, led Isaac through the kindergarten classrooms, and explained where he would keep his things and how he would get his lunch and milk every day. Really, there didn’t seem to be much of a need for Matt and me to even be there. And my heart just burst with the bittersweet gratitude of it all.

It’s Friday night at the end of Teacher Appreciation Week, and my heart is bursting with gratitude over my own job, too. I even had a terrible sixth period today, sort of, although it didn’t bother me very much because the sun was shining and it’s Friday and it’s May, and while May is really the worst month to be a teacher (I know I’ve written about this before) it is bearable because it’s May. I can count the days. (I can count the days, but I generally don’t, because I think counting days is tricky territory. As a new teacher years ago I watched a nearly-retired teacher count the days starting in September, and she was grumpy all the time.)

I’m really ready to be done with this year. At the same time, I am already really excited for next year. I think this is a good sign. But I think it’s also important to remind myself that I wouldn’t be so excited for next year were it not for the deep blessings of this one.

I love my kids this year. Even the kids in my sixth period, if I’m honest, because it is a completely awful combination of kids but they are not terrible kids. Some of them are damaged kids. One of them seized my heart so hard this year that I think about her every day even though she dropped out of school a couple of months ago, and the fact that she comes back every few weeks to let me know she’s alive and give me a hug means so much to me. Sometimes I feel like I’ve failed her, but sometimes I think that the fact that she knows I love her and will sneak on to campus just to give me a hug thirty minutes before the end of the day has to count for something. She didn’t really do work for me, but she tries not to scream “Fuck you!” across the room every time she’s annoyed because she knows I find it rather upsetting. And then there are my freshmen, a class I was not looking forward to teaching because freshmen are generally not my thing and I never teach them -- well, surprise. I adore the ever-loving snot out of those babies. They have been the most exuberant, ridiculous, dramatic, lovable, enthusiastic bunch of kids and I think they are going to be just an absolutely fantastic class as they go through high school. And words can’t even express how much I love my juniors this year. I taught many of them as sophomores, and watching them grow from the beginning of sophomore year to the end of junior year has been a deep joy. The kids who were new to me in September have become incredibly special to me as well, and they’ve adapted to my raging, cajoling, pleading, and general wind-bagginess with tremendous grace. I love that so many of them feel comfortable enough to hang out in my room during lunch, or come after school to check in, or update me on things that have nothing to do with English class. I will miss this class. They’re one of the reasons I’m not entirely eager for June.

The other thing -- a really important thing -- is that I work with the best of the best. I mean it. The best of the best. I think all of us who teach hear, at some point, the well-meaning words of our non-teaching friends: “If only there were more teachers like you!” And I appreciate those words when people who love me say them, especially when I’ve had a bad day or when I share a story I think might be funny or poignant. I think the intention is to be supportive and loving, and friends, I do so appreciate that.

But -- this is important -- I am not in the trenches alone.

The simple fact is that I would not be able to do this job if I did not have the incredible network of love and support and dedication and sheer brilliance of the teachers who work alongside me. Colleagues and I have arrived at the conclusion that Teacher Movies, while fun (sometimes), have done a real disservice to the public perception of teachers -- they somehow give the idea that public schools are filled with apathetic or exhausted teachers and one inspirational badass comes along to save the day and change lives.

I work with a lot of inspirational badasses.

They stay after school for our kids, they team up to make sure our kids’ struggling families have food on their tables at night, they let these kids cry in their rooms after school, they throw dignity out the window to be silly with our kids, they get real with our kids, they challenge our kids, they hold our kids accountable, they show up long before the sun rises and stay until it’s dark and they haven’t had dinner, they listen, they laugh, they hug, they push, they provoke.

My colleagues have cried because of and for their students just like I have. They’ve shared their stories of total absurdity just like I have. They’ve thrown out things they’ve taught forever and started from scratch, years in, because they are not complacent and they know that kids don’t fit neatly into the spaces left by students who filled their rooms five years ago. I work with teachers who understand what is required of them by people who don’t know what it means to teach real kids, and I watch them do what real kids need -- often (usually) with limited funding or support. I teach with people who work hard, get tired, get angry, get beat-up in the media, get beat-up in the comments section of any news article about any education issue ever, and still open their doors and their hearts and their arms, often to kids whose parents are the ones beating them up.

I’m speaking in generalities here because this is a public blog, but every single thing I’ve just written about calls to mind a very specific story of a particular teacher and a particular student. So many of them.

And I’m grateful. My own child has had four very different teachers and loved each one of them. She has been supported and nurtured, pushed and encouraged. These teachers have set the tone for her schooling as much as I have. It’s not luck. I’m grateful, but it is not luck. Ten years ago when I went through my master’s program I worked with a lot of elementary school teachers, and the thing I still remember is being impressed and humbled by how much they loved their kids, first of all, and how they could just do what they needed to meet kids where they were at, standards and superintendents be damned. This is what it is to be a teacher. Standards, laws, school boards, systems -- they change and they break and they change again and they get a little bit more fixed or a little bit more broken. I trust the teachers who know my children. They are what matters and they are what works.

And if I’m doing any of this right myself, this messy and heartbreaking business of teaching kids something, whether that be English or basic human civility, it’s because I’m doing it with other people whose hearts are in it with me. They’re the people who’ve pushed and encouraged and supported and encouraged me, and if I am any good at all, at all, it is because I’ve learned from and alongside people who love this as much as I do.

To all of those people? I need, admire, and appreciate you.