At the End of the Day: When Teaching Isn't Enough

We usually have student-led conferences once in the fall, usually in early November, and once in the spring, usually in late March. It's a few days of crazy: two late nights, two long days, and one early morning. Families filling the room, Leadership students parting the crowds with their carts of snacks and water bottles, the air in the library or the cafeteria too hot, the noise too much.

It's exhausting, especially for an introvert. After our conferences I don't want to talk to anyone for awhile.

However, I also kind of love them. I honestly don't dread them. I even look forward to them. Because when we teach well over a hundred students, we don't often get the chance to steal a few minutes with each one of them, one-on-one, to say: "Let me tell you what I love about you." And to say that to their parents. And when their parents are expecting the opposite, that matters so much.

I was skeptical about moving conferences to a remote setting, where we only met with our advisory classes, because parents want to talk to their kids' teachers. But we're surviving a pandemic and we're all doing the best we can do, so Zoom conferences it is. And I have to say, there are some things I don't hate about this.

First of all, I'm lucky enough to have almost all of my advisory students in my English classes, and the ones I don't teach fit in so beautifully with the dynamic of our group that I enjoy my time with them, too. Second of all, I think I've actually met with more parents. Often, during those frenetic after-school and evening hours, students will come to conferences alone because their parents are working, or they're juggling schedules with more than one child, or they're tired. This year, parents can join a Zoom from work. Or parents in different households -- when that works for them -- can join a meeting together without having to share a physical space. Or they can schedule back-to-back conferences for their children at different schools without adding in driving time and wondering how they'll manage to get everyone fed at a reasonable hour. 

I think about accessibility a lot these days. We're doing our best; we can always do better. We've learned a lot this year, and I hope we don't lose that in a rush to return to "normal." And I don't know what "normal" means anymore.

Here's what I do hate, though:

When a student logs on for a solo conference and keeps their camera off when they'd normally turn it on. They know me; I taught them last year, before the Pandemic. We've had our moments: good ones, terrible ones, plenty in between. I've been pissed at this kid, I've loved this kid. Both, at the same time. I've seen this kid grow. I've seen this kid slack, I've seen this kid work hard. I've lost sleep over them, and I've been mad about that.

I've heard this kid's voice in so many contexts over the past two years: Snarky. Sarcastic. Assy. Apologetic. Sorry. Sincere. Overwhelmed. Determined. Playful.

On my end, I've threatened, cajoled, reasoned, laughed, growled, sighed.

This is teaching. This is love, at the end of the day. Exasperated, worried, amused, frustrated, angry, concerned, hopeful love.

When this student logs in for their solo conference, camera off, the silence stretching a bit too long, I ask: Are you okay?

And I hear it in their response, after the silence: "Ehh. I'm okay." I know their voice, and I know they are not okay.

And there is just fuck-all I can do about it, really. I can say, "Hm. Okay. I remain unconvinced, and I'm worried about you." And then I hear them crying.

And this is where I feel just fucking helpless. Because when kids cry in my classroom, I can offer them Kleenex. If they want it, I can offer a hand on their shoulder, or a hug. I can read their face, their body language, and know what to say, or know what to try. But when a kiddo is crying on the other side of a screen and I know it's partly because they already trust me, and when it's clear they are trying very hard to hide the fact that this is what is happening, I want to cry right back, even though I still believe that our kids don't need the added burden of their teachers' tears. (This rule does not apply when seniors leave my class for the last time, but that should go without saying.)

Do not tell me our kids need to be back in school for their mental health. If you are not a teacher, you need to stay in your lane, because teachers know this. We know this. We also know that sitting in English class, or showing up for a standardized test (let's be honest about the push to get our kids back to school) doesn't address their mental health needs. Maybe they do need to sit in a classroom with their English teacher, or their math teacher, or their music teacher. They do need other humans. So do their teachers. But that isn't enough to address "mental health," and it's insane to pretend otherwise. I will be there to listen on the other side of a screen; in a classroom, I will be there with a box of Kleenex and open arms. (Except...we're in a Pandemic, yes we are, still, and we're not supposed to get too close.)

I will think about this student all weekend. I will follow-up on Monday by sending a message in chat, by popping into a breakout room, by saying, "Can you please come to office hours today?" Maybe they will. But nothing about this is normal, and in a normal year, this wouldn't be enough anyway.

Home, and Why I Love It

This was Multicultural Week at my school -- a celebration of culture and identity and community. Yesterday, specifically, we focused on our school culture: sharing what we love, what makes us proud to belong there. And then we widened the discussion to include our city community as well.

I teach kids who are used to hearing their community deprecated, belittled, called "ghetto."

I've heard plenty of that myself. I've heard this from my friends. Some of them wonder why in the world I'd choose to live here, or friends of friends ask them why they'd want to visit. Really? There? Why? 

A few years ago, one of my colleagues even asked if I planned to send my children to "better" schools.

"Better than the school I teach in?" I asked. "Better than the best teachers I know have to offer?"

(Look, we know what this person meant by "better," right?)

(He told me I was being too sensitive, that he only had my "best interests" at heart. He also no longer works at my school.)

Shame on anyone, anywhere, who denigrates the communities they claim to serve. You may choose not to live there, people can live wherever they want, for all kinds of reasons, but own what you're really saying. Also, how dare you?

Anyway, I didn't grow up in the city I call home now, so I have no nostalgia for the "good old days," like the folks on the local community watch groups (toxic groups I left a long time ago; there is no such thing as a good "community" or neighborhood group on social media). I chose my community, I claim it as my home, and I am proud to do so.

Last month, I attended the Rainier Educators of Color Network Equity Conference (thank you, thank you forever, Tara, for inviting me -- I can't wait to invite more folks next year) and I wrote pages and pages in my journal that weekend. In our conversations with students this morning, I thought specifically about a few takeaways from that conference: that all of our students need to know that they are beautiful, and that we need to encourage them to celebrate the neighborhoods in which they live. That resonated with me. 

*

I will never forget the moment, years ago, when a white student asked me why I would actually choose to live here. His dad thought the neighborhood was "going downhill."

And I will never forget the moment, years ago, when a Black student asked me, Are there any Black people in Montana?

How could I respond? This student knew I loved her and wondered how I could love a place in which she couldn't see herself.

*

I've been thinking ever since about what it means to call a place home. Or, to be honest, I've been grappling with that since the first night I spent alone in my own apartment overlooking Pacific Highway, listening to the traffic on the street and the airplanes roaring overhead -- I lived in the flight path of the SeaTac airport in those days. I hadn't yet put down roots here, but I suspected I might. My best teacher once told me I would put down deep roots everywhere I went.

Yesterday I said to my students, "I chose to move here, and I choose to stay. I'm not stuck here. You might not have a choice of where you live right now, but know this: you are assets to our community, and our community is worth celebrating. And I'm here for it."

*

I am senselessly privileged, and I know this. We actually can choose to stay or go, but we choose to stay.

No one ever asks someone in Bozeman, Montana why in the world they'd want to end up there. I remember my student asking what I loved about my hometown, and I remember telling her that I loved the mountain air, the way I could fall asleep to the sound of the creek on quiet nights, and the view of Bozeman and the Bridger Mountains from Kirk Hill. The sunsets light the entire sky on fire. I love camping. I love the way the air smells. I told her that it was really just where my soul goes home. 

I meant everything I said, and I still do. I was raised to love my roots. But home means something different to me now.

*

I love so many things about where we live, in our cozy rambler in our ordinary little neighborhood. I can walk from our front door and down a steep, quiet street to the shore of Puget Sound. I love the way the fog hangs heavy over the huge trees in our neighborhood, the silence so thick the air seems almost textured with it, so thick you can almost pull it down with your fingers. I love the quiet in the late afternoons and evenings, lovely in the summers when we spend so much time in our backyard, eating lunch on the patio, the kids running through the sprinkler. I can drive for less than five minutes to the boardwalk along the waterfront, where I like to jog, and where I walked my pug every day after school to clear my head during my first year of teaching.

But it’s not just the trees, the water, the quiet in my corner of town—a corner of town where the neighbors haven’t changed much in nearly twenty years and other folks seem as rooted as I am. I love my city beyond the streets of my neighborhood. This is my community. Folks driving through will see the uninteresting chain restaurants, but people living in Seattle admit to sneaking into my city for the best Salvadorean food, the best Korean food. My son loves our local Indian and Thai restaurants, and I know where to get the best pho on Sunday afternoons. I have to drive a little farther to get to the independent coffeehouses, and we don’t have fancy cupcake shops nearby, but there are public schools in which we are deeply invested (and where we are proud to send our kids), teachers who work hard for all of their students, people who will leave food and groceries on my doorstep when my children have the flu, and a church that welcomes hungry or homeless folks. 

I became a teacher because it seemed to be the best way to combine my passion for using words to connect with other human beings and my belief that we are called to serve our neighbors. And who is my neighbor? 

I think of my students.

I think of the neighborhood mom who told me she thought our elementary school was going downhill (just like my white student's father) and of her discomfort when I asked her what she meant—knowing that nearby apartments and brown skin represented a fear she couldn’t bring herself to name. I thought of a friend posting on Facebook that she was ready to move, and her friend’s response: Get out while you can! There are some beautiful new homes in my subdivision! The commute is worth it!

I think of my students.

I do have the privilege of choice, and the stupid luck of landing exactly where we did without realizing, back when we bought our little house all those years ago, what a gift it would turn out to be. I'm not leaving. I'm not interested in "upgrading."

I think of my students. So many of them have deep roots in other places, too, but I hope they can find a way to celebrate where they are right now, without apology. And I hope all the folks who claim to care about them can honor that.

Hope, or something like it

The other night I was clearing out my medicine cabinet, getting rid of long-expired cold medicine, separated nail polish I haven't worn in a decade, things like that. A small container of muscle relaxers caught my eye. They expire tomorrow, a year after they were prescribed.

Isaac and I were driving home from his dentist appointment on an ordinary Tuesday afternoon last March when an older woman slammed into us from behind. We were completely stopped behind another car at a red light; she didn't even slow down. When she rear-ended us, our car slammed into the car in front of us.

Isaac didn't see it coming, and while he was terrified by the crash, the sickening metal crunch -- we both screamed -- he was perfectly fine afterwards, both immediately and in the days that followed. Our CR-V was only three years old, well designed to protect its occupants in a crash even when the car itself was a total loss, and his limber young body was relaxed when the car hit; he didn't see it coming.

I did see it coming, unlike everything else that would unfold over the coming days, weeks, months. I saw her speeding toward us in my rearview mirror, saw her not slowing. I couldn't do anything to avoid what I suddenly understood would happen, and my entire body braced for the impact. The next day I left school early with a terrible headache and a stiff neck and took myself to the doctor for X-rays. They came back okay, but the doctor recommended an appointment with a physical therapist.

I remember sitting in the waiting room with exactly one other patient, a flushed and lethargic woman who kept coughing weakly, her head dropping. She sat near the door; I sat as far away from her as I physically could. In early March, we weren't wearing masks yet.

*

That night I swallowed one of those muscle-relaxers before drifting into an uneasy sleep. 

I knew things were changing, but forty-eight hours earlier I was only beginning to adjust to the idea of holding student-led conferences by phone instead of flooding the school with families for three days. The next day, we learned that schools would be closed for six weeks. We had twenty-four hours to process this, and one day to gather up what we could and say good-bye to our students.

It's been nearly a year since I hugged one of my kids in D-7.

That last Friday, I expected our classes to be empty, but almost all of my students showed up.

“What about our assignments that are due this month?” 

“What about IB testing? Does that still start at the same time?"

“Are we really closed for six weeks? What about graduation?”

I couldn’t require my students to work during the break, or assign anything for grading. An issue of access and equity, we were told. I thought of my students who would be caring for younger siblings, who only had internet access at the public library—which, I was sure, would close as well. I thought about my students who would work extra shifts now, to earn money or to escape or both.

“None of us are going through this alone, even though it’s going to be hard to be apart," I said. "We’ll still figure it out together. I’m not really going anywhere. I’m going to check my e-mail at least once a day, and I promise I’ll respond to you. I’ll post ways to practice for the exams and we can have online discussions. It’s totally optional, so if you can’t do it don’t worry about it.”

They nodded.

“Try to get outside if you can,” I said. “Don’t stare at your phones all day. Clean your backpacks. Clean your rooms. Read! Read something that’s not for my class! Borrow one of my books!” I pointed at the bookshelf along the wall.

“Wait, we can borrow those?” asked one of my kids.

“What do you mean, can you borrow those? Why do you think I have them here? They’re not decorations, Babies. If you don’t borrow them, they’re just going to sit there.”

“I’ve borrowed tons of Winslow’s books!” said another. “I think I still have a couple, actually.”

“What do you think I’d like? Can you recommend something?”

I walked towards the bookshelf and they jumped up to follow me like little ducklings. When I pulled On the Come Up by Angie Thomas from the shelf and tried to hand it to one of them, her friend grabbed it before I had a chance.

“I’ve been waiting for this! Mine! I get this one!”

“Bro, what the hell."

“You can have it when I’m done. I’ll probably finish it, like, by Sunday."

“I beg and beg and beg you all to read,” I muttered. “And you do not read. And now look.” But I didn’t hide my smile.

At the end of class, I said, “You all drive me crazy. But you have no idea how much I’m going to miss you.” As I said that, I felt a sudden rush of tears to my eyes. 

I calculated quickly: if we returned in six weeks, I’d have two or three classes before they began their IB testing in May. My time with them as I had known it for the past two years had come to a sudden end, no matter what lay ahead.

They lingered after the bell, leaving slowly. Most of them stood in my doorway, waving.

“You have to go to French,” I said. “You have to go to history.”

(I didn't let the tears fall; I try to reserve that for my last day with my seniors, if it comes to that, because kids are burdened by enough without having to deal with a teacher's tears, and it felt like an important time not to fall apart. But I didn't know it was, in fact, my last day with my seniors.)

One of them turned back suddenly and threw her arms around me. By then, we weren't supposed to touch each other. But in the end, I couldn’t turn away from these kids, not with so much looming unknown. A year later, knowing what I know now, I'm so desperately glad for that last hug.

*

There are few folks I want to talk to these days who aren't my students or other teachers, frankly. I'm tired of the headlines pitting parents against teachers (what about those of us who are both?). I'm tired of the vitriol from folks who claim teachers are making excuses not to return to work.

Another teacher friend expressed a familiar sadness: friends she had always thought of as like-minded kindreds suddenly had plenty of things to say about teachers and returning to schools. Once, I tried to argue back -- yes, some schools can do it safely. But I hope my last post made it clear that not all of us can, and not before we're vaccinated. 

If you think I wouldn't give anything to be back in the classroom with the kids I know and love, already accepting the reality that I would take a bullet for them, then you don't think much of me as a teacher. Please don't consume the stories of my students for your entertainment, or to feel good. Please don't imply that I am looking for an excuse not to be with them (as our oblivious, dismissive, and tone-deaf governor has), or that I think you don't work hard too. Otherwise we know why you want us back and it has little to do with the kids.

(That said, I am so thankful for my friends who have reached out with kindness and solidarity. Please believe it matters. This has been one of the most demoralizing years I've experienced in a twenty-year career.)

Still, there are moments of magic. There are moments of joy, every week. I deeply appreciate my community, I love my students and my colleagues, and the work is worth it. I won't leave the work because it is hard right now; this isn't my time to go. I almost left teaching once, and I'm not in that place now. (But damn, have I struggled this year. I'm also a seasoned teacher who has had enough therapy and experience to understand that the world happens to all of us and still believe that I am where I'm supposed to be. I have the support and access to resources to take care of myself. Even in this struggle, I am senselessly privileged.)

*

I received my first dose of the COVID vaccine on Sunday morning. Because I write about everything all the time, I know that date fell exactly one year after the last time we dined inside a restaurant, which is? was? something we enjoy and miss. I'm looking forward to sliding into one of the cozy wood booths at the Elliott Bay Brewery with my family again. In the meantime, ordering takeout is not a burden, and I'm glad to support our favorite restaurants each week.

On Sunday I drove across the tide flats in the early morning light, parked on a quiet street, and walked into a building next to Tacoma General. I took a seat, answered some questions, accepted some papers. Vaccine information. Call this number if.

I scanned the room: lots of teachers. A few older couples who had come in together. I listened in on everyone's conversations, because I'm always curious. Teachers were there from so many districts. What do you teach? Oh, that's my son's grade! He's doing okay, but he misses his friends so much. It's just hard, you know?

We know.

The nurse who handed me my Vaccine Fact Sheet was beaming.

"I'm so, so happy we're getting so many teachers!" she said. "Our kids need to be back in school, but not until it's safe for everyone."

I nodded. "We know."

*

I drove home, the morning still quiet, the sky still lovely.

I felt something like jet lag before lunch. I thought I'd curl up for a nap in the quiet afternoon, but the fatigue wore off before then. I napped for an hour anyway. I felt fairly energetic for the rest of the day. By dinnertime, my arm was sore and I slept restlessly on Sunday night, but after a hot shower the next morning, I felt perfectly normal.

I took a long walk on Saturday morning, and I saw the first buds of spring on a tree along a quiet street. 

It is cherry blossom season again. 

Yesterday, I saw more of them. Soon, the cherry blossoms will flutter over the sidewalk and land in my hair. I'll reach up to touch them when I walk underneath their fluffy canopy. I've written about cherry blossoms in this space every year, I think, and who can blame me? I love the language of trees in any season, but cherry blossoms are about waking up. Last year, even as the world shut down, the cherry blossoms in the spring air were a reminder to stay awake and present in the only life I have.

I'm grateful to be here.