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The Privilege of Teaching

Friday 30 November 2012

“You’re raising our daughter! She spends more time with teachers than with her parents,” a parent once told me regarding a student.

It was the first time anyone had said aloud what I’ve thought often enough. Such notions most forcefully — and most obsessively — worked their way into my thinking when we began leaving our daughter with “strangers” at day care. It was a stab of guilt, feeling K and I were somehow neglecting our responsibilities as parents, letting someone do the majority of our childrearing for us.

The irony of being a teacher myself didn’t go unnoticed. I thought of a film — I can’t remember the title — that had a scene in which a young girl drops off her child for day care then heads uptown to her job as a nanny.

I see into parts of their lives no one else sees. A young man writes, “I ask my mom [to play chess with me]. ‘I’m too busy at the moment. How about later?’ Knowing that later will be near 7 PM, I slither back to my room.” It’s a vivid flash of what his evening is like, of what he might be experiencing at the very moment I’m reading his paper. It’s a window few look through.

First, Last, and Only

Thursday 29 November 2012

A local priest, when discussing the Liturgy of the Eucharist — which never changes, from day to day, week to week, year to year; in other words, something repeated hundreds and then thousands of times — discussed how it might be easy simply to drift into auto-pilot (auto-priest?) and run through the liturgy without thinking, without really being there. He told us his secret for preventing such rote recitation is a prayer in which he asks for the grace to say the Mass as if it were his first Mass, his last Mass, his only Mass.

It might not be a bad way to approach every task.

I think of the excitement I felt every single “first” day I have had in the classroom: the first day at a new school, the first day ever in front of the classroom, the first day of a new school year, the first day back from a long break. Each and every first day has its own unique excitement, but the fact that it is exciting is the common element. By day sixty-five, that excitement seems somehow to have vanished, or at least diminished. The result is sometimes drudgery.

I think of the excitement I felt the first time I held our daughter. Such a charge, such a responsibility, such a humbling moment. Yet as the years pass and the fussing and independence increase, that energy sometimes seems a little tired. The daily routine, with its predictability, numbs the sense of wonder if one is not careful. Children are blessings, but the sometimes simply wear one down, and while I feel like a “bad parent” for admitting it, I’m sure it will happen with our son as well. It’s simply easier to focus on the now, which can be frustrating, than the thrill that still resonates but sometimes seems hushed.

I think of the heart-stopping moment when I asked K to marry me, and while I love her more now than I did then, and will love her more tomorrow — more deeply, more maturely — than I do today, there are moments when we grate on each other. It’s only natural. Still, in those moments, for the briefest flicker of time, that thrill seems gone. I know it will return; I know it never left; but in my human weakness, I can still focus on that moment and wallow in it for a while.

So what if I could live every moment as if it were my first, last, and only in front of a classroom; my first, last and only with my children; my first, last, and only with my wife. What if I could simply remember to reach each second as if it were my first, last, and only? Could I stand the intensity? The joy?

Guests

Tuesday 27 November 2012

Aunt L, passing through on her way back home in Tennessee, stopped by for a visit. It was the first time she’d met the Boy, but certainly not the first time she’d chatted with the Girl.

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This was quickly obvious as the Girl began monopolizing Aunt L’s attention. “Look at this!” became the common refrain, which I suppose is to be expected of a five-year-old.

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Papa, of course, was preoccupied with the Boy.

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Free Time

Monday 26 November 2012

Dear Terrence,

The other day was a teacher workday, which means we teachers are at school while you kids are free. I wonder what that freedom brings you.

I know you have more “freedom” than the average student because of all the out-of-school suspensions you’ve served. I’ve often wondered about the wisdom of that. I’ll bet in some ways, at least during some of the more tiring stretches of the school year, OSS seems more like a gift than a punishment. After all, there’s no one to make you do this or that. You get to choose who you spend your time with. You can pass that time however you please.

Or can you? Perhaps your mother makes you clean house while you’re serving OSS. Maybe she has a long list of tasks that she expects completed fully and well when she returns from work. Possibly, but somehow I doubt it. She might be struggling just to get enough money to keep a roof over your head and food on your table — she might not sweat the small stuff. Whatever it is you do during those OSS days, I’m fairly certain you prefer it to what you do at school.

And all of this makes me wonder about the wisdom of OSS. I’ve already mentioned to you that I think you would benefit from some direct instruction in how to learn, in how to be successful in school and life. Couldn’t we replace OSS (and ISS, for that matter) with something like that? It would be tricky, because we would have to find a teacher with a certain patience and dedication to young people because, let’s face it, you and your friends can be a real handful in the classroom. It seems possible and even desirable, but I somehow doubt it will ever happen. The American school system likes to think of itself as being cutting edge and progressive, but it’s still relatively set in its old ways in many regards, and how to help students like you is a perfect example.

So I don’t really know what you might be doing today during your day off. Whatever it is, I hope it’s not what I’ve heard in rumor among teachers: I hope you’re not spending all your time trying to impress the members of some gang — for all I know, your gang, for I hear, as the colloquial expression goes, that you “bang.” I have some thoughts I’d like to share with you on that as well, but for now, I’ll let you get back to whatever it is you’re doing on your day off.

With hope,
Your  Friend in Room 302

Up the Street

Sunday 25 November 2012

I grew up in a closed environment, literally. There was one way in or out of our housing subdivision, a fact that was of great solace to my mother as I was growing up: now strangers just “passing through.” And so I had almost complete freedom to go wherever I wanted in our neighborhood while growing up.

Neighborhood

The only rule was that I had to be able to hear Dad whistle and get back within a reasonable amount of time.

I wish we lived in such a neighborhood now, for every time the Girl is outside playing alone, I’m a little edgy. It’s unlikely anyone would be just “passing through,” and it’s unlikely that anything would happen to her. Yet Amber Alerts, urban legend, and the Jaycee Lee Dugard case make a slightly paranoid father like me more so.

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And so when she heads up the street to visit a friend, I stand at the end of our driveway and watch her head up. The friend’s parents do the same when he (or they) come back down to our place. It’s a simple enough matter, but I watch her bouncing up the street and realize, not for the first or last time, that she’s growing up, that she’s journeying from home and toward independence with a rapidity I’d been warned about but doubted for myself. And it will all repeat itself with the Boy, but I’ll be more prepared by then. I hope.

Family

Saturday 24 November 2012

A pile of leaves in the backyard cannot go to waste. It calls — begs — for family photos.

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It’s not big, but it’s all we’ve got.

Leaves

Friday 23 November 2012

When you have a backyard like ours, with so many huge trees with so many thousands upon thousands of leaves, there’s only one thing to do on a late-November afternoon. It takes a bit of work at first, but the Girl loves work when it’s play — a sort of Tom Sawyer in reverse.

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Yet quickly enough, the fun begins.

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The Girl remembers from last year the fun of jumping in the leaves, but she’s forgotten — or simply not realized — the fact that she weighs significantly more this year. And this means a harder impact, for leaves don’t provide as much cushion as a five-year-old might assume.

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The Boy, on the other hand, takes a totally different approach. Calm, curious he sits among the leaves and wiggles his feet, swings his arms, and enjoys the newness of the situation.

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It’s easy to credit this to his age, but there’s a personality difference that’s indisputable.

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There’s a certain explosiveness to the Girl (“You think?” responds everyone who’s ever met her.) that finally finds direction, throwing leaves here, there, and just about everywhere.

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The amount of leaves in her hair after this little adventure astounds. And we haven’t even begun burying each other.

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Still, we sometimes manage to get her calmed down within the near proximity of the Boy for a portrait.

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But the calm doesn’t last.

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Still, it wouldn’t be the same family if it did.

Thanksgiving 2012

Thursday 22 November 2012

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I am thankful for my family. With my parents nearby, and two lovely children to call me “Tata,”

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I am thankful for the fact that my extended family is what it is: loving, accepting, eclectic, and Southern.

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I am thankful that my daughter is only learning how to make a wish, and I am thankful that I live in a country where fulfilling those wishes depends more on the individual than anything else.

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I am thankful that my children are well, happy, and silly.

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I am thankful that we all help one another, even in the most trivial matters.

And I am thankful I have so much to be thankful about.

Day Before

Wednesday 21 November 2012

‘Twas the night before Thanksgiving, and all through the house, everyone was sleeping, except for the idiot who keeps slogging away at the one-post-per-day nonsense.