All the same.

I feel small; but so are stars from a distance.
//somniloquencee, “ten word poem”

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She looks around her classroom and lets out a small laugh. Laughing abruptly and unexpectedly has always been her way of dealing with feelings she hasn’t quite processed yet, and as she looks around at her now barren walls and empty desks she finds herself at quite a loss to describe exactly how she’s feeling at the moment. A coworker had asked her earlier – So was your first year what you expected? And she had answered after a long moment – Yes…and no. I guess? He had laughed and nodded his head in understanding, which was a bit confusing to her since she wasn’t even quite sure what she meant by such a response. Perhaps that had been his response, too, when someone asked him how he felt at the end of his first year of teaching. Perhaps no one really knew how to respond. That’s what she hopes, at least.

She shakes her head at the recollection and turns her attention back to her workspace – the disaster zone that is her desk area and filing cabinet – which is the last thing that needs to be cleared out before she steps out into her first summer vacation as a teacher. She sets an hour-long goal for herself so that this simple task doesn’t turn into the long, drawn out affair that cleaning out her closet or room at home always seems to become – a job that invariably becomes five times longer than it needs to be because she’s overly sentimental and ends up spending more time reminiscing on random objects she comes across than actually throwing things away.

She makes good headway for about thirty minutes, throwing away old snacks, hurriedly scrawled on post-its and broken pencils (seriously, she thinks, why did she keep so many broken pencils?). She finds a stack of documents she had printed off from some website or another, secondary texts and worksheets she’d planned on using for her persuasive unit but had shoved into a drawer and promptly forgotten about instead. She frowns at them, thinks about what a shame it was that she never used them, resolves to definitely use them next year before she files them away into the appropriate file folder. She finds a few referrals that she had kept meaning to send up to the office for filing but, whoops, never managed to make their way up there, a few phone numbers of parents she kept meaning to call but then accidentally forgot to do so (sometimes accidentally-on-purpose). Her desk is actually somewhat filled with things that she meant to do or wanted to get around to but never did. A graveyard of good (and, at the very least, more organized) intentions. A catalog of the teacher she’d wanted to be. She leans back in her chair, feeling melancholy. Yes, many of her students had come up to her, one after another, saying how much they had enjoyed having her as a teacher, made promises to visit next year, but now she thinks they’re the type of words said during high moments of emotion – empty, platitudes stated on the high rush of endings.

Then she finds a stack of student notebooks that hadn’t been taken home (or, more likely, found their way into the school’s recycling bin) and begins to idly leaf through them. She shakes her head at the messiness of most of her student’s notes but manages to rip out a few pages to use as exemplars for next year. Then she begins reading a few students’ journal entries from the beginning of the year, rereading the notes she wrote back to all 100 of them during that first semester. At the time, as she watched the hours tick by during her coveted weekend and her hand began to cramp, she had cursed herself for making such a lofty goal. Now, though, she’s glad she did it. Her students had read her notes voraciously, more than one commenting how they’d never expected her to really read the journal entries, how awesome it was to know that she actually cared about what they had written. Underneath one of them, she finds a page long note written to her from a student after she’d been sent to the office, a heartfelt apology for her behavior in class. The last thing she packs up is her personal copy of the school yearbook. She spends time looking over her students’ end of the year notes to her, numerous and running over pictures when empty space ran out, heart warmed at the kind messages (though she’ll have to remember to do a better job of teaching the difference between your and you’re next year).

She closes the door behind her and walks out into desk filled hallway, wheeling her rolling cart filled to the brim with books and office supplies behind her. She thinks back to the past year – her dreaded 8th hour, her successful 3rd hour intervention class, the slapdash end of the year yearbook club, the euphoria of her 3rd benchmark tests scores, the disappointing scores on her final benchmark test. She thinks about the hugs and handshakes from her students and their parents, a few tears shed, lots of thanks all around. She thinks – perhaps they won’t visit next year, but the things said in the heat of noonday sun were sincere at the time they were said. She realizes – perhaps her failures were numerous, but so were her victories. There will probably never be movies made about her first year, songs commemorating it, or speeches dedicated to it. She is no great general having just come through a great battle, or an intrepid explorer who has discovered new and exotic lands; nor is she some sort of brilliant scientist who has uncovered a miracle cure or a writer who has penned the next great American novel. But she is here, still standing, proud, exhausted, euphoric and a little wistful, on her last day of her first year, and it feels monumental all the same.

Only human.

You are a woman. Skin and bones. Veins and nerves. Hair and sweat.
You are not made of metaphors. Not apologies. Not excuses.
//Sarah Kay, The Type

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When she thinks back on it, she believes that the turning point in her career had to be the day she had to contend with a bout of crying in the middle of a silent class.

Of course, any one who has been a teacher long enough – especially in the 8th grade – has undoubtedly seen quite a few children burst into tears. It’s understandable of course – all those surging emotions and broken hearts. The difference here being that the sobbing had been her own, and while she had been in an eighth grade classroom, she was not 13 years old and dressed in the red polo shirt and khaki pants of the prescribed school uniform – rather she was 26, dressed in a pencil skirt and a floral blouse, and sitting at the teacher’s desk.

And the crying wasn’t the kind that you do in the movie theater, when the lead has just sacrificed his or her life, or the lovers are never reunited after all. It wasn’t a stray tear out of the corner of your eye that you could hastily wipe up. It wasn’t even the light sobbing you do as someone’s breaking up with you, the kind where your eyes fill up and tears begin to leak down your face but you still gainfully manage to keep your face from crumbling.

No, this would probably be more appropriately called weeping. This was the kind of crying you only ever hear about in old Victorian novels, where the heroine throws herself across the floor keening in despair and beating at her chest; this was old testament bawling, loud cries bordering on hysterics, so complete that she had to keep gasping for air to fully fuel the sobs being ripped from her chest.

Even in the midst of her sobs, she felt ridiculous. Which really only contributed to the prolonging of the said sobbing. She had imagined herself a superhero, but had been brought down by one too many bad classes. She had thought of herself as a wall – high and impenetrable – but she had crumbled after a single, ill-timed snarky retort at the end of a long day. This wasn’t the way it was supposed to be, she kept thinking to herself, as she sat, head in hands, gasping through her fingers. She was a superhero and insults bounced off of her; her students were glass and she could see right through them; she was a statue and nothing could touch her.

She was none of those things. Suddenly, her despair deepened and the sobs that had finally, finally begun to abate started afresh once more. She was bombarded with thoughts that she was too soft, she was too young, she was to0 wide-eyed and pliable; that there would be no coming back from this, now; that now all the other teachers, all the others students, her entire world would come to learn what she had feared the most – that she was an impostor, a fraud, a useless adult masquerading as a capable teacher.

What can I do? She thought miserably.

“What did you say?” One brave student said in front of her, tentatively looking up from his lap and towards her.

She realized she must have spoken her thought out loud.

“I said, what can I do? What can I do to make this class better?” Of course she was still half crying and too short of breath, so the question came out more like, “Wh-wh-what ca-an I dooo? Wh-at can I do – hiccup- to maaaaake -deep breath- th-this class be-tt-tter?” She took a deep breath, forcing her sore throat to swallow back her tears. Softly, as though the volume of her voice would keep away any more tears, she continued. “I want you all to get out a piece of paper and tell me what I can do to make this class better. I like you guys but…but we can’t do this any more. Something has to give.”

She lightly sobbed at the end of the last sentence. Something had given, of course, and they all knew it. She was weak, pitiful, a wounded sorry sight.

One by one her students crept up to her, laid their papers on her desk and quietly returned to their seats. She could hear low whispers and hushed tones, but they were too low to clearly heard. She was too low to fully hear them. She kept her eyes firmly fixed on her clasped hands in her lap, twisting like as though they had the knobs to her tear ducts beneath them. She could only guess at their content – the murmured gloating of seeing a fallen, shattered enemy combatant; or giddy, secondhand embarrassment that comes with a loss of respect.

Once her students had quietly left the room to join the cacophony of their classmates in the whole, she slunk down in her chair once more, head in her hands. She might have begun sobbing once more, if a student hadn’t slowly come back in and shuffled up to her desk. She looked up at him – the loudest, the ringleader, the hardest to wrangle. She could only imagine how she looked – eyes shot through with red and puffy, hair in disarray.

He looked down at his hands and then flicked a speck of imaginary dust off her desk. Finally, he looked her in the eye, face solemn and drawn.

“I just want to say that I’m really sorry.” He motioned to the stack of papers on her desk. “We’re all really sorry.” He focused once more at her desk. “Everyone likes you. And we didn’t…we didn’t know we were hurting you. We’ll be better.”

She stared at him, dumbfounded for a moment. Then smiled. It was tremulous, true, and she could still taste the salt from her tears in her mouth, but it was a real, genuine smile.

“Thank you. I really appreciate that.” Her voice shook with unshed tears, though now for a different reason. “And it’s ok. Tomorrow is a new day. It’ll be a good one.” She surprised herself with that statement. She’d mostly said it to fill up the awkward silence that had cropped up, but was surprised to find that she both meant it and believed it.

He nodded at her, face still serious, then shuffled quickly out of her class.

She smiled once more and grabbed the stack of papers on her desk. Paper after paper contained apologies and promises to be better; many contained phrases similar to the one her student had just uttered – we didn’t realize we were hurting you.

She sat back, contemplating the day. She was embarrassed by what had happened – mortified was probably closer to the truth, really – and she didn’t see that changing any time soon. And it wouldn’t do at all to constantly burst into tears at the end of every long day. She would need to toughen up in that regard, keep a closer watch on her emotions that were always so easily bubbling over the surface. But, surprisingly, other than the mortification she felt…okay. No, she was not a superhero, or an impenetrable wall, or a stone statue. But she was also not a fraud or fake or an impostor.

She was just a person who was sometimes sad, sometimes joyful; with skin that was sometimes too thin but with a heart big enough for all her students.

She was only human, and now everyone knew it.

And that was just fine.

 

Soft heart.

Having a soft heart in a cruel world is courage, not weakness.
//Katherine Henson

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She looks out at the sea of faces in front of her. About a quarter are looking directly at her, a hint of a smile on their mouths or in their eyes. Another quarter are staring at her, their expression just short of a glare. A good half are staring blankly at some point just past her head. She likes to think that perhaps they are mulling over some deep thought about love or life, but it’s more likely that they are trying to figure out what time this class gets out.

And this, she thinks wryly, is actually a good day.

It’s not quite what she imagined when she began the school year. It’s not just opening doors to different places and times; it’s not just debating about the finer points of this character or that action; it’s not just looking deep into our own lives and seeing how they’re reflected in the text.

It’s the principal’s expectations and updating the data wall. It’s poring over test scores and marked interventions for this kid and that.  It’s filling out forms and keeping data logs and spreadsheets filled with charts. It’s parent phone calls home, reminders of conferences and behavior contracts. It’s working with fellow teachers to figure out a behavior plan and well, who does get to go on this field trip?

Some days,when exhaustion is dripping  from her pores and her heart is heavy from the stories of the day, she thinks – am I too soft for this?

She asks around and gets the same basic answer –

“You gotta harden yourself, or else you’ll never make it in herel!”

And she knows, in some way, they’re partly right. She has to be able to discern between a lie to cover up misbehavior and a lie to cover up personal shame. She has to be able to be firm in the face of a barrage of whining. She sees the rigidness in others’ spines, their uncompromising natures, the voices that she can hear booming from their classrooms halfway down the halls.

But she remembers a lesson from some long ago science class – hard things are easy to break. Diamonds are unyielding but easily shattered. It is toughness that allows you to weather multiple blows.

She understands that temptation to scream and yell. To send kids out of the room and lobby for suspension. She is perfectly capable of seeing why so many throw their hands up in despair or impatience or a sense of failure and declare a cause lost. It’s easy to do when you’re tired of the complaining and the hemming and hawing; exhausted from the constant stream of data and the feeling that your students are just not gaining ground fast enough; upset from the little meanness that children can inflict on one another and on you.

It’s easy to be hard. To harden your heart and move on, day by day.

But this is not a battlefield, she thinks to herself one day. She is not a general and they are not enemy combatants waiting to gun her down.

They are only children, begging to be heard and known.

And it isn’t just about knowing their standardized test scores or their grades or their behavior reports.

It’s also knowing who comes to school hungry every day and how sneak extra food from breakfast to take home to younger siblings. It’s noticing who shows up on winter days without a coat and too many holes in their shoes. It’s realizing who comes from a broken marriage or walked in with a broken heart. It’s finding out whose parents are trying, trying so hard to make ends meet with two different jobs and somehow still make it to parent conferences. It’s walking the line between making excuses and seeing the explanations.

So she takes care to moderate her voice and listen to their complaints. To tell it to them straight but without bitterness or mean sarcasm. To treat them like human beings, sometimes human beings in training (because, no, you should never say some things that a thirteen year old thinks to say), but never as horses whose spirits she has to break, or hopeless cases to pass on from one grade to the next.

There are no places in her teacher portfolio or a check box on her observations to show how much her students trust her; how unafraid they are to tell her of aching hearts and the tears of their parents; how they’ll show her finished homework and say – “I did it because I like when you tell me you’re proud of me.” But she swells up with pride all the same.

“You’re much easier on them than life ever will be.” Someone says to her over lunch one day. It’s meant to be a soft critique, she knows, but a part of her is happy for it. Because long ago she realized that these kids know how hard life can be. These kids who go home to absent fathers and fridges with too little food; who move three or four times in the year because they keep getting evicted; who have slept in cars for weeks on end and have to save up for weeks for the five dollars to attend the end of the year field trip. Let her forever be kinder to them than life is.