Good grief, look at this picture. It looks like I have seen a ghost. Or someone just killed my best friend. Or my best friend has been killed and I am being haunted by their ghost. What caused this haunted, tight, vaguely constipated face? It was not a ghost or a death that left my face like this, it was simply surviving my first two weeks of working at a high school. This picture was taken early in the morning after our usual crowd of 150-200 or so left and I had some time to sit for a yearbook picture. I think it does a great job of conveying how totally overwhelmed and slightly scared I felt being surrounded by teenagers. It also does a great job of showing that I should not wear a scoop neck anything, ever. I think if they were to take the picture today, it would be difficult to get one of me looking at the camera as I would be having two separate conversations going on and probably handing someone something and telling someone else that yes that they could use my computer to print.
Those first few weeks of school were a blur. I will now admit to feeling very nervous about being surrounded by teenagers at first. There were just crowds of them and I didn't know any of them and I was not a teacher so I didn't carry the weight of being in control of their grades. I was also initially hesitant to tell them to stop bad behavior. I sicced my librarian on them because it made me feel icky. Eventually I got over my fear of confrontation and engaged. Enough so that I feel confident that the very image at the top of the page is being defaced by Sharpies in many yearbooks as we speak.
Adding to my sense of HOLYCRAP, was the fact that there were Juniors and Seniors assigned as Library Aides to us almost every period. I was trying to figure out what I was supposed to do every day and now I had kids I was in charge of as well. I had kids who loved the library and loved to read and happily shelved. I had kids who were killing time to graduation and would push in chairs and then fall asleep for the rest of the period. I had kids I didn't know what to do with and kids who could be a lot to handle. The good thing about these kids is that they showed me that teenagers are like awkward adults. Slowly I began to realize that if I felt uncomfortable engaging them in conversation, that they were wishing I wouldn't even try. This made me talk to them even more. And slowly,they would engage in conversation back with me. I learned about their classes,their jobs, their plans for college and they learned that I was someone who would listen, someone who was not shocked by their language and someone who laughed alot and let them use the period to do their homework. Other kids became familiar as they checked out books all the time or asked me what was a good book to read. There were siblings of kids who told them to go to the library, it was a good place to hang out. We accumulated a motley sort of crew who began to know each other and us and made the day a lot of fun.
And now that we are eight school days from graduation, I am feeling a little verklempt thinking of these kids flying out of my safe little library nest. They are more than ready: they are skipping classes, rolling their eyes at assignments, weary of their nestmates and just ready. They are too big for the nest, too big for the halls of high school, they are ready to go. Remember that feeling of knowing that the rest of your life was just days away? I have talked about my favorites before and I have some perched and ready to go. One I totally got ripped off on because she is a freshman and I should have three more years with her, but she is moving. Rude.
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| I promise I fed them mostly cookies, no worms. |
As I begin to feel very sad about watching these favorites graduate and move on, instead of acknowledging that it has been a good year and that I will miss them, I keep saying next year I will not invest in anyone. Especially not seniors. Come in and get you involved in their lives, get you to care and to worry and to laugh and cry with them and then they are gone? Who signs up for that? I told the few Juniors I have that I will carry them over into next year but no new kids let into the fold. They say "yeah right Ms McMahon". As if they know me better than me. That I will still be feeding the ones who I overhear are hungry or running interference for ones who need it. That I would be willing to help with History and English homework but just still stare at the Math homework along side them.
Maybe because it was my first year I just cannonballed into the deep end of the pool with these kids. I never stopped to think that they wouldn't still be there. They have made me laugh and cry, taught me new words as I tell them which ones they cannot say in front of me. They have made me remember what it is like to be 16 or 18 or just a teen. I have watched them fall in love and break up. I have seen them pass without trying and fail miserably. They have been named in our family dinner conversations and in our extreme cases, offered up in our prayers. And now they are on their way to the rest of their lives and I am so happy for them and sad at the same time. I will miss them. I will miss knowing what is going on in their lives and miss knowing that I can help. They have brought out the very best and the very worst in me and I hope I did a little of the same for them. (the best anyway) Next year, I will wade in a little more slowly, especially with seniors, because this time I didn't know to guard my heart and they have left their mark on it.
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