In an all-time teaching low, I started off
third period by saying “Everyone stop and stare at the pimple on my
forehead. Yes, it is a pimple. Yes, you can get pimples when you are
old.” And they did. They stopped and stared and the table that
instigated it laughed until they died and I am sure my pimple-rage is on
Snapchat and all I could think is that this school year needs to end now.
This has been a very hard year. In addition to the normal working with
teenagers: break ups, bad home lives, hunger, cheating, apathy and anxiety, we
had some really big stuff happen this year.
Let’s list it:
.
●
Two suicide attempts, on campus
●
A racial incident off campus, but
widely talked about on campus
●
A student was paralyzed in a
drive-by shooting
●
Another student died from a drug
overdose
●
One student was arrested after I
reported him under the influence
●
One student came to me from jail
and is now back on his way to jail because he just couldn’t acclimate.
●
A coworker resigned suddenly.
Exhausting stuff at work and some exhausting
stuff at home too. Bill has had two
terrible melanomas removed and just recently underwent radiation for metastatic
tumors in his chest. I am incredibly
relieved and grateful to say that the radiation worked and the tumors are gone,
but cancer is some scary stuff. We
didn’t tell a lot of people because we wanted to wait and see what we were
dealing with. We also didn’t tell a lot
of people because when you have cancer, you still have to do life and maybe you
are going on about your life and for three minutes forget you have cancer and
then someone will remind you by saying “Hey, how’s your cancer?”.
Based on all of the above, I think that I
encased my heart in a petrified sort of shell and have been trudging through
the past few months. I found I was
impatient with my kids at school and my kids at home. I enjoyed teaching, but not as much. I laughed, but not as loud. I worried about everything until I got to
where I worried about nothing. This is not
the best way to do life and I was worried I was never going to shake the fugue.
However, today I went to a cording ceremony
for AVID students and I felt a shift start to take place. I am not going to say
that my Grinch-like heart grew three sizes because in reality, I have a
ridiculously big heart; it is just tired from caring so damn much about
people. What I will say, is that
petrified shell I encased my heart in definitely began to crack and fissure. AVID is a class for kids who will be
first-generation college attendees. They
might even be first-generation high school graduates. They work hard, they go through four years of
high school together in their AVID class and they make up a little AVID
family. I watched kids I have in my
class or have had in class walk across to get the cords they will wear to
graduation next week and I smiled. I
watched the parents I didn’t know hoot and holler and I felt their
excitement. I could feel the pride in my
chest for them. Then one speaker talked about his mom, how as an immigrant she
worked terrible jobs so that he and his siblings could do better and that was
beautiful. But when he, sniff, asked her
to, sniff, stand, sniff, and he applauded her?
TEARS! Wet tears from my
eyes! I can emote! I can feel!
I am ALIVE!!!!!!
I tell you all of these things because I have
to believe that other people out there are overwhelmed with the world at large
and their smaller worlds at home. School
shootings, collusion, volcanoes, tariffs, tornadoes, hateful this, hateful
that. And that maybe you have locked
your heart up tightly too. You will get
no lecture from me. What I do hope
though, is that like me, you will be surprised with some sort of good in your
world.. Some joy. Some pride or beauty
or pure emotion that catches your eye, your ear, your heart. Let it in. It feels so good to be reminded
that there is good in the world. It
makes you want to shake off that crispy crust around your heart and get back
into doing the things you do well: caring about kids, encouraging friends,
loving your people.
I sometimes struggle wondering what it is I am
doing with this life, but as I watched those kids yesterday, I knew that along
the way various teachers had truly impacted those kids and helped them along in
their lives. I really hope that I am
doing some of that too and that I can continue to break down that crunchy
casing surrounding my heart. There is only about one week of school to go and I
now feel confident that I can get to the end of it with a little bit of
grace. And, at the very least, I know that third period
will never doubt that adults can get pimples too.
