It's the End of the Year....

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:

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●     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.