New Teacher Diaries
The question on everyone’s lips
May 8, 2008 2:52 PM
By The Drama Club
’Tis the season in teaching that brings the same question to everyone’s lips: “So are you coming back next year?”
My response for about two months now has been, “I’m on the fence.”
New events have transpired over the past few months, and I can’t help but notice — I’m still here. I’m still living, still breathing and actually staying pretty healthy. Sure I have my struggles, but I’m getting the teacher thing down pretty well, I dare say.
Last week I took a personal day from school to celebrate my birthday. The call came in at 3:05 p.m. “Boy, are you lucky,” my friend and colleague began. I prepared for tales of a fight or an expected substitute-teacher-related drama in one of my classes. He went on to detail a full-on riot in the hallway, with 30 police officers and handcuffed students. Then one of my students had an epileptic seizure right outside my classroom during my class. Oy.
I felt a mix of guilt for missing the eventful day and relief at having missed it. The relief made sense but I wondered at the guilty feelings. I guess I care. I care about our students put in handcuffs and brought to jail. The riot was a result of longstanding tension between the school and school safety personnel, and quite honestly, it might have been difficult for me to keep my own temper at the way things went down.
Last week, as I was preparing to give a quiz, one of my 11th-grade students entered the room with her mother and her 1-year-old son in tow. Her mother began to gush to me about her daughter’s progress in the class, how proud she is of her, how she wanted to come in and speak to her teachers in person. Never mind that parent-teacher conferences were the week before and I had a quiz to give! I suggested we talk after class.
My 16-year-old student sat down to take her quiz and her mother handed me the baby and went to talk to another teacher, and the class went on. Walking around the room with the baby perched on my hip (while my student took a quiz on reproductive anatomy, of all things), it occurred to me: I am the American Teacher. My 16-year-old student, though some may say her life is “over,” is succeeding. She’s learning. She smiles so much more than when I first met her. And this adorable little boy on my hip, who knows nothing about teen pregnancy rates in this country, seems very well-loved and cared for.
So what if my student didn’t know what a fallopian tube was? (P.S.: She does now.)
Maybe it was karma that I missed the riot. Things happen for a reason, and maybe there is a reason I am in this school. Starting over at another school — even if it was a “better school” with more arts and more resources, closer to my home — would still mean starting from scratch for me. None of the colleagues I love, none of the students I have grown to love. It would be me alone with the lunch tray in the middle of the cafeteria trying to look nonchalant. Again. And I’d really, really like to see this 16-year-old mom graduate.
I’m giving myself until the end of the month to figure it out. But I suspect that everything is going to be all right.
The Drama Club is a pseudonym for a first-year high school teacher in the Bronx. A version of this post first appeared in the UFT blog, edwize.org, where “New Teacher Diaries” is a regular feature.
