What scares good teachers?
When I was a kid, my mom's side of the family lived way up north in the US - basically in Canada: cold, snowy, full of bugs, humid as ever, where everyone is super nice for no reason and loves to talk about different ways to use butter.
We use to visit every so often, at least once a year, sometimes every other year. I loved the experience of it all: driving and driving and driving, playing video games in random hotels, smelling the chlorine the second I walked into a Super 8, even sitting next to the cooler that started smelling like old mayonnaise and meatloaf sandwiches mere hours into the drive is a nostalgic feeling for me.
The trip was always about family. When we were in town, everyone would get together. My grandma would make ham and expect everyone to be over at her house, and, while the adults talked upstairs, the kids would all be downstairs playing bloody knuckles on my grandparents' pool table, running up and down the long staircase for more snacks before dinner.
Even now, so many years later, those are some of my most favorite memories.
You know what I always hated, though, about going up there? There was always a point, the night before we were driving away the next morning, where everyone in the family would come and give us a goodbye. It was eerie. As the conversations tried to wrap up, it was always with this air of "this is the last time we will see you in a while."
I used to cry, standing in our hotel rooms, long passed when we should have already been resting, saying goodbye to my cousins and aunts and uncles. Being the kid that I was, I would start dreading going just so I didn't have to go there just to say goodbye.
I hated that feeling so much.
No one tells you that, when you are a teacher, that feeling is literally encompassing every moment.
And I still hate it.
I was told a lot of things as a teacher, but the fact that I would have to relive the pain and heartbreak and emotion and pure vulnerability of saying goodbye - and just how much it would hurt - was not one of them.
A couple of years ago, when I was finishing up another year of teaching 7th grade, a couple of students stayed after most others had left: whether they had forgotten something or were late or were doing whatever...
I ended up giving them both hugs before kicking them out the door - because, well, that's what all day had looked like: hugs, goodbyes, tears, gifts, endings. While these were quick goodbyes, one of them did this thing that I caught myself thinking about today:
Right before the hug was finished, he squeezed ever so slightly more before letting go...
I haven't ever told anyone that - outside of my own journal, of course.
Sometimes, I think of that, and it makes me sad: I haven't talked to that student very much at all since that year, nor have I talked to his friend.
Sometimes, I think of that, and I am honored.
Sometimes, I think of that, and I am renewed with hope to continue in my profession.
Sometimes, I think of that and feel this pending sense of existential dread seeping into me about the ever-so-surprising-passage of time.
Sometimes, I think of that, and I realize how much it all matters.
Today, I thought of that and wondered if I could ever get there again.
If you are one of the few people who actually pay attention to the happenings of the blog, you would know that this year I have a new position; one that has changed so much about how I see teaching, how I see my school, how I see myself as a teacher, and how I see my future as a teacher.
All of that, I suppose, is irrelevant to our current context...
However, there was a moment this year, when I was creating this class and beginning this class where my old partner teacher said this: "I know how important building relationships is for you because that's where you and your students thrive."
Another coworker said: "Give yourself grace and time and patience in building these relationships. They will come."
I think about that a lot, and I have done my own very best with giving myself that patience.
And, last week, our first day in the building after a long time solely being virtual, I got a typical email about being invited to an IEP meeting. In the midst of my day, I had forgotten about it, put it aside, whatever.
Later, while reading it, there's an alarm going off in my head: they didn't send the right email.
I don't know this kid.
There's a typo. It's supposed to be this kid instead. But, wait, he doesn't have an IEP.
This kid doesn't have an IEP.
My coworkers didn't make a mistake.
There was no typo.
I didn't know he had an IEP.
It's the middle of the year.
I looked around my classroom the next day and started to realize how little I know of these kids, how there are some kids I haven't even ever talked to, how there are two sets of twins in the 7th grade that I can't even tell apart so I refuse to say their names aloud, how I am asking my students to truly engage in social-emotional learning on a level I never have before and I don't even know them.
I looked around at a classroom full of students that I hardly felt connected to.
I worry that saying goodbye won't be hard this year.
And that scares me.
