Year after year: A love note to teaching
I’m at that age where people are starting to ask me, mostly in a nice way, if I’m starting to think about retirement. You’ve been teaching forever, they say, their tone an odd mix of bemusement and incredulity; Aren’t you excited to stop working?
Surprising to those who ask, but not to those who know me well, the answer to that question is a hard no. I am not excited to stop working. In fact, I am actually excited to keep working. I just finished my 34th year of teaching high school English and I can honestly say that I still love it. Yes, love it. Without exception, every single September of my career, I feel true excitement when I walk into a class full of teenagers, mostly strangers, knowing that over the course of the school year, I will have the opportunity to really get to know them. I love to know that, in the space of this job of teaching English to high school students, there is also space for a meaningful exchange. An exchange that flows in two directions and that has possibilities that I can’t predict or even imagine.
This is what I love most about my job—the profound potential for deep connections with my students and the very real possibility of unexpected and serendipitous things happening in my classroom. Learning about my students—their lives, their dreams, their values—while we explore texts and ideas together feels like a great adventure to me. In the very best classes, there is a kind of positive energy that you feel when you walk into the room. It is a like a secret club, complete with its own language of inside jokes, shared understandings and a certain level of comfort, born of trust and simple affection.
There have been years when my own life has taken nearly every ounce of my energy and in those times, school was a welcome respite, a place in which I not only found the pleasant distraction of doing work I enjoyed, but also the comfort and love of my colleagues and students. I will never forget last year a few days after my Mother died. I had just flown in from the West Coast and had to get back to work after being gone for a week. I was sad and exhausted and literally holding myself together by a thread. At the end of first period, as students were filing out of my classroom and I was wondering how I was going to make it through the day, I was surprised to see one of my students—a shy boy who I didn’t know very well—walking toward my desk. As I looked up, he looked right into my eyes and in the most gentle, sympathetic way asked if he could please give me a hug. Of all the kindnesses that were extended to me during those sad days, this is the one that I think of most often. For me, it will always be a poignant reminder of the empathy and love that so often flows between teachers and students.
My students sometimes ask me if I get tired of this job or of teaching the same books over and over again. I always tell them the truth and it is this: The books may be the same, but I am not. The same can be said of this job. Every year, my classes are filled with 100+ new human beings, with whom I get to share time, stories and ideas. Through reading and writing and conversation, I get to teach and learn about the world and my students and myself. Not only does every year feel different, but every day feels different. I feel different.
It is exactly this that makes my job so compelling—and so sustainable. It is the dynamic nature of all these young bright minds, the stories we read and write, and the ideas we explore, that fill me with such exhilaration—such hope. To cultivate in my students a curiosity about the world and the confidence and skills to navigate it in the best way possible is always my goal. Day after day, year after year, I use every bit of knowledge and skill I’ve acquired during this long career to try to see my students and even more importantly, to help them to see themselves.
The knowledge that many of my students actually see me too, is the icing on the cake. In the past few weeks, I have read many insightful words from my high school seniors as they reflect on the past year, on their transition from high school to college and on the work we’ve done in my class. The following words were written by one of my graduating seniors and remind me not only of how good it feels to be acknowledged by a student, but also that our students are watching us closely as they begin to figure out the kind of careers they want to build—and the kind of people they want to be:
“At the end of the day, no matter the assignment, I can always tell how passionate you are about teaching even after all these years. It gives me hope that when I choose a career, I can still have as much energy and passion as you do no matter how much time passes. I haven't seen many teachers with as much love for their students and their class as you do and I truly hope that you can stay this way, even if there are obstacles in your life.”
—Spirit Franklin, Class of 2021
