The First Day of School

     This is the first day after Labor Day in over 20 years that wasn’t the day back to school for me.  First as a parent, then as a teacher.  It is poignantly sad, strange and freeing.

     I left my job last spring after teaching second grade for 13 years.  I loved teaching.  I left for personal reasons that were burning me out.  I will admit there were things within the system that made me crazy.  My love for the teaching and the kids made me hesitate for at least a year longer than I should have.

     This year, as school starts, a teachers’ strike is looming.  I voted to approve the strike last spring, joyfully.  The system needed to know most teachers agreed with the union.  No one wants a strike but the administration needs to know the teachers need to be part of the deal.  

What I won’t miss about teaching

1. The crazy acronyms and the crazy projects that go with them.  I hated all these acronyms.  I never could keep the letters in the right order.  Worse, the frequently contained another system to teach.  Not really new material but a new way to keep track of it.  I hear there is one called WTF – where’s the funding.  Someone just needs to be slapped.
2. No air conditioning, no temperature control.  Classrooms in the city are notorious for being the wrong temperature.  You want the kids to learn? Every room should be air conditioned.  My room was one of 4 at my school that wasn’t.  It was over 80 degrees when I arrived in the morning and just went up from there.  Who is going to learn in that?  Who wants to be with the crabbiest teacher who hates the heat?  The winter wasn’t much better.  We had this goofy engineer who would come in the room, wave his hand around and say, “It’s cooling off.” 
3. Letters from the Superintendent saying things like: Good teachers agreed to extend the school day.  They care about your children.  Ha! Those teachers were largely coerced by their principals who received incentives from the board for breaking union voting rules.  So, I’m not a good teacher by following the rules I agreed to? 
4. Documentation.  I understand the importance but how do you teach and keep track of everything each child you are concerned about does? One year I had documentation on 12 of my 26 students.  I have seen teachers walking around with tape on their pants to tally whenever a child did a certain behavior.  It is crazy hard to do this and teach.

I could keep this negative list going but I hate it.  It never was who I am.  (I hope.) 

A better list.  Here is what I will miss:

1. The first day when the students come in looking so nervous.  Some cry in second grade.  Some are busy talking to friends from last year.  The room is new, the teacher is new, and the desks are strange – taller than last year.  What you see mostly in their faces is: "Will my teacher like me?"

2. The chance to sing silly songs.  Anytime, anywhere.  I never missed a chance to sing a name, a spelling word, a penguin song.  Oh, I loved when they groaned about it.  They knew they were mostly love songs to them. 

3.  The eagerness to do something new.  Seven year olds yearned for new things and to be experts.  If you taught the way to do something new correctly, they became experts.  They loved it.

4.  My calendar with everyone’s picture on it holding their number.  Those September pictures of toothless Alice Akers holding number 1, Betsy Bottoms with bangs holding number 2 and Calvin Cisco with a shaved head holding 3 and so on. Later in June the calendar numbers were given back to Alice with teeth and Betsy with all her hairs swept back into a ponytail and Calvin with a fauxhawk. They had lived nearly a seventh of their lives as second graders and now were ready for third.

5. Teaching moments that showed up suddenly.  They were so perfect because they were relevant and that is when they learn the best. 

6.  Reading Daniel Pinkwater’s Wempires, or Louis Sacher’s Sideways Stories from the Wayside School, or Cookies: Bite Size Lessons by Amy Krouse Rosenthal or anyone of my hundreds of favorite stories.  Laughing and teaching at the same time made life very sweet.

7.  The moving and rearranging of seats, everyday at first, and tweaking all year.  Who can work with whom?  How can I quiet this bunch down?  Who will motivate little Johnny without doing his work for him?  Life is fluid and so is seating.

8. Freaking second graders out about fire drills by telling them in pretty graphic detail the story of the school fire at Our Lady of Angels in 1958 where 87 students and teachers were killed.  I took fire drills very seriously because it might save their lives one day and their lives are very, very precious.  Probably thousands of lives were saved in the World Trade Center on 9/11 because most of the people practiced fire drills as a kid. 

9.  The quirky moments when a student came up to me to tell me something important to them.  Sometimes it was funny and sometimes sad.  A joke, a story about their dog, tears because they fought with their mom on the way to school or their grandma was going back to Mexico.  The self-knowledge of their abilities and inabilities: You’re lucky to have me because I’m a really great reader or I wiggle A LOT!  Some shed tears daily at minor disappointment. Sometimes the floodgates burst after months of stoicism.  Then it was a privilege just to hold them in my arms and let it pour.

10. The sweetness and vulnerability of each one.  I taught hundreds of second graders.  Each one had the desire to be loved and wanted to do their best.  Some had that desire wrapped on their exteriors, hearts on their sleeves as it were.  Some had to hide that desire for hundreds of reasons.  I considered it my job to make sure they each one made progress, to let that desire rise to the surface.  Movement.  Regardless if they were reading at 7^th grade level or kindergarten, they all needed to learn something.  I will miss those pops of light bulbs that happened when all of a sudden it made sense.  That is what I taught for.

So teachers, go ahead and strike.  I believe we are striking for respect towards the giving of our souls everyday.  Not money or benefits or any of the other stuff because if we were respected the rest would follow.