My birthday just passed. I am 44. I realized this morning that I have been teaching for half of my life. That is a weighty truth. Thousands of students have passed through my classroom in that time. Thousands of beating hearts heavy with the anxiety of growing up. I have been a part of that and them for a year and sometimes two. Some have become friends on social media and I get to watch them build their lives. I have been lucky. I have been lucky enough to have a job that is emotionally and intellectually fulfilling for 22 years. I have been lucky enough to work with teenagers who are curious and snarky and funny and exploding with personality (and hormones) for so long. I have been lucky enough to work with friends and colleagues who match me in intensity and excitement and who believe so much in the work we do that they have stuck it out in this ever changing, seismically shifting career of ours. I have been lucky. But this is tough. This is not like anything I have ever done. And yes, I know that this is true for everyone everywhere in every job. But most people do not have my job. Most people have not been that lucky.
My job, my career, is meaningless if the kids don't show up. But these days I have only shadows of kids. I have students whose masks have subsumed them. They have been overwhelmed and overcome. The masks cover their anxiety, blanket their trauma, and destroy their joy. I see few smiles, and hear less laughter. I am teaching to breathing avatars. Oddly, they are more alive when they are virtual, but barely. Without their joy, and candor, without their tears and hugs, without their arguments and drama, I am nothing but an automaton speaking into a void. I am exhausted.
After years of witnessing my students think critically about ideas in every form, I am standing in front of 15 pairs of glazed over eyes, who robotically take notes. After years of pacing around my room, bending down at desks, kneeling down in front of pairs and groups sprawled out in the hallway, I am a droning lecturer in front of neat rows of teenagers all facing front terrified to turn their heads to speak to the student to their left. Discussions fall flat. Relationships are strained if built at all. This is not my job.
And I am trying. Other teachers tell me, it would be better for me if I stopped caring so much. Don't worry that I won't get them to write as much, read as much, talk as much, think as much. Don't worry that they are getting shortchanged ever so much. It is out of our control. But I am not those teachers. If I become those teachers I fear I will never come back to me. Yet I know they are right. If I could leave my job at 2:15 and switch my brain to being a mom and wife, if I could leave my job at the door, I might feel better. If I could stop myself from volunteering for every committee that I think might make a student's life better, if I could just say no instead of always yes, I would have more time, more clarity, more sleep. But then I would truly be stuck.
I have been teaching for 22 years. I have another 13 years before I can retire, and I am too old, too centered in my life to leave. So I must find a way to love this job that I have been lucky enough to love until now. I must find a way to make my students smile through their masks and to keep smiling through my own. I must keep pushing myself to remember how lucky I was and how lucky I will be again. Because 2020 is not life. It is just one year. One year out of 22. I have to show up, if only so that my students will sense the fullness of my presence, and come out of the shadows to find their own.
