I guess I’m worried, or nervous, or maybe even a little scared, because I don’t know how to be anything else. I mean, I know how to do many things, some of them fairly well. I know how to DO other things, but I have no idea how to BE anything else. I thought about being a Walmart greeter, but I’m not even sure that’s a thing anymore.
I’m a teacher, or at least I will be until May 31st. I’ve been a teacher, formally, since 1994. I think I was always a teacher, always a disciple of Glasser, even before I knew it. I have lots of things I am excited about trying in my first year as a former teacher … writing, fishing, hiking, taking care of my grandchildren, but I fear that may not be enough.
The Unbreakable Bond: The Need to Continue Educating
I expect I will have to teach just a little, maybe a GED class or a poetry workshop, or else I might start telling random people at Walmart about the due process clause of the 14th Amendment or how to decipher the slope/intercept form and write in iambic pentameter. I think there is something about having been an educator for a long time that almost renders it impossible to just stop educating. There is a moment of something akin to grace that only a teacher who has seen a child actually learn can understand.
Teaching is something that is very difficult, if not impossible, to stop “cold turkey.” I’m sure that abruptly ceasing any avocation is difficult, but I sincerely doubt that a retired attorney retains an insatiable desire to litigate. I wonder if I should start a Teachers Anonymous to facilitate the transition from the classroom to the flower garden. For some reason, almost every retired teacher I know has taken to growing things. There is so much rudimentary psychology in that transition. One doesn’t need to be a prophet or a sage to see the parallels between gardening and teaching. We all know, or at least hope, that some of the seeds we’ve planted will flourish.
That’s really what it’s about, planting seeds and watching them grow. I think that’s why it hurts so badly when they don’t, and sometimes they just don’t. A good teacher always wonders if they might have done something differently … maybe a better lesson plan, a better activating strategy, a better differentiation strategy, a little bit more empathy. When I thought about writing this little scribble this morning, I knew I would have to step away before, and or after, the next few sentences for a breath of fresh air and a few, or many, tears.
I have lost fourteen current or former students: automobile accidents, cancer, murders, suicide.
I’ve won a lot of awards for teaching, but I’ve also written too many eulogies and walked by too many coffins. I know I can never write the fourteen biographies it would take to tell their stories the way they deserve to be told. I carry a yearbook in my head, and in my heart, with fourteen pictures and fourteen testimonies. I try to keep that yearbook closed but sometimes I can’t. Teaching hurts. It always has, and it always will. It hurts … and then it heals.
Small Moments of Gratitude: The Rewards of Teaching
You open the mailbox and find an invitation to a college graduation or a wedding. Some burly biker dude sends you a Facebook friend request and a message assuring you that you changed his life a quarter of a century ago. Some loquacious girl who tried your patience for an entire semester writes you a note on the bottom of her final exam declaring you to be the best teacher ever. You didn’t even know she was paying attention. You tear up and tell yourself that you made the right life choice. I think it is time for a little vignette, and I know how structurally irresponsible it is to announce a vignette, but here it comes.
It was March of 2020. The governor had just canceled school. I was afraid of the virus, the sickness, that we knew so little about. Though some folks might posture, or even downright lie, about their bravery, I think most of us would admit that we were at least a little afraid.
The Decision to Keep Teaching: An Encounter at Walmart
I stood in line at Walmart. I had decided that I was never going back to school again. When I left that last day I had gathered all the things in my room with meaning, stuck them in a cardboard box, put them in my trunk, and drove away. I hadn’t decided to retire; I had just decided that I was never going back. You see, a few days earlier, I had learned that yet another former student had passed away, and not peacefully. That’s all I’m going to say about that. I think I saw Covid, and that death, and my perennial depression, as an excuse to leave something that all too often simply hurt.
I was standing in line at Walmart. I think I had a loaf of bread, a gallon of milk, and a 12-pack of AA flashlight batteries. I was looking at my feet, feeling sorry for myself, when I heard a little voice, a small still voice. I looked up and recognized the cashier as a girl I had taught four or five years ago, a quiet little lady who spoke softly and rarely.
“Hey Mr. Caldwell.”
“Oh, hey girl, how have you been?”
“I’m doing well. I’m in college right now, studying History.”
“That’s great. You gonna be a teacher?”
“Yes sir, just like you. I told my professor that it was a big old white man with a beard who first made me feel proud of myself and made me ok for the first time with being a black female.”
I don’t remember how I responded. I know I sat in the car in the Walmart parking lot with my bread, and my milk, and my batteries and wept. I know I sat in that car in that parking lot and decided that I would always be a teacher.
You have to love this thing, this job, this identity, because it is worth loving. You have to love this thing even if it doesn’t always love you back.
