One year
away from halfway through… Halfway through the “home years”, halfway through my
teaching career, halfway…halfway…
In the past
fourteen years, I have carried many, many things. I have carried things for my
students and I have carried things because of them. Some things are so very
heavy and painful to bear. I have carried the crushing blow of a college
rejection, the anxiety of Spring Break trips, the heavy load of the death of a
parent. I have suffered under the weight of test scores and I have nearly
drowned in the flood of white with blue lines or black text that covers my
desk. I have carried the knowledge of kids who work all night and go to school
all day just so that they can help a parent pay the bills, of a girl who was
skipping school to chase the paper trail that is beaurocacy from the Social
Security Office to the bank to the Housing Authority so that she could stay in
school and live in a safe place. I have carried disabilities and health plans.
I have carried the stress of seniors as they feel pressured to make life
decisions RIGHT NOW when those life decisions don’t even need to be made for
several years. I have carried the financial burden of a student who didn’t have
the money to pay her father’s burial expenses and the funeral home was going to
hold the body until they found the money. I have carried the weight of an empty
chair at graduation, cap and gown draped over it for a student who never came
home. I have carried other students across the stage, metaphorically speaking,
to receive a diploma that probably should have had my name on it as well.
But oh, the
beautiful things I have carried… I have carried the bite in the air of a Friday
night football game, the tears of a successful curtain call, the triumphant cap
toss in May. I have carried projects that perfectly captured the theme of a
literary work, bags of brown research paper envelopes that proved to some that
what seemed to be impossible was very much within their reach. I have carried
Holocaust Memorial Projects that took my breath away because I know that THEY
GOT IT, they embodied the message and purpose of Holocaust education. I have
carried checks to non-profit agencies that represented blood, sweat, and tears
from Holocaust Lit kids who went so far above and beyond in their projects that
it astounded even me. I have carried the words of thousands of letters of
recommendations. I have carried 2100 (more or less) names and faces. I have
carried five yearbooks and the staffs I will never forget. I have carried ____
proms. I have carried college graduations and military deployments and weddings
and new babies and new jobs for the “kids” who will always be “mine”. I have
carried millions of text and fb messages and the occasional handwritten letter
that boost my spirit in a way very little else can. I have carried requests to
proofread and analyze long after these people leave my classroom. I have carried the thrill of exciting news,
the joy of seeing someone find his or her dream calling, the excitement of
watching an athletic ability flourish at the collegiate level.
I have
carried the words, the stories… so, so many words and stories. I think when you
teach English, you become, in some sense, the keeper of the stories.
