RafeWorld

A few weeks ago I lost a former student. Even sadder, I lost this student to suicide. It was… and is… an incredible tragic event. I’ve watched over the past few years as suicides and student deaths have shaken the community I teach in, fortunate that they weren’t my students. This time it was and it was every bit as devastating an event as I expected it would be. I hope not to have to go through it again.

A year ago I ranted on my podcast about the unfortunate suicides that were making national headlines and how I pondered if things would be different if these kids knew that someone loved them. A year later, I’m wondering what I could have done to ensure one of my past students knew how much his former teachers and coaches still cared about him. Would it have made a difference? I’ll never know. I can’t change the past, but I can change the present… the future… and I’m doing so.

I wrote the following speech which I delivered to most of my students over the past week. I still have a few more classes to deliver it to, but I suspect they won’t see it before I get to deliver it to them as well. I worked hard to make it say what I wanted and needed to say and I’ll never know if the students know how much saying these words meant – it undermines five years of building a reputation as a “tough” and “mean” teacher, but I need them to know why I teach and what they mean to me more than I need to be seen as “mean”.

So… here’s what I told my students this week:

“How are you doing?”

I can’t count the number of times I have been asked that question over the past few weeks. I reply with some variation of the conventional answer, of course: “I’m fine.” After all, what I’m experiencing is the same as many others and most frequently the people asking are the ones who really need to talk. To those who have asked how I’m doing, I thank you. To those who haven’t out of consideration of privacy, I thank you as well. You would have only gotten the same answer, “I’m fine.” And I think everyone who has gotten that answer has known it’s not the truth.

No, the truth is that I’m not fine. Coming to terms with death is hard. Making sense out of something that has no logic behind it is hard. And considering the life of someone and contemplating all of the potential and brilliance that will never be seen again is hard. None of these things are fine, and the recent death of Troy Pelish brings all of these things forward. He was a brilliant young man with an unlimited future ahead of him, and his death most certainly does not make sense. While I hold myself proud to have known him, I am incredibly mournful of his passing. I am not, “fine”.

One of my teacher friends has a saying: “I can teach out of love or I can teach out of fear. I prefer fear because I can get a lot more done with it.” The first time I heard him say those words I became enamored with that phrase because it’s true: I can teach out of fear or I can teach out of love. As many of you know, I tend to favor fear. Unfortunately, in favoring fear, I have often forgotten to show love.

I love all of you. It’s an awkward phrase to hear, I’m sure. It’s equally awkward to say, but it’s the truth: I love all of you. This is an important lesson I’ve learned over the course of my time as a teacher: teaching is love. I got into teaching because I wanted to make a difference in the world, but what does that difference mean if I don’t love those who I teach? I may not always like the decisions you make, but that doesn’t make me love you less – it just makes us human. Love – real love – is accepting someone as they are – the good, the bad; the smart choices and the dumb ones.

I’ve also learned over the years that there’s even an irony to that love: those of you who think I’m just saying the words but they don’t apply to you, or think that I can’t possibly care about you because I’m so hard on you I obviously I dislike you are most likely the ones I care about the most. Ask yourself: why else would I care how you do? Love. Why else would I want to see you succeed and rebound from failure? Love. Why else would I take the time to make an investment in you not just as a student, but as a human being? Love. It’s one of the most important pieces of teaching, but I fear I’ve become so adept at my style of teaching that I’m not very good at showing it, so let me repeat one more time: I love all of you, just as I loved Troy. I need you to know that and I’m sorry if I’m not better at showing it at times. I also need you to know that, just as I miss Troy, I would miss any one of you if something happened to you, because I do care about you and because you are mine.

You see, teaching is a very possessive profession. As teachers, we have classrooms that are “ours” and we have books we prefer teaching that are “ours” and we have lessons that are uniquely “ours.” What you might not realize is that, as our students, you too are “ours.” We take possession of you, just as we help take responsibility for your successes and failures. When we hear about your achievements, like a proud parent we are quick to point out, “That one’s mine.” This student got accepted into an Ivy League university: “She’s mine.” This student just finished boot camp: “He’s mine.” Even, this student was arrested by the police. “They’re mine too.” In fact, when I got the phone call about Troy, I wasn’t asked if I had taught or coached him, but, if he was mine. And he was, just as all of you are.

That possession doesn’t end when you leave my classroom or leave William Byrd High School. You are my students, and you will always be my students. I care about you, and I will always care about you. I’m not alone in that: I don’t know a single teacher who isn’t exhilarated to find out how a former student is doing in life.  We enjoy seeing our students mature and grow and we are fascinated about where life takes you. Students often worry that we will be disappointed in where life has taken them, but I assure you we aren’t. Part of love is recognizing happiness, and even if life takes you in a completely different direction than you expected when we taught you, if you are happy, we will be happy for you.

If you aren’t happy… that’s when I need you to remember what I’m saying the most: I love you and care about you. I have never turned my back on a student or friend in need, and I never will. If you need someone to talk to, someone to complain to, someone to vent to, or just someone to remind you that there are people in the universe who care about you… well, you know how to find me. I am here for you. Now. In the future. When you need it. After all, you are my students.

I’m not a heavily religious person, but I do believe in fate or destiny. I believe things happen for a reason and we are put where we are supposed to be. I believe that you are my students and I am your teacher for a reason. While I can not pretend to make sense of it, Troy’s death happened for a reason as well. I’m trying to find something positive to come out of this tragedy. It will be some time before I am actually “fine” again, but I keep coming back to Troy’s parent’s request: to greatly cherish those who we love. I do cherish all of you, but I think it’s important – important enough to give up some of my valuable classroom time – to make sure you understand that – to make sure you know that someone cares for you and cherishes you.

Thank you for being my students, and never forget that you are my students and that means something, at least to me.

And the reason for the picture at the top: a scene that has been repeating in my head for the past few weeks – another fictional teacher I hope I can carry the spirit of throughout my very real career:

I posted to facebook last week:

The important lesson I hope my students learned today, regardless of anything else: don’t disturb Mr. Telsch while he’s eating. Seriously. Important lesson.

While that may sound like sarcasm (one of my friends responded “OMG – You’ve become “that” teacher), it actually is an important lesson and one that keeps coming up this year, so I thought I’d pontificate on the subject of lunch and why it is the most important meal of the day… at least for me.

When I had my first job (a subject I wrote about here), I didn’t give my lunches much attention. I would work through lunch, sitting in the back, typically familiarizing myself with policies and procedures, making a schedule, or doing one of another various and sundry work related things. No big surprise: I quickly found myself burned out. Even though the manager of that store was absolute rubbish as a manager, the one thing she did teach me was the importance of taking a lunch break; getting out of the workplace and clearing your head for thirty minutes does wonders for recharging in the middle of a busy work day.

I’ve had the luxury of having jobs with very flexible lunch schedules. These sort of jobs offer the opportunity for longer lunches or leaving the workplace in order to eat. When I was in hospitality, I could sometimes be gone for an hour or more (not frequently) and left to eat out on a daily basis. I think part of the reason I get along so well with the person who served as my boss in that job was because we would bond over lunch. We’d get away from the craziness, enjoy a good meal, and chat about movies, music, theater, books, family, or whatever came to mind. Sure, work would creep in sometimes, but most of the time we just enjoyed the freedom of escaping for a while.

Teachers don’t have that luxury.

Seriously. As a teacher, I get 35 minutes to eat lunch. Subtract from that the amount of time it takes to clear out the classroom and satisfy the needs of any lurking students afterwards (or any students that had to stay after to discuss behavioral choices during lunch), monitoring the hall, etc, and you’re looking at half an hour tops for eating. But you can’t get away. There is not enough time to race out and grab fast food, particularly since the closest fast food is at least 10 minutes away. So there you are: half an hour, stuck on campus where students, administrators, and others can quickly track you down.

The need to recharge is getting more and more desperate. I love teaching, so don’t read this as a complaint. This is fact. When I started teaching five years ago, teachers had an uninterrupted planning period and a duty period. The duty would take half the class period, so essentially in two days you had a period and a half of time designed for the teacher to plan, grade, call parents, talk to administrators, guidance, etc. That never was enough time, but it was something. For teachers with responsibilities like department chair or SCA or class sponsor, that was considered your duty. Now, thanks to budget cuts, that time simply isn’t there. This year, my schedule afforded me one duty period (but being department chair doesn’t count as that duty) and a second duty period. No uninterrupted planning. Three duties: hall duty, study hall supervision, and department chair (I should add that one of the wonderful members of my department did – of their own volition – take the hall duty so I would at least have one uninterrupted period for planning).

Can you see the need to unwind in the middle of the day?

I don’t mean to complain. It’s simply a fact: teachers are being asked to do more and more with less and less time afforded to do it (people who complain that teachers have such an easy job since they only work 10 months and get off at 3pm have no idea what they’re talking about). And you know what, I’ll take it. Because I love teaching. I love my students. I love my job, even with the bureaucratic tasks we are given and the constant amount of C-Y-A going on. I know what I do makes a difference.

But give me my lunches. Let me unwind. Let me destress for thirty minutes. Let me joke around with co-workers for half-an-hour without having to fulfill any commitments or face any students or answer any questions. I’ll be happy to do more work after those thirty minutes are done, including having my classroom interrupted to deal with the things people wanted to bug me with during lunch.

Lunch. It’s the most important meal of the day. If for no other reason than it’s what keeps us sane.

I don’t write a lot about my years at the hotel. Maybe it’s having a mindset for so long about not burning bridges, or maybe it’s that my mind has blanked some of my memories from my time working there to protect me from insanity. I enjoyed a lot of the people I worked with, but the job itself was crazy, especially as I carried my responsibilities with such a personal level of attentiveness that I couldn’t let myself “take it easy.” My work ethic and my expectations exceeded my own common sense – a problem that I can’t ever seem to let go of.

It wasn’t uncommon for me to have 80-90 hour weeks at the hotel. That’s not an exaggeration, unfortunately. There were times where I literally only got three or four hours of sleep between the time I got home from work and the time I had to go back in. Thankfully, it wasn’t the norm, but working six days a week or twelve hour shifts were pretty common. It wasn’t unusual for me to be greeted by people as I entered the building with the query: “Don’t you ever go home?”

For the longest time, the joke was that I didn’t. It was a hotel, after all. It wasn’t hard to believe that I had a room somewhere I could sequester myself for a few hours of sleep in between shifts. The “barn” (our audio-visual office) was private enough with few enough holding keys at the time that it was completely believable that we could have a cot set up in there. Frankly, there was a time or two (or a dozen), when I was in “hurry up and wait” mode, awaiting a room with little a/v requirements to finish so I could reset it for early the next morning, where I did grab a quick nap in the office, uncomfortably positioned in the office chairs.

As I entered management, I would find myself covering last minute pop-ups where things weren’t scheduled or the event didn’t justify the cost of bringing in a staff person. I was, after all, a slave of salary. As this became more and more frequent thanks to poor meeting planners, the exchange became something out of Clerks:

“Don’t you ever go home?”

“I’m not even supposed to be here today!”

It’s unfortunate not enough people recognize Kevin Smith’s debut film, since it’s so easily quotable. Still, at least the response was true, if not as clever as most people understood.

Fast forward to present time. I’m arriving at school around 7:30. I usually stay afterwards to prepare my materials and check in with other members of the department. At the beginning of the year, I determined I would stay until 4pm each day in an effort to get more done at the school and less that has to be done at home. Even that’s been unrealistic, as it’s uncommon for me to leave before 4:30. With very little prep time during the day, and an almost constant need to meet with principals, guidance counselors, other teachers, etc, I almost always have things to do once students leave.

On top of that, I was “volunteered” to run a new digital scoreboard our school has installed as part of the ongoing construction. This week was one of two games I said from the get-go I couldn’t participate in, but due to a comedy of errors (or, at least something I’m trying to call a “comedy”), I wound up having to go at the game.

So… get to the school at 7:30am. Leave around 5pm in order to come home and grab a quick bite to eat before getting back to the school before 6:30. As I walked up to the gates to enter the football stadium, what am I greeted with? One of the other teachers, who asks, “Do you ever go home?”

And before I could even think about it, the response came out: “I’m not even supposed to be here today.”

It’s funny because it’s true, but in that brief instant, this school year became something reminiscent of my time at the hotel – an experience that I don’t write much about, either because I don’t want to burn bridges, or because my mind has blanked things out to protect me from insanity. There is one key difference: this time I carry an unparalleled love for what I do, even if it does slowly drive me mad over the next year.

As good, old Norman Bates once said: We all go a little mad sometimes. It worked out well for him, right?

…death will come to you off the sea,
a death so gentle, and carry you off
when you are worn out in sleek old age
Your people prosperous all around you
All this will come true for you as I have told.

When I was younger, I read a translation of The Odyssey that finished the story with the death of Ulysses, featuring the hero as an old man, waking up one morning, climbing up a hill, sitting down, and proclaiming that he was ready to die. Although non-canonical, I always liked this image of one of my favorite heroes – someone who had been so many trials and tribulations, but when death came, it came on his terms. It’s an image that I felt was solidly reflected in the end of Babylon 5, which may be a big part of the reason the end of that series resounded so well with me.

In the past year, I've watched two of my own personal heroes fall. One was claimed by death, the other by politics. To some degree, both of them fell as Ulysses did in my young adult translation - on their own terms. Yet, in their falling, I can't help but think how deeply these people have affected and influenced me.

The first of the two, D.J. Keith, was a math teacher... no, was the math teacher at my high school. That’s not to say other teachers weren’t as good or knowledgable, but there was just something to Mr. Keith that set him apart. He was a teacher you didn’t mess with. He had a reputation far and wide for being no-nonsense. A student who was reading a novel instead of paying attention to the lesson found his book being tossed out the second-story window to get the student’s attention back, and another student who was misbehaving found himself being dragged out into the hallway – desk and all.

The more I learn about teaching, the more I know I could never get away with the things Mr. Keith did. They just wouldn’t be tolerated in today’s educational world. I think is somewhat a shame, because Mr. Keith had an attitude and a manner that demanded respect. Even students who didn’t have him as a teacher, or didn’t do well in his class, couldn’t defy him. I was a weak math student… no, I was a lazy math student, and he called me on it perpetually. I think it’s one of the few things that led to my wake-up call my senior year, when I finally proved all the teachers were right – I had the potential and just wasn’t living up to it.

I had the utmost respect for Mr. Keith, and even though I can’t apply his philosophies to my classroom, I know there is his influence there. I hear his words echo in my voice at times, when I talk about being “fair” or I help stall to not give an assignment over the weekend. He was larger than life, an image I often find myself trying to present. I think of all the students who were touched by having him as a teacher, and I mourn those who will never have that chance. If I can carry on only a tenth of his legacy, I will count my career as an educator as a success.

On the other hand, we have someone who wasn’t a teacher, but affected my decision to become a teacher greatly. Danny was the biggest pain in the butt to my co-workers when I worked as an Audio-Visual manager, but once you got to know him… once you paid him respect and earned his respect in return, he was an amazing person. Unlike Mr. Keith, Danny is still around, just having stepped down from the role in which I worked with him. His influence is just as unmistakable, however – possibly more so, since he’s one of the people I turned to when I was thinking about changing careers. Danny supported the idea, both challenging and cultivating it. That was what I needed, because it quickly showed me that teaching isn’t a walk in the park, but that I had shoulders to lean on if I needed them.

I was fortunate enough to have the opportunity to tell Danny how influential to me he was before he stepped down from his position. I didn’t have that same opportunity with Mr. Keith, although I had run into his wife (also a teacher, and also a large influence on me) right before I got my teacher’s license and told her of my career change. I hope he heard through word of mouth, and I hope he didn’t cringe if he did.

I got into teaching because I wanted to have an effect on the world, to know that I had made a difference. These are two men who have accomplished this, even if they only made a difference to me. I walk in their footsteps, but even my sizable feet don’t come close to filling those steps.