A Teacher's Lesson

Today started out pretty well but did not finish nearly as strong. By the time school was over I'd spilled tea all over my desk and the newly updated October dates on my desk calendar were blurry and damp and ruined. I tripped over something or other and misplaced the pages I needed for periods 4 and 5 to complete the agree-disagree statements we had left to debate. The late afternoon and evening proceeded about the same with a trip to Fed-ex to retrieve my daughter's Ipod that was not fixed in the least. The diagnosis fee if I send it back is $100. I had to deliver the bad news which made her very sad. I slopped enchilada sauce all over the counter, twice, and now I am supposed to be grading, but the efficiency tank is bone dry.

So I was ruminating on this no good, very bad day. For all that went wrong, two things I almost forgot went right.

First, last Friday I collected daily writing journals from my high school juniors. Now I am hefting bags of 57 journals with 20 entries each. Don't bother to argue that they don't need to be read. I create serious connections with my students in these journals as I ask them light questions like, how old is your little brother ? or more serious do you need help? Anyway, it takes some students a good while to warm up to writing every day. So today, their first day without journals for a week, two students said they already were missing writing in them. My teacher-heart grew a size.

Second, after school today the boy who previously has walked out in a disgusted huff, frustrated that the class doesn't always work the way he wants it to, hung around. He wanted to share a poem he'd written about waking up on a cold, dewy morning. Sharing anything you write is a risk. Sharing your poetry riskier still. Sharing your poetry with your teacher, an act of bravery. Still there was the poem written on lined paper with loopy f's I couldn't read, powerful words and artful imagery. Once he'd shared the one, he read me another. A boy with the brave heart of a poet, shared a bit of himself with me. That's a moment to savor. Tomorrow he says he will bring in a novella he's been working on. We talked about the process of writing, writer blocks and characters that don't know what to do next. I hope he will share more in the future.

I may have been physically clumsy today, but as a teacher, for at least a couple of shining moments, I had the grace of a dancer. Because in the best moments of a teacher's day, your students teach you as much, if not more, than you are teaching them. It isn't really about the stack of papers at the end of the day.