A Question Answered

In the fall I asked myself the question almost every day. Why am I back in the classroom? The simple answer, that we needed the money, while true, did not satisfy. There are other ways to make money. It was made clear in a variety of subtle but unmistakable nudges, that I was meant to go back to teaching. That I ended up back in fifth grade seemed both gift (I love this age in ways that make no sense), and punishment (Hadn't I already done my time? Didn't I deserve to move on?).

I searched for the real answer in every child who crossed my path. Are you the one I'm here for? I searched in my adult encounters. Do you have wisdom for me, or I for you? I searched my heart and mind in the exhausted stillness of the time that's neither night nor day into which I awakened far too often.

Events happened that seemed like they might be answers.

A girl standing by my desk at the start of a bright spring day. She's wearing the same stained white coat she's worn every day, the one I ask her several times a day to take off when I look up and find her sleeping, her head tucked down like she's in a cocoon. She's late more often than not, so I'm surprised to see her. I'm even more surprised by the flower she extends to me, her face lit in a proud smile. I take it with all due delight, wondering whose flowering cherry tree she ripped the branch from on her walk to school. I remember this same girl from a few months before, silent and never smiling, hiding under her desk one day. Then avoiding our Friday ritual of hugs or handshakes by slipping around and out, now clinging to me on many days saying she doesn't want to leave.

A third grader with a story that would break a weaker heart who somehow has become my buddy. Her face lights up (as does mine) when she sees me in the hall. Great hugs. A trip to my room one morning so I can give her a nutritious snack to balance out the bag of chips she was eating for breakfast. Another morning she extends a hand full of peacock feathers toward me, telling me she'd brought them for sharing. We stand for long minutes as she tells me everything she knows about peacocks, including the fact that they climb trees because they can't fly. (They actually do fly up into the branches of trees, and don't literally climb up the trunk, but she convinced me enough that I looked it up.)

Lars. I'd forgotten about him. My heart leaps the first time I see him in the hallway. He's in third grade now, not much bigger than when I knew him as a kindergartner. Still tow-headed, still disheveled, still radiating light like no other child in my world. "Lars!" I hold my arms out.  He looks up with a beaming smile and comes for a hug. I have no idea if he remembers me or not. It doesn't seem to matter. Every time he sees me it's like I'm exactly the person he's been waiting all day to see.

The three people I teach fifth grade with have become friends, and we've become one of the most functional teams I've ever worked on. So different in so many ways, we share a fierce and stubborn belief that every child deserves our belief in their potential. We love each other's kids. We laugh. We celebrate each other's successes. 

Not all was smooth. In the two years I was gone, I became fodder for baseball field gossip, started by a former teammate. My principals, meeting me for the first time, believed the gossip, or at least enough of it to color how they saw me. For the first time in my career, in a year when my purpose was to be as unnoticed as possible, I was disciplined. The weird thing is that the focus was on an activity that former principals have praised me for. The focus was not on the thing that I've always felt perhaps I might deserve to be disciplined for. 

As the year wound down and I was pretty sure I was still missing the point, I began looking even more closely for the answer. I'd begun to think there was no answer when, on the last day of school, it was just there. Clear. Unmistakable. Simple.

In past years I've grieved the ending of the family I had spent the last nine months creating. The last weeks of school were filled with bittersweet energy as I reluctantly released my kids into the summer and the rest of their lives. I cried often and walked around tender, vulnerable, wounded. At some level I knew I had loved them and taught them the best I could, but I also knew how hard I'd had to work to love some of them, and how I'd not been completely successful in that endeavor. Somehow the raw grief of June was more about that loss, my inability to love well, than the loss of my students, but I didn't see that until just now. 

This year there was none of that grinding sadness. As my kids and I reflected back on the year and worked closure together, all I felt was love and satisfaction. Love for every single child in my room: the girls who never stepped out of line, the drama girls, the sad angry stony girls; the boys who could not sit still, the competitive boys who needed to win more than they needed to care, the funny smart endearing boys.

When asked what they liked about the year, the kids said the usual things: our play, the game day, outdoor school. But they also said they really liked how everyone in the room was an important part of a team and how we all worked together. It was in that moment I knew I'd succeeded. Not just with the kids but in overcoming that part of myself that could not love them easily and without reservation. I knew without doubt that my principals and the gossips were wrong about me. I knew that a heart so determined to find a way to love freely could not possibly beat in the person they thought they knew.

I don't know the direct cause and effect for my healing. All I know is it's real. I'm deeply grateful that finally I can look back on a year and know no matter what else happened, twenty-five kids were taught and loved and cherished from a soft and open heart. We've been warned—repeatedly—that the class coming up is the most challenging group of kids to come along in years. I met them on the last day and began to fall in love as they sat in my room in a circle with curious faces and wiggly bodies and multitudes of questions.

This year did not come without cost. I lost sight of my writer self. My body did not respond well to the concrete floors, the long days, the fatigue. I spent weeks in fear and shame as I struggled to understand how my view of myself could be so different from that of my supervisors.

I prayed. I stayed. I felt it all.

And now on the other side I feel a freedom I haven't known since my own tenth year. My defenses against shame are stronger than ever. My body is healing. My story is waiting to be told still. Only now the telling will come from a light and spacious place cleared of shadows, cobwebs, and ancient dust. 

Thank you to all of you who read my story and offer such wonderful words of encouragement. I love you in the same way I've learned to love my kids. For a while my blog is going to go a different direction. Walt and I leave for Belize tomorrow! I'm hoping to blog the whole two-week adventure as much as possible. I'm not sure how much internet access I'll have, but one way or the other, I'll be journaling our time there. Mostly for our own memories, but also to share this trip of a lifetime with all of you. I hope you'll come along for the ride.