My Former Students Turn Fifty

I started teaching in the spring of 1986 at a junior high school in Evanston. At the same time, I was hired at Deerfield High School and I began that fall. I had just turned twenty-two years old when school started. This year and next, the seniors from my first year at DHS turn fifty years old. 

Yes, you read that correctly; my eldest former students are fifty. It is amazing that they have not only caught up to me but now are several years older than I am. Time is relative.

I was the youngest member of the DHS faculty for my first three years. There were only about seven of us under the age of thirty! Slowly, staff members my age arrived and by the early nineties, I was dating a DHS counselor and we had colleagues who were at the same stage of life.

Then one of my former students was hired at DHS. Then another. Then some more. They were not that much younger than me, and we were hiring a lot of people who had recently graduated from college. I had plenty of former students who were out in the working world and pretending to be adults. I was doing the same thing.

I got married. We had kids. My former students did the same thing and invited me along for the ride! Right after college, I ended up going to many of my friends’ weddings. For a while, I had frequent renter points at a local tuxedo shop. Just as that wave of weddings slowed down, my former students picked up the slack and I attended their weddings.

They were always one stage of life behind me. Funny how that works.

Remember, this was before Facebook or any other digital way to stay in touch. They would call me on the telephone (which was on the wall). I would see them when they visited their parents in town or had just moved into their first house.

In 2008, things changed. After the DHS welcome session with my incoming daughter’s counselor, a woman approached me and told me I had been her teacher. Her son was also starting Deerfield High School. Oh, no, my second-generation students had arrived in the building.

But they had not arrived in my classroom. In the next few years, half a dozen of my former students’ children became my hallway friends. Seeing their parents at Open House night was like traveling in time.

Meanwhile, I attended some fortieth and forty-fifth birthday parties, a few more weddings, and other events that made these ex-teenagers feel very grown up!

As I met with a student a few years ago, we realized that his stepmother was a former student of mine. Last year, a former students’ son was in the same class that his mother and I had shared many years ago. This year, I have many more. There is no denying it: my former students are old.

I bump into former students everywhere, but now I am as likely to see them at school functions as anywhere else. I have a confession: I love it. I love seeing them all grown up. I love hearing about their lives. And there is something very special about learning with their children.

Yes, sometimes I mangle their names. I am always grateful for a reunion that comes with a reintroduction. More often than not, I recognize my former students and remember their first names. They usually recognize me. This always surprises me since they are older than I am now.

And now the class of 1987 approaches fifty. The class of 1988 will do the same thing soon. Two years later, the class with whom I entered DHS will hit the half-century mark.

Sometime, I think we will all finally realize that we’re all the same age now.