I'm in Love -Again!

I think I’ve fallen in love again. All the signs are there. I am obsessing. I am worrying. I find myself distracted easily. And I haven’t just fallen in love with one person. Oh, no. That would be far too easy. I have fallen in love with almost one hundred kids. Yes, for the twenty-somethingth time, I have fallen in love with my classes.

It may sound trite and silly, but it is true. As I spend the first long weekend away from my classes, I find I am thinking about them. More often than not, I am not thinking of them as a class, it is as specific individuals. I am reminded of them as I walk through my weekend. As I catch up on grading, I am upset with them, worried about them, or eager to talk to them. I debate whether I need to email them and remind them that we’ll be in the computer lab for the first time on Tuesday.

It is one of the most wonderful things about being a teacher: the cycle of the year. Yes, I know I am in the crush phase right now. I have just met these students and we are newly in love. The honeymoon will end just before Halloween. How timely. But for right now, we are still new to each other, still exploring who were are together.

I am trying to tailor the curriculum to fit my kids as precisely as possible. With each assignment, class session, discussion and activity, I am learning what they can do, who they are and what they seem to need. I am reading IEPs, talking to parents, and having conferences. The more I learn about them, the more eager I am to learn with them.

Yes, some of them are challenging. Yes, some of them are tough. Not only I am undaunted, but their prickles compels me even more to reach out and connect with them – especially now. The first few weeks of class are formative. One of the beautiful things about the new year is that even my most rigid and difficult students still have wiggle room at this time of year. They are willing to come to the relationship anew and try again. That is what the cycle is all about.

Unlike a day-to-day business, students and teachers in school move through a spiral path that promises growth, change and release. We love our breaks but we also know that, as we study together, we are changing and moving in a positive direction.

As optimistic as that may sound, I know I have students who dread coming to school. I know that many carry enormous baggage with them. I worry about them. I look for them and work on ways to support them. I am not all knowing, and they are not all sharing, so I often wonder and wait. And I am always hopeful that my optimistic enthusiasm will infect them and that can help, if only just a little.

The cycle will move forward. We will go from being shiny new friends into a more everyday routine. Yet, I believe that the way we form our relationship will have a profound effect on the routine into which we settle. The way I, as teacher, respond to these first few weeks will shape the course of our year together and our relationship beyond that.

In college, I remember reading excepts from a book called, Contact: The First Four Minutes. The thesis of this book was that, in the first four minutes when people meet, much of the future of their relationship is determined. While four minutes may be a short amount of time, I think a similar thing can be said for classrooms.

So despite the end of summer and the return to the work routine, I am eager to get back to the kids with whom I have newly fallen in love. I know it won’t last. It will turn into something far better and more important. That is why I do it, again and again and again and again.

What I Do On My Summer Vacation

I love being a teacher. I love the kids, the classroom energy, the connection to the community, the cycles of the year – and summer vacations. Students aren’t the only ones asked about what they did on their summer breaks. A summer break is one of the best perks of being a teacher and I treasure it.

During the school year, I try to strike a balance between work, family, and everything else but school still gets the biggest chunk of time. I spend hours in the classroom with the kids. I come in early and stay latel. Yet, schoolwork doesn’t remain in the schoolhouse. I go home and read, grade, plan, make phone calls and do countless other school related tasks. Teaching is not a job that can be left at work – even during the summer. I spend a significant amount of time doing schoolwork over the summer.

I try to amortize my summer free time into the school year. I complete many of the tasks that I would otherwise need to do during the school year. I do about 80% of my planning during the summer. I create handouts and schedules. I prepare literature units and activities. I go over my students’ end of the year feedback with a fine-tooth comb. I revise, add and delete, restructure and reinvent. I take a few hours a day to do school work so that I can have those hours for my family and myself during the school year.

I go day to day for each my classes and look at how things worked during the past year and what changes are needed for the year ahead. I completely prepare materials for the first few weeks of school. I plan the first semester as completely as possible.

The best laid plans of teachers and compulsive people often go astray. My plans are not fixed in concrete. However, I find it easier to revise plans than to build them on the fly. Sometimes I have to throw them away and start over but more often, they need some tailoring and tweaking. This summer works creates free time for me during the school year.

Summer is also a time for me to be a student. I have taken courses on everything from gifted education to technology to American literature. I take on the big projects like revising my website, finding new texts and writing new curricula. I try my hand at blogging. I learn a lot during the summer.

The best part of summer is that I spend time with my family. We go to museums and parks, take short “overnighters” and see movies, plays and concerts. We have a great time together. My kids have their own activities and I spend a large portion of my summer sitting in the stands of baseball and volleyball games as well as schlepping them from classes, camps, and other events.

My children go to overnight camp and that gives my wife and me the opportunity to travel. It is delightful to have time for just the two of us. We hiked in the Rocky Mountains this year and it was fantastic.

The summer gives me a chance to pursue a long list of tasks that are set aside during the school year. I organize, clean, build, plan, buy, and work on a long list of home improvement projects.

I read and relax, spend too much time on the computer, and go to lunch and dinners with friends. I saw a ton of people this summer and gained a lot of weight with them.

My summer vacation is full. I use a good chunk of it for school, and a larger chunk for those things that don’t get their fair share during the school year. Summer vacation balances the school year’s frenetic pace. It is the reset button that makes the school cycle possible.

High School Reunions - Putting the Past In its Place

As a high school teacher, I think I approach reunions differently than those whose last high school experience was long ago. Unlike many of my classmates, I have been able to view my high school days through a new lens – over and over and over. It has changed the way I see my high school years significantly.

When we were in high school, it was the center of our universe. We lived our lives as if the boundaries were just out of our sight and would slip into view in a year or two, revealing the bigger picture of wealth, status, and adulthood. Little victories or setbacks were major events; rivalries, reputations, and relationships were our primary focus.

As we moved away from high school, we look back with a kind of split personality. We know that we were different people then, but we don’t feel like different people now. Some of our memories embarrass us; others are cause for pride or anger. We know that our classmates have grown up, but we secretly believe that, deep down inside, they are the same people who tortured, teased, and tantalized us way back then. We think that, when we reunite, we will magically revert and our adult selves will be replaced with who we were then – and it will all happen all over again. That has not been my experience.

My reunions with my former students are often surprising and satisfying. For them, I am the same as when they sat in my class. The high school, all of it - teachers, classmates, memories, are fixed in a time bubble, unchanged. One student, with whom I spent every day for her four years of high school, returned and, after we had spoken for a while confessed that she wasn’t sure that I would even remember her. When I asked her how she thought I could forget someone with whom I spent so much time, she replied that she was a mouse in high school, no one noticed her. I assured her that she was indeed, noticed. I reminded her of events that she had minimized or even forgotten. I asked her if she still saw herself as a “mouse.” She smiled and said, “Certainly not!”

Reunions are opportunities to repair the past, set it straight, put it in its place and let it go or transform it into a new future. Few of us were the person we wanted to be in high school. That is a good thing. If we reached our peak during our high school glory days, it may have been a long twenty years and be an even longer rest of our lives. For many of us, high school does hold glory memories, which may appear alluring when compared with the darker moments of adult life. The reverse is also true, although we probably either don’t remember it or have it locked into an adolescent emotional time capsule.

My former students are either eager or embarrassed to tell me about their exploits since high school. Some have noted that they did not attend their reunions because they knew their classmates had accomplished so much more than they did. Yet when I ask them about high school friends, they have the same glow of curiosity, the same need to see the adult version of the teenage comrade, the same nostalgic wish to touch the past.

I have attended only one official reunion of my former students, although I have been at countless unofficial reunions. As I drove to a loop bar for the tenth reunion of the class of 1990, I became increasingly anxious. What was I doing there? Why did I feel the need to be an interloper on this event? Even as the party began and I saw only a few familiar faces, I did not feel at ease.

Then, one by one, adults who had been my students came through the door: attorneys, social workers, moms, dads, unemployed guitarists, graduate students, and “I’m not sures.” They were not kids any more, they were people. They were closer to me in both age and place in life than I ever realized. We talked about their high school years and I was privileged to perceptions I had never imagined. Instead of remembering them as the children they were, I now think of them as the grown ups they turned out to be. They turned out really well, I am very proud of them.

We know that the changes since high school are mighty. There is nothing profound in that statement. Yet, the high school kid inside of us screams out that it is not true. He or she says to us, “They are exactly as they were. They will still make fun of me, compete with me, and turn me back into the person they wanted me to be and not who I really am.” It is not true. It is the voice of nervous adolescence speaking.

Our high school reunions afford us the opportunity to come to terms with our teenage years. They provide us with the chance to remake old friendships and transform old enmities. Reunions can provide us with the perspective we need to shepherd our own children through an all new high school landscape. We can finally put our high school experience in its proper place in our lives – and that is not a bad place, but it is not today’s place.

A Teacher’s Facebook Dilemma

If you are reading this, you probably know that I am on Facebook too much. Facebook has been a great vehicle for reconnecting with my schoolmates from my first twenty-two years. Finding people from elementary, middle and high school as well as college, camp and other parts of my past has made me a Facebook enthusiast (some would say addict).

Like most people, I have made friends since college. Some of them are on Facebook. Unlike most people however, for the past twenty-three, I have been teaching high school. Just as much as I enjoy finding my former classmates, it has been delightful to reconnect with former students. Many of them are on Facebook. See my problem?

Of course, I am not going to be Facebook friends with my current students or other students attending the school at which I teach. That could put us all in uncomfortable and (here comes the teen buzz word) awkward positions. Does this issue vanish when these students graduate from high school or college? Several of my former students are now my friends – I mean real life, talk-on-the-phone, go-out-to-lunch and hang out friends. My eldest former students will turn forty this year. Surely I can be Facebook friends with them.

Here is the heart of my dilemma: if is okay for me to be real life and Facebook friends with former students (or at least the older ones), is it okay for me, the teacher, to initiate that friendship? Please note that I did not use the noun “friend” as a verb. I know it is a Facebook convention, I just refuse to do it.

I am Facebook friends with several of my former teachers and professors. When one of my former teachers befriended me, it felt very good. I never felt confident about our relationship and the Facebook friendship invitation felt like getting a good grade and a pat on the back. I would never have initiated a friendship with this teacher. If I befriend former students, would that be their response? Could there be some former students who would like to befriend me but aren’t sure if it is okay to do so?

Maybe not. Two of my former students have indicated that they didn’t want to be Facebook friends with me. One was very direct and said that it would be “inappropriate.” If there are things on former students’ Facebook pages that they do not want me to see, then I do not want to see them! I appreciate being protected in this way. The other student communicated with me via Facebook but never initiated a friend request nor did she approve mine. The first student is still in college but the second one is out of college by several years. Please note that I had very strong positive relationships with both of these people and, I think, I still do.

Do I wait for former students to invite me into a friendship? Do I take the chance and make that first move and just shrug off those who do not feel comfortable with their old teacher seeing those embarrassing pictures or reading their status statements? Do I only befriend the older students and wait for the college kids to clean up their pages when they are getting ready for job interviews? I don’t know. I just know that, when I see their names on Facebook, I wax nostalgic and I wonder, “What are they doing now? How are they?” And then I realize, “I miss them.” That is the primary reason I am enjoying Facebook so much.

Talking to Each Other, Talking To Myself

Hello! How do you do? Welcome to my blog, I am delighted you have found it. I am amazed that you have found it. Wait! Don’t leave. Stick around and see if something interests you. I am hopeful that this blog will be an opportunity for us to converse about the challenges of raising kids, being good neighbors and navigating a world where the issues are never as clear as they appear on the evening news.

Who am I that you should read what I have to say? I am the parent of a teen and a preteen who are teaching me new lessons daily. I am a high school English teacher. I have been teaching since the early ‘80s and, for the past ten years, I have balanced these two important responsibilities by being a full time dad and a part time teacher. I am also a Sunday School teacher, an officer in my local neighborhood association and an active leader in my congregation.

I am writing this blog to explore the issues that only sometimes make headlines. I want to discuss how we navigate in new and uncharted waters. As I move through my community, I find that, because I am both in the school and in the parent pick-up line, I have a different perspective on many of these issues. Whether discussing over programmed children, substance issues, civility, parenting styles, religion or taxes, I see things from many points of view. It is my goal to explore those views and issues here.

I write to explore my own thoughts. I write to help me understand a complex world. I write to exchange ideas with people interested in dialogue. So I invite you to make this blog yours as well. In many ways, it is like my classroom; we will learn together.

Since this blog is not my primary focus, I will do my best to add an entry or two each month. I will write more, if I my schedule allows. Feel free to post comments, questions, suggestions and additions to each of my postings.

I am a participant on Facebook and Twitter and you may certainly contact me through those networks. Please feel free to get in touch with me.

Finally, be patient with me. Writing a blog is new to me. For those of you who have done this before, I thank you in advance for sharing your wisdom. I do not anticipate that there will be many people actively reading this blog and I am well aware that I am talking to myself most of the time. So, dear reader, I am especially grateful that you are generously giving me some of your time and attention. I promise to work hard to deserve it.