Category: Students

What teachers really want to say to students but can’t.

To My Students: I Won’t Be Offended.

To My Students: I Won’t Be Offended.

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Here we are.  Summertime.  School is out, the weather is warming, the sun sticks around a little longer.  It is the time of year when we all retreat to our separate little corners of the world and live all of those things which make us look forward to the word “summertime”.  This year is definitely different, with all of its uncertainties we feel like we are trying to build a house on shifting sand. There are so many unanswered questions.

First there are the questions about normalcy. Will the pool open?  Can I go to the mall with my friends?  Will I be able to play baseball this year?  Next come the questions about the bigger picture. Are bills being paid? Are my friends and family ok? When will this end?

Then of course, we need to add to all of those questions the fact that different people are looking at all of this very differently.  Differing views over how to handle the virus and our various states of “lockdown” are costing some people life long friendships.  Emotional exchanges are happening between usually level and calm people.  Adults, who should be exemplars of behavior for you, are so stressed in ways that are unfamiliar to them that they are behaving in ways that they will be ashamed of in the future.  If our world’s current situation had a smell, it would be “EEEEWWWW”.  

Unfortunately, you have less control over things than even we do, and we don’t have much.  Yes, I can go into all of the motivational quotes; “Attitude is everything”, “Hang in there Baby”, “When you get to the end of your rope, tie a knot and hang on”.  I mean, they all make sense.  They must be true because they are on a poster after all.  No one questions the wisdom of the motivational poster.  That simply is not done.  There would be real anarchy in every classroom across this great country if we started to question the poster wisdom.  

I can see it now, young, innocent Timmy raising his hand to ask a question, “Mrs. Nerdleblank, is attitude actually everything?  I mean, everything?”  The class looks on, slack jawed at the audacity of such a question.

“Yes Timmy.  Yes it is.  Also, you should go to the office for even thinking of questioning the motivational poster.  This is something for which I will not stand.”  Timmy slowly stands and begins the long walk toward the office, knowing he is in real trouble this time. It is not the first time Timmy has questioned the wisdom of the posters.  He fears the worst; a phone call to Mom.  That means real trouble indeed.

So to keep us all out of the proverbial hot water with the poster police, let us assume that yes, attitude does matter in this and all circumstances.  It is also really tough to keep a positive attitude all of the time, especially when everything in the universe seems to be having meetings in some dingy back room somewhere in order to conspire against you. 

Let me assure you that teachers are having similar struggles.  We love summertime too.  We love the long sunlit days and getting more sleep.  After all, summer is the time when teachers entirely stop thinking about classes and lessons and anything to do with work.  It is when we leave to go on our around the world cruises or move to our beautiful mountain homes to get away from it all.  It is when we hit the town in our limos and party until dawn.  No, wait, that’s not us.  I am not sure who that is, but it’s not us………Anyway, the point here is that teachers don’t have limos.  We should though.  That should be put into our next contract.

The other point is that we are struggling along with you in all of the uncertainty.  We know many of you do indeed feel like you are standing on shifting sand.  Many of us feel the same way.  We know many of you have real worries and concerns and are fighting some serious dragons in your own lives.  On top of all of the worries is yet one more: the worry of offending someone.  What if you think you are doing the best you can and someone is offended by it because what they “think is best” is different from what you and your family “think is best”?  It is enough to make even the most level headed among us lose our cool.

To that end, let me say this to you, my students, whom I adore.  As summer comes and we head to our own little corners of the world, restrictions on our movements due to the pandemic are being lifted.  If I am not in my mountain villa and we do run into one another, I promise you that I will still see you as one of my students, whom I adore.  I promise that I will believe you are doing your best to navigate all of this.  I will not be offended if you forgot to put on your mask, or if you remembered.  I will not be offended if you stand a bit too close in the store.  I will not be offended if you back away a bit because you think I am standing too close in the store.  I will not be offended if you think we should handle our nation’s situation differently than I do.  Lastly, I will not be offended if you spot me out running errands and hide from me, because let’s be honest, you would have done that one anyway.

Unusual Times Show How Much We Genuinely LOVE Our Jobs…

Unusual Times Show How Much We Genuinely LOVE Our Jobs…

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During this unprecedented time of unique challenges of everyone being all in this together but completely alone and in the same boat except that some people are in yachts and some are on the little floating door thingy that Rose from Titanic totally bogarted from Jack because we all know there was plenty of room on there for him so he ended up freezing in the Arctic waters of the storm of corona, I have learned a few things.  The first is that Rose was not all that nice.

The second, and perhaps more important thing, is that I love my job.  Truly, madly, deeply, as the song goes.  I love my job.  Over the last eight weeks I have done what many other teachers across the country have done.  I have tried to figure out how best to help my students, how to continue to deliver content and not simply have them review, review, review.  I have tried to figure out how hard to push them, how much to excuse, how best to keep them engaged.  I have made hundreds of decisions about what my virtual class will look like.  Not all of the decisions have been the right decisions.  They haven’t all been wrong either.  There were days where I was more complacent about what was happening in class and days when I was vigilant.  There were nights when I lost sleep over one student or another and whether she was ok or not.  There were days when it was so overwhelming I didn’t want to think about it at all. 

None of this is unusual.  Teachers all over the country are doing the very same thing.  I am not special in any of that.

To be sure, every teacher had a different experience just as every student has.  The Mrs. Nerdlebaums and Mr. Titleborns of the country all have different perspectives and different issues to consider.  Some have to worry about very young students who were in the process of learning to read and do basic math.  Those teachers have to figure out how best to help them continue to do just that.  Other teachers have to think about seniors who have literally been robbed of their senior rites of passage and are emotionally devastated by it.  Somehow, they have to convince these almost adults that they should continue on with their Pre-calc lessons when it just doesn’t seem that important.  

Couple those concerns with the fact that students are not, in fact, “all in this together”.  Each student has his or her own problems, worries, and fears.  Some have parents who have lost their jobs and for the first time ever are unsure of where the next meal is coming from.  We want them to worry about handwriting.  Some students have severe asthma and they are terrified to go outside.  We want them to pay attention to a history lesson.  Some students miss their friends so deeply that it is keeping them up at night.  We want them to worry about diagraming sentences.  Don’t misunderstand, they should worry about these things.  Handwriting, history, proper grammar and structure are all important things.  Good teachers know one more thing, though.  We know they are distractions from the worries of the day.  We know that when students are engaged in our lessons students are less likely to be worrying about hunger, asthma, or desperate loneliness.  So how best do we continue to deliver our curricula and be the saving distraction for so many of our students? Even as teachers and students think about all of these worries, we are also now thinking about the end of the school year. 

Normally at this time of year, teachers are scrambling to cram in content to finish the curriculum.  We are contacting parents to make sure the end of the year details are in place.  We are having conferences about where students should be placed and how best to serve them next year. 

Students are thinking about the fact that the clock is actually  moving BACKWARD!  Summer break seems to move further away between the beginning of the day and the end.  The final days and weeks stretch like the never ending chewing gum someone tries to pull off a shoe.  Students worry about their final grades and begin asking for extra credit (no, you can not invent some ridiculous 4 paragraph assignment when you haven’t bothered to complete the 8 assignments still outstanding from the beginning of the semester).  They have trouble keeping their thoughts on their 900th algebra problem of the week when the bright warm days of summer are so close at hand.  Students think about the sun on their faces, warm breezes and afternoon ice creams, long boarding to their friends’ houses, playing in sprinklers, amusement parks and summer jobs.  

Not this year.  This year, all any of us can think about is what summer will actually look like.  Will there even be a “summer” in any normal sense of the word?  We all hope so.  None of us know.  What we do know is that we teachers love you, our students.  This came home to me in a big way this week.  When we left school in March, we all just “left”.  Students and staff were directed to take home whatever they thought they would need to continue to work.  All of the textbooks, iPads, chrome books, all of them went home.  What did not go home were locker posters, mirrors, markers, snacks (gross) various gym bags and clothing, basically anything that can be left in a locker, is still at schools across the country.  There is a certain ghost town feeling about it all.  All of the belongings were seemingly abandoned in a hurry. 

Normally there would be a “desk clean out day” for the little ones or a “locker clean out day” for the older students.  This day is always filled with gleeful chaos as the students pull things out that they haven’t seen since the first day of school.  Suzie will pull out an all but forgotten hair brush she just had to have at school.  Tommy produces a calculator that has been lost since Christmas.  Jenny pulls something out of her locker that used to be an apple.  The now shriveled and fuzzy article will engender roars of laughter and several shrieks as she walks toward the giant trash can that only appears on these end of school days.  Students then stand by their desk or locker as clipboard laden teachers walk past for inspection.  Excitement builds as students return from their newly cleaned and de-grossified lockers to their classrooms.  Summer is almost here!  Everyone is almost free.

That’s how it should go.  That is the way the good Lord intended, for sure.  It is a rite of passage for every student.  A clean locker at the end of the year is a symbol. It is the manifestation of 180 days of work. It means a movement to the next level.  That is not what is happening this year though.  This year will look like some weird Hollywood version of an old fashioned hostage transfer and ransom drop in a Western movie.  Students will come through wearing masks to get the stuff which has already been cleaned out of their lockers and placed in bags for them.  As they approach the adult who has control of their locker loot, masked students will extend and arm (gloved, of course) to show they have the ransom; the school’s property. The two parties will each carefully check their merchandise and then, when the transaction is complete, they will slowly back away from one another.  The sound of old timey Western music plays in the background. Tumble weeds will blow by, even in climates where they don’t exist.  

AND I CAN’T WAIT! I am so excited at the prospect of seeing my students that I don’t even care that I will be dressed like some bandit from a soundstage and will be gloved like a surgeon about to go to remove a pesky appendix from a middle aged Karen.  I want to see the faces (ok, eyes) of my students.  I want to hear the excitement in their voices as they fill us in, even briefly, on what has been happening with them.  I want to hear them as they greet their friends for the first time in eight weeks, even if it is from a distance.  I want to be there as some tiny little bit of normal comes back, even if it is fleeting.

Truth be told, I had no idea how much this would mean to me until the main office requested teachers to help in the ransom drop / hostage transfer that will be this day.  I simply could not reply to that email fast enough.  My fingers tripped over each other with excitement at the prospect of getting back to the students and the building where I belong.  There can be no doubt that other teachers feel the same way.  Scenes like this will play out all across this great country of ours.  These scenes will no doubt be filled with laughter and love and tears of joy, hearts will fill to bursting at the prospect of this.  I know this is true.  I know because mine is full.  I know because I am not the only teacher who loves her students and her job.

To Our Students, We Are Missing You Right Now…..

To Our Students, We Are Missing You Right Now…..

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We are missing you right now

You are home.  We are home.  Some of you are simply “off” for a few weeks.  Some of you are engaged in “distance” or “remote” learning.  It is tough right now, for sure.  There are unanswered questions like, “When do we get to go back and see our friends?”  “Will we have to make up all these days?”  “Am I going to catch the corona virus?”  “Can I get away with having a snack during our google meet or will I get yelled at for eating in class?”, “When I go onto said google meet to connect with my teacher, is she actually wearing pants?”

A lot of very good questions indeed.  I can answer a few of them.  First, we don’t know what is going to happen either.  There’s no play book for this one.  We are making it up as we go along and trying as best we can to figure things out.  We know you want to go back to school, even if it is just to see your friends. Your parents want you to go back to school (trust me on this one, they REALLY want you to go back to school).  Your teachers want you to go back to school. (seriously, we do!)  We wish we could give you a date, provide you with a countdown calendar of sorts.  We can’t.  The best we can do is follow what our national and state governments are telling us.

Will you have to make any of the days up?  Some of you are continuing with your lessons online, so probably not.  Some of you are not continuing your lessons, you’ll have to check with your state about whether you will have to make them up.  If you do, how bad can it be?  I mean, consider how bored you are right now.  You are bored enough to be reading this, so, I mean, you are BORED!  How bad can sitting in class be compared to this?  Sure, every time Maddie sneezes, everyone will jump and want to spray her off with Lysol, but that is to be expected.  Maddie always sneezes.  Why is that?  What is it that makes this kid sneeze so much?  Is she allergic to air?  What the heck?  And for the love of God, haven’t we all learned through this to cover your mouth when you sneeze?  She just lets those things rip!  If I were sitting within 6 yards of her I would go in there looking like I was ready for a deep sea dive, wet suit, mask, SCUBA tank, the whole deal.  I mean, it is gross enough that you all hack and sneeze on desks, then put your papers on those desks and then hand them in to me.  Now I have to contend with Sneezer Maddie?  She is like a sneeze ninja, she gives no warning sign of those things coming at all.  It’s not like they are quiet either.  For goodness sake, last time she sneezed in class, Mrs. Nerdleblank,  the science teacher down the hall said, “Bless you.”  SCUBA gear, definitly.

So that takes care of if you will have to make up the days in the summer.  What about, “are you going to catch the virus”?  Honestly, I don’t have an answer for that either.  I know it sounds really scary sometimes.  I also know that I am in no way a doctor so the best I can tell you is that you should follow the advice of the professionals around you.  Seemingly simple things like washing your hands and sanitizing frequently touched surfaces will go a long way to protecting yourself and those around you from this virus.  As rough as it seems, perhaps it is wise to do as our Surgeon General of the United States, Jerome Adams, says and “Stay away from Nana and Pop Pop.”  Nana and Pop Pop, how cute is he?  Here is this man who gets up on TV, trying to talk to multiple generations across all walks of life about how to protect themselves from this bugger of a virus and is so charming and relatable that he just brings us all together with the fact that we all have Nanas and Pop Pops. Oh, and he is totally brilliant too.  We should probably follow his advice.

So that about does it.  We have no idea when you will be back in school and you should wash your hands and probably clean your rooms.  Remember that we really do miss you, love you, pray you are well and happy.  Hang on as well as you can and remember this will not last forever.  In the meantime, try to make something in your environment better; clean it, rearrange it, decorate it.

OH MY GOSH!  I almost forgot!  We still need to talk about snacks during google meets and whether your teacher is wearing pants.  Yeah, you can probably get away with snacks, just brush the Cheetos dust off  your face before you turn your camera on. As far as pants? No.  Well, sort of.  She will have leggings or yoga pants or sweats that are older than you on.  Even if from the shoulders up her make up is done and her hair is well groomed, like an iceberg, you only see the tip………..  

We Really Do Love Our Students. Usually

We Really Do Love Our Students. Usually

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We Really Do Love You.  Usually.

Any good teacher is there because of the students .  Sure, the $143.00 a week is nice too (a salary crack already? Yes.) but it really is for the kids.  Whatever age group a teacher teaches, she is there because of the kids.  We can’t help it.  We love our kids.  You become our kids.  You become the reason we get up at the ungodly hour of 5:00 AM so we can be there before you.  We see you when you are sad, we notice when you are happy, we pull for you when you are facing a challenge.  We cheer for you when you reign supreme.  

This goes for every single student.  Every single day.  Except some days.  Like every day the sun rises.  The truth of the matter is, under it all, we love you.  The truth of the matter is also, there days where you can be a plain idiot.  (You know who you are).  The thing is, we have already heard the hilarious noise you can make with your armpit, especially if we have been around long enough to have taught your father.  Also, that noise is disgusting.

That doesn’t mean we don’t love you and pull for you.  Yes, some days we fantasize early dismissal days because you left class early and we LOVE inservice days because, well, you aren’t there.  Those days would only last for so long.  We would get dreadfully bored.  We would miss you.  Actually, over the summer your teachers miss you.  Through it all, arm farts included, we miss you.

We Really Do Want You To Succeed.  Always.

Your teachers really do want you to succeed.  Not just because it makes us look good, either.  We want you to succeed, no matter where you came from, no matter where you are headed. Remember, you become our kids and we love you. We see you filled with fear and nervous butterflies before a big game or dance; we see the unabashed confidence of youth as you stare down the road into your future and your dreams open up in front of you. You give us hope. When the time finally comes and you arrive at your graduation ceremony, you think, “Wow! I did it!  Now what am I going to do?”  

We think, “Dear God, if I have to sit through one more graduation speech, I am going to lose it!”  Seriously though, your ceremony is beautiful and the most perfect ever devised by anyone who didn’t live on Mount Olympus (go ask your history/mythology teacher).  Also it is pretty much the same as every other speech ever given at a graduation ceremony since the ceremony first began on Mount Olympus.  Except yours is better.  And we are proud.  You did it.  While you celebrate with your friends and family, sometimes we are there with you personally, enjoying the parties and praying that no one there gives anyone under age alcohol because we don’t want that to blow back on us.  Even if we are not at the parties personally, always we are with you in our hearts.

Success doesn’t only appear at the graduation ceremony however.  There are many little successes everyday.  These are often what keep us coming back everyday.  Personally, I love to see a student who has been struggling with a difficult concept in economics finally understand that Stan Lee is a maniacal genius.  I mean, for crying out loud, who designs a “universe” that ties in multiple movies where not only does it make sense that “Gods” from Asgaard, highly trained assassins, lab experiments turned super cute super hero frozen for several decades, another lab accident turned giant green anger machine, and Robert Downey Jr. all get together and take orders from a one eyed man who doesn’t trust anyone but also convinces us to part with literally dozens of dollars in going to see these movies.  Seriously, Robert Downey Jr. is adorable.  Also, once the students understand this, economics doesn’t seem so hard.  When you students are wiling to challenge yourselves and work through a difficult concept, good teachers will help you.  We will cheer for you and we will continue to silently pray for you on test day.  

Teachers Have a Great Job, But There Are Things We Can’t Say……..

Teachers Have a Great Job, But There Are Things We Can’t Say……..

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Everyday, thousands of good teachers go to work to teach the children of the nation and to change the world.  We waltz through our days with smiles on our collective faces; beautiful little birds tweeting about the room, flowers in full bloom, harps playing and angels singing.  Our students, bright and shiny and eager to learn greet us at the door, well rested, groomed, fed, and prepared for another day of learning.  As their minds open to the tremendous value of cultures long ago dispatched to the annals of history like the Phoenicians, the Babylonians, and the Clevelanders, you can hear the greats being played in the background, Mozart, Bach, Clapton.  (It is a well known fact that listening to Eric Clapton makes kids infinitely smarter.)  

When the day is over, students file out of the room in a controlled rush that resembles Black Friday deals on 60 inch LED TVs.  As they sprint past us, they thank us for imparting such knowledge as will change the course of their lives.  Ok, some of them grunt at us as they leave.  A few even make eye contact but we know what they mean.

After school our students enter many different worlds.  Some go home to loving families who eagerly await their arrivals, some will go to less stable homes.  Others, when they are old enough to work, will begin internships to gain college training, some go to jobs where they will engage in important career training. They learn things like:

  1. other people’s children are often as easy to care for as a hungry wolverine
  2. grown adults, despite being grown adults, are not always pleasant when ordering food at a drive through
  3. you can get a great tan life guarding, providing you are life guarding outside

Still other kids will be engaging in what we like to call “extra” or “co” curricular activities.  These are often activities that students engage in at an early age, perhaps as young as first grade, in order to learn how to:

  1. work as a team
  2. enjoy the company of others who hold a common interest as the student
  3. gain a greater depth of understanding of a particular topic or sport
  4. endure the maniacal rantings of people on the sidelines (we often call them “cheering parents”)
  5. learn to become strong in body and mind as they compete in what appears to be a rebirth of the Roman Circus
  6. most importantly, pad their resume in order to become President of the World Council on Everything

As teachers, we have a wonderful job.  It is a privilege.  We get to change the world.  As with many career paths, teachers have to take the good with the bad.  Also as with many professions, there is A LOT that teachers want to say but can’t. (OK, perhaps don’t.)  There are many reasons we don’t say anything, decorum, professionalism, fear of being burned at the stake by parents masquerading as angry villagers.  For whatever reason, we don’t say them, but this blog is here to offer a little peak at what those things are.