|
|
Graduation, 2009
The relationship of teacher to teenager is something special. There isn’t a school counselor in the country who spends 150+ hours a year with each student. In fact, research studies put you right up there near their parents, and you’re not engaged with cooking or television when they’re in the room, you’re engaged with them. At home you read their essays and grade their notebooks and they’re in your thoughts in the car on the way to work, and when you drive home too. They inhabit parts of your world that no one counts up. You talk about funny things they say and do years later; just ask me about the Election of 1964 simulation, when I had a visit from the Secret Service because there was Xeroxed money in my wastepaper basket at Chaparral High School. That happened in 1986, 23 years ago. You think about the “Susan Boyle” moments that have made your day this year. Remember those? You’ve called on a kid who never raises his hand and you’re prepared for one of those mumbled “I dunno” answers – and instead you get a thoughtful and unique response, and it’s four or five sentences long. Or you cast a C student in a classroom debate and his closing argument is so excellent that the rest of the class stares in Simon Cowell wonderment. Social studies teachers get a special shot at all of this. It’s about hearts and minds, this subject, and you don’t have to teach grammar and spelling to get to that part of it. (Not to say you’re not responsible for building good reading and writing habits – you are, but it’s THINKING you’re after.) What a privilege, what a mission. The day after graduation, teachers drive onto the walkways and load up their cars, and in Phoenix lots of them head out with their families to the San Diego beaches. You can see in their faces the feelings of achievement and completion. Yes, they pay you less than they pay accountants or electricians, but teachers get a bonus that cannot be calculated. President Obama spoke about it in his commencement speech at Arizona State University last week. In the college of education at that very university I once saw a plaque that I’ve never been able to re-locate so that I can find the author and the exact citation – but here’s an approximation: “As the end of life nears, and you wonder what it has meant to have been here at all, oh, to have been a teacher.” Have a wonderful summer vacation. You deserve it. Photo by Flickr user Korean Resource Center used under a Creative Commons license |
Graduation day. Nothing like it. There they are, the scholars and the jocks and the popular kids and the shy ones, the ones who loved American History and the ones who slumped in their seats every day and you had to wind them up like mechanical toys to get them engaged. The girls have anchored their mortarboards with bobby pins and despite what the principal said at rehearsal, they’re wearing brand new stiletto sandals. The boys are tall and they are men, in their rustling rayon gowns from Josten’s. You are worried about the students who chose to enlist instead of to enroll in college. It hits you in a wave how much you care about these new adults, and this particular June you’re fearful about the dashing of their hopes in the recession world they will confront tomorrow.