My Unexpected Love Story

I started out teaching college students.

While working on my master's degree, I taught a basic communications course to incoming college freshmen and sophomores.

And just like that, I fell in love with the art of teaching.

I also felt its inadequacies with every step I took.

I worked with college freshmen who didn't know how to use a period. I met 21 year olds who didn't know the difference between "there" and "their." I met students who graduated high school - with honors - and couldn't write a coherent sentence.

And all those students? Communications and English majors.

It was terrifying.

Something was happening in high schools that greatly hurt my grammar-loving heart, and I was bound and determined to stop it.

So, I took my master's degree and headed off to teach high school.

I was filled with ideas that I could "save them all." I thought I could teach everyone of them a "love of the language." I believed I'd instill in them writing and reading skills they'd been missing up until this point.

And then I fell flat on my face.

Because high-schoolers are so much more than poorly educated.

And my job, as a specialized language arts teacher, very often has little to do with teaching the proper usage of a semicolon.

Instead, there are days when I'm a life coach; there are days when I'm mother; there are days when I'm a judge, and there are days when I'm a jury. I've been a police office, a preacher, and their worst enemy. I've also been their best friend and their shoulder to cry on.

Only once in a great while am I their teacher.

And then, we learn about semicolons and commas and non-essential clauses.

Sometimes.

My first year "in the system," as they say, was brutal. The attitudes, the behaviors, the problems, and the reactions the teenagers greeted me with were above and beyond anything I've ever experienced.

And I'd worked with plenty of teenagers before.

But, quite honestly, these teens ate me alive.

Between the lying, the cheating, and the stealing; between the melt-downs, the melodrama, and the mundane misbehaviors; between the unavoidable, the inevitable, and the un-exciting; there was very little room to impart a "love of the language."

So I taught what I could and survived the rest.

I dreaded my job, and by the time summer rolled around, I burned out.

Way out.

I wasn't even a flicker of a flame. I wasn't even an ember.

I was dried-up soot.

Dried-up soot that never wanted to see a child between the ages of 14 to 18 again.

I took solace in the fact that other teachers told me they "cried every day during my first year 'in the system.'"

Well, I cried a lot, but not every day, I told myself.

I took refuge in the fact that I learned the average job expectancy for what I teach, to the age group I teach it to, is two years.

Two years, and everyone else who does what I do had moved on to another job. Any other job, it seemed.

I even took comfort in the fact that I met 20-year-veteran teachers who were struggling with the same students I wanted to, quite honestly, never even think about again, let alone face in my classroom the next year.

I counted down every day of summer until my return. I debated calling up the principal and quitting. I dreamed of returning back to my old job - where I had deadlines, and pressure, and endless late nights of writing. But no teenagers in sight.

Instead, come August, I went back to work.

I went back to school, with the students in tow.

I took a deep, painful breath and faced those adolescent monsters that had made my life a living nightmare for the nine months prior.

Against my better judgment and my intense fight-or-flight response, I went back.

I chose to fight.

I chose to fall back in love with the art of teaching.

Except I didn't.

Because while I re-vamped my lesson plans and changed around my curriculum and mapped out my quarterly assignments, I began to lose sight of my beloved pedagogy.

And, without even knowing it, I began to fall in love with something else.

Because while I was teaching the essentials of good literature, I watched my kids start to adore story-telling. I laughed along with them while they played with bubbles and Play-Doh and a Barrel of Monkeys to create a children's story that contained foreshadowing, setting, and rising action, as well as a good dose of fun.

While I was teaching the importance of non-fiction, I watched my kids stare at images captured by photojournalist James Natchwey. I cried along with them while they viewed photos of major world tragedy and helped them along in frank discussions about AIDS, famine, and war.

While I was teaching editing, I watched my kids tactfully critique their peers' work, while helping those same peers complete a piece that was flawless. I clapped along with them when we finally were able to include every student's edited work in the school newspaper.

And before I knew it, I was beaming when they came bounding into my classroom in the morning, wanting to show me pictures of their new dog, new car, or new and improved math grade.

I was reveling when they knew the right answer to a question I asked, even when I assumed they'd answer incorrectly or snidely.

I was living for the moments when they were all intent on finishing a project, a paper, a yearbook page, a news article, a poem - so much so that completing it well was there reward, and not the good grade they'd receive from me later.

I relished every conversation I had with a student; I cherished every gift they gave me; I enjoyed every tidbit they told me.

Because instead of falling back in love with teaching, I'd fallen head over heels in love with my students.

And it took me until yesterday to realize it.

Because on Monday morning, I was actually excited to see them. I couldn't wait to tell my journalism students how wonderful the yearbook was looking. And I was anticipating all the photos my 10th-graders had to show me from the photo essays they were working on.

Without even realizing it, I'd lost that pit of dread that resided deep-down in my stomach every time I drove to school in the morning.

Instead of the pit, all I felt was love.

And, now, as I write this, I also feel twinges of sadness.

For I only have three months left.

Three months, and then I'm moving away.

Moving away from this school I once hated. Moving away from the students I've worked with for close to three years now. Moving away from people I love.

Luckily, kids are resilient. A few will lament me moving on, but most will bounce back with a buoyancy that is reserved only for 15 year olds.

By next year, I'll be a name in passing, a "Hey, remember Mrs. C?"

I'll be replaced with another teacher, who, in all honesty, will probably do a better job than I did.

And though I won't miss the stress and the craziness and the constant emotional tight rope that working with high-school-ers involves, I will miss the smiles, the hugs, the origami paper cranes, and the frank discussions about college admissions, sex, drugs, and, occasionally, rock 'n roll.

I'll miss watching my teenagers become published authors; though I've done it for a while now, the magic never wears off on me, and I'm never quite sure how my kids manage to publish a student magazine, newspapers and a yearbook in less than nine months.

I dare say, I'll even miss the drama and the heartbreak. The tears of a recent adolescent break-up and the sobs at graduation.

Those joys, just like all the burdens, will be handed off to somebody else.

Somebody else far better, who will teach these kids and guide them and, hopefully, learn from them.

Learn that they are prickly and difficult.

Learn that they are emotional and overbearing.

Learn that they are frustrating and hair-raising.

And learn that they are seemingly impossible to love.

Until, one day, you realize you've fallen for them. All of them.

You learn they've gripped your heart and that letting go will be far more painful than you ever expected.

Just like I did.

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Happy Tuesday everyone! Come back tomorrow for another edition of Workout Wednesday!