Tag: memory

Things I Know 287 of 365: Here’s where I’m from

I am from those moments–
snapped before I budded —
leaf-fall from the family tree.

– George Ella Lyon

As we closed out our final meeting of the small group section attached to one of my courses, we engaged in a conversation on the importance and shape of teacher autobiography. We ended with a writing exercise. I wanted to call Bud, because I knew how happy he’d be.

After brainstorming the sensory details we associated with our individual school journeys. Then, we looked at George Ella Lyon’s “Where I’m From.”

Our job was to re-imagine Lyon’s work filled with the stories of where we’re from. It was a beautiful task, and I thank my colleague Tracy for giving us space and safety to create and share. We began our time together this semester by sharing the basics – name, home, experience in education, etc. Tracy gave us a space to mark the end of our time together by, again, sharing who we are in a way that honored the intimacy inherent when a class becomes a community.

Here is where I’m from:

I am from tater tots,

from madrigal dinners and holding your breath in the boys bathroom.

I am from painted cinder-block walls.

(Covered in essays and coats of arms to disguise the normalness of it all.)

I am from chalkboards that wanted to be dry erase boards,

the pride of a strong FFA chapter

and knowing we’d be champions in meat judging

if not basketball.

I am from the safety of the choir room,

from Hemingway and yearbook editing.

I’m from the old guard who knew their duty to be sacred.

They’d taught our parents’ parents, and they’d teach us.

I’m from being sick the days we learned to use scissors,

and finding it didn’t matter because the teacher was right-handed.

I’m from scholastic bowl, Alanis Morissette’s debut album,

pizza that looked like it came on a giant saltine,

huddling around a speaker phone to interview a victim of Kent State,

being bumped a grade and then terrified as Mrs. Miller explained how she hated freshmen because they smelled –

making her laugh in spite of herself throughout that entire year.

I am from hallways and classrooms –

built by people who knew –

their hope and ours depended on knowing more than they did.

Things I Know 202 of 365: It’s time to re-collect

Today is tomorrow. It happened.

– Bill Murray, Groundhog Day

I had a chance today to interview a fellow teacher from Omaha for a new podcast episode. She’s been in the classroom 17 years and brings to the table all of the perspective of those years.

We talked a bit about teacher burnout and she brought up the movie Groundhog Day.

She said she certainly had her moments of burnout when she knew she wasn’t the best she could be, but that she knew those moments wouldn’t last.

“In the movie,” she said, “Bill Murray’s character goes through a phase where he tries to kill himself because he can’t find any way out of the day. Then, at some point he changes and starts making ice sculptures.”

As it was a perennial favorite in my household growing up, I remembered the scenes she was describing.

“It’s like that with the classroom – sometimes I want to die, but most of the time I’m making ice sculptures.”

I’ve been collecting teachers’ comments and thoughts as they gear up for the trip back to the classroom.

This is the first time in eight years I won’t be entering the classroom as a teacher, and I’m enjoying observing the rituals of return that I’ve been too tied up in myself for the past several years to truly appreciate.

My friend Henry posted tonight that many of his students are coming from other schools:

They have been rejected. I understand rejection because when I was in high school I didn’t fit in and it was very visible. Today, I am a better person and a better teacher.

Henry was one of the first African Americans to integrate his school district in the South. I’ve talked with him about the experience and read his recollections of the events.

And that is what he was doing when he wrote his post, he was re-collecting.

It’s what the teacher I interviewed does as she’s “making ice sculptures” – re-collecting all the moments of weariness and frustration from the darkest parts of teaching and connecting them to the moments that bring her the most joy.

When Henry enters the classroom tomorrow, he will not have simply collected whatever rest and renewal his summer break provided, he will have re-collected every memory of being other, different, afraid or strong that has made him who he is as well.

And to truly teach and connect to the children in our charge, we must re-collect all the pieces and experiences of who we are so that we can see the richness of experience each student brings to the classroom.

While the perspective of 17 years in the classroom is a powerful source of strength, it is nothing if we do not re-collect who we are as people and offer that to our students.