When people find out I used to be a classroom teacher, they always ask, “do you miss it?”, and I take a long pause.
Do I miss the bureaucracy? The countless top-down reforms, useless initiatives, endless staff, leadership, department, curriculum team meetings? The stacks of essays I would lug home every winter and spring break? The parent-teacher conferences with the yellers and the criers?
Do I miss the inequity that I witnessed on a daily basis? Do I miss walking a picket line being heckled by passing motorists to fight for justice for my students?
Do I miss the daily grind of holding my urine for hours, the sweltering summer classrooms, the cockroaches and mice, the smell of BO and Axe body spray? The bone tiredness with which I would drop to bed each night?
No, I don’t miss that.
What I do miss is collaborating and creating curriculum with some of the most passionate and talented educators that have ever taught at @lphschicago
I miss my students, some of whom have gone on and will go on to do incredible, world-changing work. Even the difficult students taught me so much about the art of skillful teaching.
So to all the teachers who cannot be with their students, or students with their teachers, at the end of this school year, know that it is not your physical presence that matters. It’s the indelible mark that we leave on each other.
For every student that has ever written a teacher a letter, know that we keep them. Always.
