Ends and Beginnings

               Much of teaching last year was dispiriting, as it had been the two previous years following the return from Covid. A year ago, I met with a financial advisor, who showed me that my half-pension, half-401K plan is pretty much garbage even if I put a bunch more years into teaching—and only a little more broken were I to leave the profession far sooner than that—in three years, say, after I’d served over 30 years. Tin handcuffs! I found this incredibly liberating. And so, all year, unlike most of my coworkers, and especially the department heads to whom I’d passed the sputtering torch, when confronted by nonsense at work, nothing keeping me, I was able to live up to my professional goal for the year and Let Shit Go.
              Despite this attitude and relentless encounters with the absurd, the end of the school year was triumphant: I felt connected to students and our work together in ways I hadn’t since before the pandemic.
              I attribute this both to Letting Go and choosing a moment to ratchet all the way back up.
              Leading up to the two-week visit from the South Africans in late March was full of stress and panic and agonizing interactions with a dozen people from the district and our principal and nurse whose goal, it seemed, was to discourage us from ever, including on a weekend day trip, meeting our students outside the walls of my classroom. Here was Shit I could not Let Go because 16 visitors and many here were deeply and joyously part of this, and so, I experienced the kind of torment I can’t even describe because it’s so boring and bureaucratic. One morning, I was exasperated to the point of career danger, and I announced to my program team that I could no longer serve as its teacher leader in the next year.
              But for now, towards those two weeks and through them, I stayed dialed all the way up.
              When the South Africans came, we were there to meet them at the airport; they shadowed students in classes and paneled discussions in others; homestays and neighborhood social pods were active and successful; we had a weekend retreat in a forest; we volunteered at a garden run by the Black Farmers Collective; we toured the Wing Luke Museum and the Chinatown International District; we jointly led games and discussion in an elementary school; we attended the Japanese American Exclusion Memorial Garden on an anniversary of forced internment, and we heard from a Suquamish storyteller on the reservation. Students and visitors spent as much time with each other as their sleeping schedules would allow, and I was learning and loving my own guest, Mimi (an experience I detail here). It was a rich two weeks that blotted out everything else; and when we came to the tearful, weeping end, I was on a high, knowing I had put my all into what would probably be the last, big thing I led as a teacher. My last big thing.
              Having done that, I really could let go. Mimi raised the stakes of my teaching, and I came out of the experience relaxed and sincere. The program students and I had arrived at a mutual trust and affection and the thoughtfulness of a community that had experienced risk, growth, and grief together.
              Meanwhile, I finally arrived at some mutuality in my other classes, too, in part because I stopped fighting for attention and attendance and just leaned towards those ready to engage together.
              About a decade ago, my father-in-law said he believed schools should just teach to those wanting to be taught, which is what I found myself doing at the end of the year. At the time, I had said to him, Yes, while that would save schools so much time and money, many kids come to schools with attention and skills fragmented by life circumstances entirely outside their control that nevertheless put those students at high risk of difficulty at school. Those students need the interventions and care of educators even more than those prepared and ready to focus. I still believe this.
              But by the end of the year, and with so little help from my school forthcoming, I put myself first: I taught to those ready to engage, without policing or case managing. And I enjoyed it. Students in it with me enjoyed it. And those other students? Didn’t notice I’d let their shit go.
              On the day of the final exam for the program class, I told them how much their there-ness meant to me. And at the end of the period, I received hug after hug from students, and some tears.
              We had one more moment together—what we call the Ends and Beginnings ceremony, in which we introduce the incoming group and celebrate the outgoing. As a master of ceremonies at our community evenings, I keep the timetable tight and limit my own talk to introductions; but this was my last moment as the head of the program, and I decided to spend some attention on myself.
              I was secretly anticipating my retirement from the school after 29 years of service in the school that graduated me and all three of my daughters, and was fearing the hollow, life-defeating anticlimax of the school’s failure to recognize who and what I’ve been in those three decades—something I’d seen too often from hallowed old vets who’d been given a little speech and faded away or worse, ended their careers in angry sick leave and received no speech at all.
              At the Ends and Beginnings ceremony, I honored myself. I spoke to what was meaningful to me about the program, how it fostered the kind of community big and loving enough that students within it were willing to risk vulnerability and ignorance, and therefore depth of commitment, compassion, and learning. And I said that as much as the program means to students, it means even more to its teachers, who put their all into creating a meaningful experience just so we have one place where we know it’s  possible: What we do with you all represents what learning can be, what school can be. As an idea, and as a reality, it has saved some of us teachers. It’s the torch we light for ourselves. I told the community what I put in, what I took out. You can watch my speech here.
              And when I was done, I had the reception I knew would sustain me even were I to experience a couple more years of teaching frustrated by distracted students and obstructive administration and a hollow institutional goodbye at the end of them. Students, parents, alumni, and community members stood in line to hug me and give their recognitions.
              My sincerity and heart have been the best of my teaching. I hope to give them unobstructed entry this next year and what, after that, may be my final year teaching.