Homecoming, Spontaneously

I don't know how common it is campus-wide, but I get after-school visits from former students every year.

This year, I've had R, J, N, E, M, and today, K, drop by. Six kids in the first three weeks of school. That's a lot, even for me.

I say kids, but many of them are being graduated from four-year universities this year, have spent semesters overseas, are engaged, etc. And some are last year's Mayfair graduates who barely have the confetti washed out of their hair.

They come in to catch me up on their lives, or to ask for advice. Some of them I haven't had daily contact with since middle school. But we chat, and I get updated. I see how they've changed: sometimes I'm impressed by their growing maturity and first grapplings with the challenges of adulthood in college or the world of work; other times I'm saddened or shocked by the values and attitudes that they have adopted, and pray they will experience a speedy transition to a more mature perspective. I've had both reactions this week.

I know that at least some of them make more than one stop while they're on campus, and my door is open for a couple of hours a day after school, and that makes me a pretty easy choice. But I also know that a few of them come to see me specifically, and I understand the honor they confer on me by taking time away from any of the other things a 20 year-old could be doing to stay and talk to some tired-looking middle-aged guy for a while. Most of the time they will sit across my desk for an hour or more; sometimes two, and three is not unheard of (happened last week).

I'm not talking about the random, one-time visit. I get some of those, too. Mostly because my door is open after school. Those tend to be significantly briefer, and the conversations shallower. But the regulars and semi-regulars: we have friendships that are being maintained, and when you see your friend just once or twice a year, it takes some time to catch up.

Can they sense how much I enjoy their visits? That I'm genuinely interested in their lives, just like I was then they were thirteen, or sixteen? I always make references to ways that I know them as people or show interest in them in our conversations:

"Oh, you were always impatient: it's no wonder waiting for that second interview call drove you nuts."

"I can just see you sitting there, listening to your professor drone on, and looking around the class, wondering why everyone was eating up the garbage he was spewing out."

"What do you think you've learned about yourself, since you broke up with ________ ?"

That may be responsible for much of my return business. One of the things I give in my classroom is myself. I treat them as if they were real people: unique individuals that have value and who matter. Don't get me wrong: I'm so not touchy-feely, or interested in pampering their emotions, and I think the Self-Esteem movement has screwed up more young minds than LSD. I'm more likely to tell a kid that it's not about his feelings, so stop talking back to his parents, and to go out and get a haircut and a job, in that order. But I can get away with that, becaue they know I care about them, always treat them with dignity, and demand that they treat themselves with some. Too many kids come through my classroom every year who have inattentive parents, or who are missing a parent (I know that I have served as a father figure for many students over the last dozen years), or no youth pastor or other trusted adult to confide in. It's tough when you see your dad every other weekend. So I'm willing to stand in that gap, if they'll have me. I take their concerns and worries seriously. I try to understand them, and I think they sense that. I've had a few tell me that I'd make a good father, which is more of a compliment than they know. A few friendships have developed deeply enough that I've been teased with the name "Dad." I burst with secret pride.

Today I was asked which side of the aisle I was going to sit on at her wedding, hers, or her fiancée's? (I taught them both, and am good friends with them both).

I never know who's going to show up, or where it's going to lead. But I'm usually delighted.

Where There's Smoke

Two girls I don't know (they're always in pairs) come into my room at lunch. One asks if she can use my microwave. Another teacher sent her to me. Sure, I don't care.

She pops her Chick-Fil-A bag in, and no one notices or remembers that those bags are lined with aluminum foil.

As soon as the Start button is pushed, the bag begins to spark. I call to her to shut the oven off, and she is trying to push the wrong side of the door release button, and the door won't open. By the time it finally opens up, the tinted glass is lit up from the inside because the bag is on fire.

A tiny puff of smoke curls out the top of the oven. When the bag comes out, my aide blows it out like a birthday cake. We're all laughing hysterically; everyone except the poor girl, who thinks she just fried my microwave. We put the chicken sandwich on a paper plate and finish the job, joking about the "what if"s of fire alarms and thirty-five hundred students out on the field because of a chicken sandwich.

It could happen, but I wouldn't want to explain it to the principal later.

Turn, Turn, Turn

Yesterday I announced that that day (Sept. 20th) was the last day of summer.

Guess how well that went over?

The Word On The Street

Today I learned that I'm considered a "pretty cool" teacher.
Thats, well, pretty cool, I guess.

Oh: no snorts. Just goofiness.

Another Friday Night, and I Ain't Got Game

Dashed home after a teacher, um, 'support group" at BJ's pizzeria to grab my camera before going to the football game. Important game: cross-town rivaly, yada, yada.

Anyway, got there 45 minutes after kickoff, and they were at capacity attendance and had closed the gate, so I didn't get in.

On the way back to my car, I met a group of (mostly) former students of mine walking up the to gate. Seemed to me a couple of them may have had a snort or two earlier in the evening. I'll have to create the opportunity for a discrete talk with them next week.

Never Mind

Friday, and I didn't want to start my juniors on a new multi-day lesson plan on Jonathan Edwards' "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God" right before the weekend. And I didn't want to commit the sin of overkill by cooking up a second "after the reading" lesson to the poem we did yesterday just to fill the period. I was just about to give them a grammar review/diagnostic (completely justifiable at the beginning of the year, but less than tasty on a Friday) when my first period informed me that it's picture day today. So off to the gym we went.

It killed the entire period.

What?

No, you can't leave your math book in my room after your morning algebra class, then come back and retreive it after school.

Psst! Hey, look: he's mumbling to himself.

While kids read today, I stood @ my podium and attempted to memorize names using my printed seating chart. In a little over five minutes, I was able to just look around a class of kids and say their names to myself. I did this with about 140 students (didn't start until 2nd period). So now I think I'm really something.

We'll see how many of those names I can recall tomorrow.

Another Year, Another Tear

The first two days of the school year have passed, with less than the usual chaos. Last year, I was overloaded with students for three weeks until an additional English teacher was hired, but this year all my classes are evenly filled, and as of Friday, I'm one student "under contract."

Schedules are still being changed, and the counselors are frazzled, but that's SOP every September. Maybe it will settle down sooner than usual, and I can begin our first novels without having to get new kids up to speed.

As far as classes go, I went from having four sections of sophomores and one of juniors last year, to having three junior sections and only two sophomore sections. I'm just not used to this, having had a preponderance of 10th graders for the last two years, so I'll have to devote more time to getting that 11th grade curriculum up to snuff: they're now 60% of my student load.

I have several returning students who where in my 10th grade classes last year, and some I had in middle school whom I haven't seen (except around campus) for three years, who are now back with me for their junior year of high school. There are even a handful that are three-timers: 8th grade, 10th grade last year, and couldn't escape the gravity of planet Coulter this year either. In almost all of those cases, it is a student I'm quite happy to have back. What they think of being stuck with me a third time, I can only imagine…