I have so much to say after only my first day back teaching. What a rich and vibrant life is to be found in days that include children. I came away so humbled. There are so many children with such need – need for love and affirmation, need for spelling, need for a decent snack, need for pants that fit, need for a sticky-fingered knowledge that they can dig their little paws into to figure out what’s-what in science and math and words and in the glory of love and friendship and belonging.
At the school I was at on Friday, I saw so many delightfully quirky kiddos, and I wanted to give each and every one of them some of my spread-thin-like-peanut-butter-on-a-cracker time to just love them up and make sure they knew they were more than their snowsuits and their crusty eyes and their funny dyed hair and shoes on the wrong feet.
Though I think I encountered mostly children, I felt like I was in a forest of magic elves whose eclectic souls almost jumped out of their boots and untied shoes and holey-stockinged feet. These were kids in the trenches. I mean, which kid in school isn’t these days? But they were also kids rocking their castles to the core with their antics and their cudgels and shillelaghs, and their quests for fairness and their desires to go first. They were determined to be kings and queens of their castles. Yay!
When I found out my first class of the day would be playing hockey with first graders, I laughed and called my brother, who talked me through a thing or two and taught me a marvelous game called ISLANDS, which made us all so joyful, we nearly peed our pants. Well, one of us did. It wasn’t me, but I didn’t mind that someone else did. It was easily remedied. When we got to the hockey part, we got out wee little sticks, pointed them in the right direction, and i just started randomly dropping pucks and racing around saying nonsense like, “She shoots, she scores!” When kids didn’t want to play because things didn’t seem fair, I said, “Just be a ref for a while until you feel like playing again.” A sweet little boy who didn’t join one of the activities came and sucked on my pant leg later in the lesson, giving me a toothless smile that spoke volumes. He was glad I had let him prance on his horsey hockey stick and be his own precious, random self. Some boys were annoyed that we didn’t play by the NHL rules, but I assured them the Leah rules were much more fun and that winning was not part of my game book.
Next came my recess tour of duty in the forested play ground. which was both muddy and wet and frosty all at the same time. A teacher handed out Cinnamon Toast Crunch (the most delicious cereal I have tasted in my entire time on the planet), and students roamed around in little circles of friends or alone or in unruly snowsuited gangs. There was laughing and crying and screaming. I played my favourite trick (Please don’t tell me it’s mean because it almost always makes students laugh after their initial shock.) of telling a little girl we might need to cut her leg off when she came to show me the owwie she had accrued while playing unicorn tag. “Or we could just get you some ice,” I added. “Whatever you think.”
I raced to the middle school across the field with my rolling bag trailing behind me, spilling out with my computer and stickers and books and emoji balls, to teach two periods of gym class for Grade 8 and Grade 9. It was “Free Friday” so there was a lot of mobility and choice in what these rambunctious crews of gangly adolescents got to do. The sensory overload was a bit much for my sensitive self who has been mostly hibernating for the last year, as were all the physical feats I performed. I divided an entire gym in half by unfolding a wooden, curtained door, I brought down the basketball nets and set up the volleyball nets. I delivered balls and made sure students knew how to fall onto the mats from the hanging bars without breaking their backs, all the while appearing nonchalant and cool and not at all worried about liability or reliving the PTSD of my own profound lumbar injury or the horror of my own PE experiences at their and every age. I played Chinese skipping with girls taller and cooler than me, showing two of them how to make double knots in their laces so the only tripping they would do would be over the rope, and I just now remembered that I got accidentally hit in the head by a very chic girl wielding a badminton racquet far too high, whose hair and makeup make her look like she had just come from prom. Another girl came to gym class in her slippers, claiming she was much more athletic in those than in her running shoes. Who was I to disagree? A substitute teacher’s mantra, I have so quickly learned: don’t stir the waters if you don’t have to.
To be in the midst of complete chaos, but everyone doing what they wanted, and me not feeling the need to rein it in, only to hold space and keep these middle schoolers safe? That was a beautiful and revelatory thing. I can do it in an academic space pretty easily after years of pruning my skills; yesterday I learned I could do it in a gym. I’m very, very impressed with myself. (I’m also very sore.)
In the afternoon, I taught second grade. Ava S pulled me aside and said, “Just say “WATERFALL” when the kids aren’t listening, and you’ll get us all back.” Well, it worked every time for about two seconds. But it was fun. As a reciprocity, I taught her that her name was a palindrome and wrote the word on a sticky note for her so she could go home and show her parents.
The teacher I was filling in for asked me to have students line up and check their phonics work – they were learning the short u sound, and had to write sentences with the words THUD and CHUG and also the ACK sound, using WHACK and BACK. She wanted them to print out the sentences, using their best fine motor skills, paying attention to downstairs and upstairs letters (A primer for those who have forgotten: y and j are downstairs/d and k are upstairs) as well as capital letters and punctuation. When they had corrected all the items I had gently underlined with a pink pen, they got to choose a sticker.
A sweet little boy with very precise handwriting and a serious demeanor proudly displayed his sentence: My bolls went whack. “What a great sentence!!” I said enthusiastically, “Let me just show you how to spell balls and you won’t even have to erase anything – just add a little tail to the o to make an a, and you’ve got it!”
“Oh, you don’t get it, Leah,” he replied earnestly. “I know how to spell balls, but I am talking about THESE!” He pointed to his genitals. “Ah,” I said gently, not belying my amusement. “Guess what? They’re both spelled the same way! Here, grab a sticker!”
I have an official district lanyard with a photo of me on it that my friend Rachel took of me last year, the day of parent/teacher conferences. It’s been my teacherly tradition to get my hair cut and coloured just before these days, and to show up in a well-cut blazer and blouse to project a professional demeanor. I’ve learned this is, in fact, very unnecessary for the act of teaching – a good teacher is a good teacher and I am a good teacher – but it is reassuring to the parents so I don’t mind putting on a show. Plus, I like an excuse to dress up. Anyway, the picture is most certainly a good one of me, but I didn’t think I looked so very different from THAT me on a daily basis. Toward the end of the day, a boy glanced at my lanyard and asked, “How long ago was that taken?” “Last year,” I answered. “No way!” he said. “Is that even you?” And there you go. Humbling and humorous.
Yesterday was the first day I have taught since Emily’s death. I thought of my Emily many times throughout the day, but only mentioned her once. A teacher’s assistant who was supporting for a bit in the second grade class asked me about my background and what I was doing here in this particular space and time. I have learned in this year how and when to speak of this unspeakable (or not speak of it) sadness, but here I did. She listened carefully and with an openness, but not oppression, that made it easier to share. Then she said, “Forgive me if I’m not responding with enough compassion. I’m autistic, so I’m not always sure how to do it right.” “Whatever you’re doing, you’re doing it perfectly,” I said. “Thank you for listening.”
How grateful I am to be back in the game. How humbled I am to remember how hard it is. And how joyful. And how much I love it. I am joining the world again. It’s a world I know, but it’s all different. Yet it’s so much the same, too. Just wow.