Goodbye Love Letter to My School

As I leave my workplace for the last time, I pause at the doorway, turn around, and take in the silence of a desolate classroom.  The shuffling of feet, books, and backpacks; the horseplay, shouts, and giggles of students; the happiness, the anger, the boredom, the surprise, the fear, the strength, the bravery, the ever-constant hormonal presence, and the enlightenment of young adults; no more.  My stage, my podium, my lectern, my pulpit, my soapbox--just a memory now as I turn the page to begin a new chapter, nay, a new volume in the life that is mine.  

This empty classroom cannot speak of the seventh graders, over 700 of them, that have been the major players in my life these past few years.  I stand in the silence, flooded by the memories of lessons and speeches and laps around the room and tests and debates and throwing paper in the air and clapping and dancing and playing the music too loud and testing and writing and reading and yelling and laughing and completing paper work and  playing games and testing and acting and falling to the floor as a failure and screaming in exultation when someone understands!

It is so quiet now.

I look at the desks stacked and can see the service of the amazing people who come in after hours to keep our school shining and safe.  No matter how destroyed my class was at the end of the day, by the next morning it stood orderly and clean, marks on the desks erased, scuffs on the floor now invisible.  I bow to those who give such effort so that our children can spend their days in a sparkling environment.

My bookshelves stand empty, and I think of our media center and its specialist, of her helpfulness and willingness to procure whatever was necessary, always with a smile.

The computer is off and I have saved all of my documents to a tiny thumb drive…years of creation thrown into my backpack for another day.  And so I think of the "IT Guy."  Never did I wait more than a few class periods for a solution to be found to any technical difficulty in my classroom.  Now I must rely on myself for these issues…I guess I'll just turn it off and then turn it back on--always the reboot.

I think of the office support, whether it be those who are the face of the school, interacting with the parents, protecting me from unwanted criticisms, lending help whenever it is needed; those who take care of all my needs, whether it be finding supplies, contacting the "Taj Mahal" on my behalf, working with student schedules, mediating student conflict, or nursing the ill back to health--my ability to teach would have been hampered without their untiring efforts to make our school run so smoothly that at times I may have forgotten all that it entailed.

My stomach growls and I realize that I'm on my own now…no one is preparing lunch for me today.  I'll miss the smiles and kindness of the cafeteria staff; I never heard a negative word from any of them, only helpful messages.  I think of the special meals that they prepared for the teachers and all the calories I ingested.  My body displays the results of their diligence.

Just outside my room stand other classrooms with my comrades, a force of educators to admire and applaud.  I will miss the fellowship of these master teachers.  Despite the constant barrage and assault by our government on their performance, they prove day after day that all they want to do is teach and to do it the way they know best.  They listen to each other--shared joy, frustration, anger, and love--and they know to keep it close and not break confidence, because, seriously, teaching middle school children can make one a little crazy sometimes.

I think of my bruised ego when I entered this place for the first time; my spirit had been beaten down, my self esteem nowhere to be found.  I cry real tears as I recall the encouragement and support of a principal who took the time to build me back up, to give me the strength to be myself once again. 

This classroom, this little piece of real estate in South Florida is/was my growing place, and I know, standing here, that it was the constant support of the administration that gave me the room to grow.  Kindness.  Encouragement.  Praise.  They demonstrated and shared their confidence in me that I could do my job well.  

I hope I did not let them down.

The Decision to Trip

I am an educator, and I think I always have been.  Even when I was a little girl playing make-believe out in the carport or in the yard, I set up desks and gave my friends handouts to complete while I monitored them for accuracy.  It seems I have a knack for teaching, and it always gave me great pleasure.  Well, up until recently.

You see, politicians have embraced the insane idea that a child is measured only by her ability to read some rather

Photo by Alberto G.

boring passages and correctly answer some rather subjective questions presented at the end…all in a specific time frame and under the ever watchful eye of Big Brother.  Public education in my state works very hard to end the creativity, spontaneity, and uniqueness of each individual; rather, it is consumed with the creation of mindless drones (they are much easier to control).

Let me interject right here to make sure you understand that I have met some amazing educators in Florida, who, despite the bureaucratic hierarchy, continue to energize and excite students to become free thinking, highly educated, exceptional adults.

I think I used to be one of them.

Our Department of Education, however, caught on that some teachers weren't "teaching to the test," so they quickly began working to transform the teachers into drones, as well.  It was subtle at first.  The state benchmarks were presented sequentially, clustered into cycles that teachers should follow.  Then my school district created a site presenting actual lesson plans for every single day of the school year.  

As a team player, I allowed myself to be controlled….somewhat….and started doing things their way.  I decided to trust that these "educators" with the big titles might know something I didn't.  After all, I was just a lowly middle school teacher with a BS and they had all kinds of letters at the end of their names.

Still, they had yet to conquer my ability to inject myself into their lessons--my personality, my flair, and my style. And so despite their attempts, I was still a happy teacher.

The DOE was having none of that, so they decided to come up with a new evaluation model, one in which teachers are mandated to include all kinds of charts and scales and methodology into their classrooms.  And while there is nothing inherently wrong with the system and despite the fact that I received an excellent evaluation, I discovered that somewhere along the way I had lost myself.  

It happened one morning this past November while sitting on an uncomfortable seat in the school cafeteria listening to the administration talk about observations (for the umpteenth time) that something snapped in my brain; I realized that teaching no longer made me happy.  

I had become a slave to the wage, to the man, to the system...and I wanted to be free to be me.  I was living someone else's life, not mine.  I wanted to live on my own time-clock, to travel, to see old friends and relatives, and to meet new people from all walks of life.  I simply wanted to experience America.

So after school I told my boss that I was done playing the game, and on the first day back in January, I submitted the official paperwork to take a leave of absence.

And here I am…tripping

julie