We all have those days of teaching when our patience runs thin, when we find ourselves in the constant space of “which battles should I fight and why.” I wrote this after one of those days several months ago. To be honest, revisiting this piece this week it rang less true for me; at this point of the year I feel like we are all a bit more honest with each other. (For example, I am much quicker to call students out about their surreptitious heads-down phone practice and we all just openly crack up when someone makes an innocent statement that could be taken inappropriately with a not-so-mature audience.) Nevertheless, I wonder if some of this resonates with others, whether you teach 18 year olds or three year olds. I hope it does, and I hope it doesn’t, all at the same time.
You think I don’t see you.
The way your eyes flit quickly around to each other with a glint of mischief when I accidentally say a phrase that could be construed as a double entendre.
I see it.
You think you may be squeaking by: when you send texts with your phone on your lap,
head down, device hidden; when you flip open the laptop pretending to take notes but are actually playing a game, watching a game, shopping, looking at the stock market, looking at game stats, doing other homework; when you have ear buds surreptitiously stuffed in your ear.
Just because I don’t say something in the moment doesn’t mean I don’t see it. I am practicing grace here. I am practicing planned ignoring here. We are all practicing “before you know it you will be in college” in this space.
We are also practicing being human together.
Still, your assumption that I don’t see it, don’t see you, can cut deeper than the fact that you do it in the first place.
You think I don’t notice when you consistently turn things in late, when you slip into my classroom 45 seconds-2 minutes late- 3 minutes late, that you have 10 times more excuses for each thing than most.
Please don’t mistake my patience for ignorance, my practiced “choose which battles to fight” with naivete. We have all lived lives far longer-bigger than you. We have all played games that rhyme with yours. Different vices-devices, different tools, different melodies. But all hauntingly familiar.
I see you are overwhelmed and behind and scared and insecure. I see you in the back row with the answer on your tongue. I see you stuff it back in because you don’t want to always be the first one right. I see you out-perform in class and under-perform in anything you need to do outside of class.
I am scared for you.
I am scared for the way you sometimes crumble under pressure that seems minute to me. Deadlines like these shouldn’t sneak up on you so. I am scared for a world of people that can’t do the thing by the time the thing is due. I am scared for a world of people that can’t cough up the motivation to care unless the thing is personally, inherently engaging.
I am scared the way all forty-somethings are scared of the generation that comes after them. I am scared of my own mortality. I am scared of difference.
Am I already growing out of tune with the world?
I am ashamed to admit I am often more scared of what non-compliance can produce than what revolution can redeem.
You think I don’t see the way that everytime religion is brought up in class your jaw clenches. Anytime politics might enter, you feel the need to make it known you are a vague reflection of the conservative-liberal-whatever-constellation you’ve grown up in. You think I don’t see you are silent. Listening. Watching me. We are all still figuring out who each other is. Where we stand. On our own and with each other.
You think I don’t see that he always asks for bathroom breaks and disappears from class for too long. He is 18. I’d rather let him escape than to declare this classroom a jail.
You think I don’t see you are still children, In tall-long-adult-esque bodies.Begging for a game-a prize-some noise- some fun. I know you can be both: a child and an adult. Both can be reckoned with seriously.
I know you need a break. I know you’ve been sitting too long. I know you act crazier in my class because you were holding it in the last class. I know you could act more mature, make better decisions. But so could I. So could we all.
I see this too: I see you being kind and caring for each other. I see you also caring for me.
I see that seeing this makes all the rest of it melt away.
I see you.