To Those Teachers…

Photo by Kenny Eliason on Unsplash

This is for those teachers. You know the ones.

This is for the teachers who create classrooms that feel like cozy nooks of acceptance. The ones who create immersive lessons that make learning feel like an adventure. The ones who can’t make it through the Dollar Spot at Target without purchasing the tiny flower pots or the neon pencil pouches that will definitely come in handy at some point. Hopefully.

This is for the teachers who keep granola bars and tampons and band-aids on hand — even when the school district says that the responsibility rests with the parents. The ones who make students feel genuinely liked. The ones who treat their students as whole individuals — as people with strengths, weakness, hopes, fears, traumas, and triumphs that shape their actions from day to day.

You see, I am a high school English teacher.

I teach seniors.

Lately I find myself awash in the copious amounts of apathy that can only be observed in fourth quarter twelfth-graders. The senioritis is rampant and all-encompassing. And yet, my seventeen years of experience tells me that I’m in a uniquely privileged position because I get to reap the benefits of being present during one of the most triumphant and tumultuous periods in a teenager’s life.

At a series of as-yet unknown points that will fall between the moment during which I am typing this and the first notes of Pomp and Circumstance, many seniors will come to the delayed realization that this is it. The “it” they have been waiting for over thirteen years of formal schooling. The big “IT.”

Many seniors will transition from a state of exhausted apathy to one of poignant nostalgia, and suddenly they’ll find themselves commenting longingly on all of the lasts: last progress reports, last club meetings, last dances, and last slices of square pizza. In this haze of misty fondness, they will appear in my classroom, sometimes alone and sometimes in small groups, to wax poetic about the good ol’ days. To tell me they can’t believe the time has come. To tell me what they hope to do. To tell me what they will miss.

Elementary and middle school teachers don’t often get to see this, and it’s a shame. So many of them pour everything they have into their students: love, lesson plans, tissues, and Ticonderogas. They see students through some of the most challenging years — the years when students are still so malleable and uncertain of how to become who they want to be. They send them off to the next grade, the next school, the next step, and they are often left just hoping for the best.

I’m lucky. I get to hear the reminiscent anecdotes about circle time and singing songs about the weather or the days of the week. I get to hear them snicker as they recall painting their hands with glue, only to peel the dried layer away, squawking as though they are peeling flesh from bone. I get to hear them compare notes on the catchy songs they learned to memorize the 50 states, and I get to hear them recall (somewhat apologetically) the nefarious odors that accompanied them to whichever unfortunate teachers they had following middle school P.E.

A series of names dot these conversations like confetti— names that are unfamiliar to me but beloved to them — as they recall those days that seem to slip away even more rapidly as they approach graduation.

“Core memory” has become the TikTok phrase du jour, and what I’m realizing is just how many teachers are responsible for creating some precious ones.

When I hear these conversations, I always urge my students to reach out, to say thank you, or even to simply let these memory-makers know that they’ve had an impact.

Some students do.

Others feel too shy or awkward: “They won’t remember me.” “But that’s so weird!” “They won’t care.”

These young adults are about to leave the routines and the places and the people they know so well — for better or for worse — and as they muster up the wherewithal to make the leap, they are looking back at the adults who were the touchstones on this journey.

As we begin this year’s Teacher Appreciation Week, I hope these teachers know just how impactful they have been — even in the moments that may have seemed silly or superficial.

Your kids remember you. Even years later.

They remember the words that you shared, the songs you sang, the jokes that you cracked, and the kindness you extended. They remember playing “Hot Cross Buns” on the recorder and they remember the color of their “spot” on that circle time carpet. They remember when you made them feel capable or unique or important.

On behalf of the students who are too shy or embarrassed to tell you, I want to say this:

THANK YOU.

Thank you for being the sturdy rungs that have enabled your kids to reach this particular height. Thank you for being a part of the collective gust that will nudge them just a tiny bit further than they believe they can go. Thank you for spending the time, energy, and money to build the moments that these kids still carry with them.

Thank you for being those teachers. They couldn’t have done it without you.