I would like to add, to all the new teachers, "What gets us here isn't what keeps us here." 

I began teaching sixteen years ago because I desired the same schedule as my children.  Summers off counted as bonus--not the answer meant to impress future principals.  I always wanted to say it, though. 

“Tell me, Mrs. Rhodes, why did you become a teacher?”

I clear my throat and shout, “Duh, summers off, two weeks at Christmas, and spring break!”

The romanticism of making a difference sounds good, but it is a learned reward.  When Michael entered my classroom several years ago, he twitched and jived and did anything to get out of writing.  Excuses filled his head, along with ADD, ADHD, and special education.   Soon, however, I saw a new light.  I arranged for him to visit the nurse when he first got to school, take his medicine, and then come to class.  Sometimes the first five or ten minutes were shaky, but if he arrived at school and took his meds at least fifteen or twenty minutes before class began, the difference was amazing. 

“Write, Michael, write,” I would say.

“Miss, can I write a poem instead?”

“If you give me fifteen minutes of this assignment, I’ll give you the rest of class to compose,” I would barter.  And boy did he write. 

“Miss, how do you spell insufferable? Insatiable?  Isn’t ennui a word? Does it mean boredom?  Can I use it when I say ...?”  I spelled it, he wrote it, and the other students gawked their amazement.  Before the end of the year, the class knew Michael had something they had yet to discover.   I recognized a world inside of him that few ever experience—a world invented to compensate for a raging, alcoholic mother who punished him with her addiction his entire life.  He is seventeen now, and that was five years ago.  Michael still calls me, confides in me, and reads his poetry to me.  He is the reason that I still teach.

“Y” graduated from high school when she was almost twenty years old.  She walked into my ninth grade class cursing like a sailor and failed the ninth grade curriculum that year, but the lessons she learned on etiquette and manners carried her through the rest of high school.  She beat the odds and did not become a statistic on a chart of unwed mothers who dropped out of high school.  She called me Mama, and I answered to it.  She is the reason I still teach.

JOE was a malnourished, fourteen year old white kid among a sea of African-American and Hispanic children, and all sixty-eight were what the state deemed “low TAAS performing.” JOE attended school a couple of days a week.  He lived without necessities like running water, food, clean clothes, and peace.  One day I asked two girls, Brandy and Cheri, to “please study with him” and privately told them that “it would help JOE to pass,” when in reality I knew that it would help them.  JOE was an excellent study partner for the two street-wise girls.  He ended up with two friends that would last him a life-time, and I know today that he remembers. Because of Brandy and Cheri, the other kids took it upon themselves to make JOE their special project.  They brought him new jeans that covered his ankles, two coats, and chocolate chip cookies from the cafeteria.  In January, JOE approached my desk, “Miss?”

“Yes, JOE,” and I knew something was wrong when I saw his face.

“I’m moving to Dallas, Miss.” He swallowed.  “These are the only friends I’ve ever had, and I don’t know what I’m going to do.” We all cried when JOE left, including some of the toughest kids in that high school.    They are nearing thirty now, and last Christmas, I ended up at the cookie stand in the Longview Mall.  Brandy was working there, and after we hugged and I asked about her life; with tears in her eyes, she looked at me and said, “Miss, you know who I think about sometimes?”

“JOE?”

“You think he remembers us?”

                “I know he does, Brandy, and if you don’t do one more good thing the rest of your life, you will know you did something great for JOE.”  Brandy and JOE and the rest of that group of kids—they’re the reason I still teach.

 

Student names have been changed. KR

 

 

 

Kim Rhodes 208 days ago