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Time Travel
I love teaching for so many reasons, but I get a particular thrill when I hear from a student who I taught long ago. At this point, I have many students who are grown adults with careers and partners and even children of their own. Sometimes my students write me notes or find me on social media, and every once in a while I run into them out in the world. In fact, when I was in labor with Austin ten years ago, I was triaged with another woman who was also in labor. “Ms. Clark?” she asked, using my maiden name from my earliest teaching days, and I turned…
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Four Years Ago
(Below is a letter I wrote my first class of senior-level government students. We lived through the election of 2016 together, and the day afterwards, I had them write letters to themselves that I saved for four years. Last week, I sent them those letters, along with this one. It’s been edited for privacy and brevity.) Almost four years ago, on the day after the election, I looked out at all of you from the front of my classroom and I wasn’t quite sure what to say. We were all surprised at how the election had turned out, and I knew there was a lot of emotion in the air.…
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Hard Things Are Hard
It had been a really hard week at my school. An incident had shocked my students and made them fearful and frustrated. I stood in the back of the auditorium, listening to our head of school talk to the students. I sighed. I was about a year into widowhood and everything seemed hard. I didn’t need anything else on my plate. The head of school talked about the importance of holding space for each other and reaching out to teachers if students needed more support. The kids were listening, but it wasn’t an easy talk. At one point, our head of school paused his speech. I think he was attempting…
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Unaffected
Workplaces love surveys, don’t they? My school is a great place to work. As I’ve written about before, I get constant support from my colleagues, administrators and parents. I know I’m lucky to have this. So, recently, when I received a “employee satisfaction survey” I was happy to take it. I marked a lot of “extremely satisfied” and “definitely yes” answers. But then I got to this question, and I paused: “Are you able to present yourself each day in a way that is seen by our students as consistent and reliable (i.e., unaffected by outside-of-school problems)?” I didn’t have a hard time with the first part of the question,…
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The First Day of School, Part 2
I love my job. For almost a decade I’ve been teaching at my current school and I truly enjoy every day. I mean, get to teach history and government in Washington, D.C.! I can even walk to work. I do love having the summers off, but I miss my students and my identity as a teacher when I’m away from school. And so I was really happy when Labor Day arrived and school began. Last year, I missed chunks of school when Shawn was sick and then I missed two months after he died. Everyone at my school was really supportive, and I knew I was lucky to work in…
There’s No Handbook for How to Do This
