The One Box Left Unchecked
Sharpies are dry, highlighters, pens, pencils are missing, Expo markers are desperately slugging their way across whiteboards in sad streaks begging to be left alone! Two pocket folders are expanding and heaving on desks or in classroom corners praying to be emptied of their contents and released into the peace of a recycling bin. Google Classrooms are competing with end of the semester Hail Mary submissions and/or crickets and teachers are waiting at the goal line, palms, interceptions ready - the practice, the dedication (academic ambition or agitation) - have come full circle.
Students cyclone into spaces of deep love and deadlines playing the role of detective in their own missing homework mystery novels. Teachers carefully culminate emotions that conflict with one another - ‘I will miss this face, this amazing kid and human being, and I also need a 72 hour uninterrupted nap with an IV bag of fluids tied to each appendage.’
This is the beginning of June in the world of secondary education.
Simultaneously, sent in the midst of above mentioned chaos is the dreaded email that lurks like a fox searching for prey in the night; the EOY Checklist. (EOY = End of Year) Every teacher dreads this email although we all know it is coming. We do not own our spaces, and although the backdrop of our jobs is to always teach empathy and sharing and this back and forth cycle of appropriate compromise our classrooms have become a place of comfort, habit, home, storage, and for me - SO MUCH BABY STUFF!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! PSA I take most everything new and gently used (albeit not expired, in a car accident or in pieces - FYI DM me xo). So like many teachers I panic when I see the novella of tasks I have in front of me to make my classroom ready for all the unknowns of summer activity.
Amongst this list is of course the cleaning of our white boards. All items on our walls must be removed and white boards must be emptied of any markered contents because these whiteboards populated with months and months of teacher/student poetic curricular graffiti will be erased forever.
This essay has a point, as do all of my pieces although I know it takes me a LONG road to get there. For those of you who have hung on here it comes with a quick backdrop. The teen childbirth and parenting program moved into a new building this 2023/2024 school year with another school. We have all come into this new space with hope and warm welcomes, some wrinkles, trepidation and much excitement. The coolest part, aside from the fantastic babies, childcare and mamas, are all the students I have gotten to teach and meet along the way. So many of these phenomenal kids buried their way into my heart and one particularly matchless soul who left me and all the staff the most hilarious and beautiful message that NONE of us erased - from our minds OR the whiteboards OR the checklist!
We all reported back to school the last Friday of our contracted school year as it was a designated staff day. As all of us shuffled a bit blurry-eyed into our spaces to begin the final close down, knot all our loose ends, dotting I’s, crossing T’s, removing our old gross lunches from staff refrigerators and while returning who knows what to wherever I noticed something truly awesome. I was so fascinated by this that I literally ran through each floor to investigate and sure enough we all had one!
I ended up having to stop and put down an armful of hot glue guns and glitter pens and a bajillion two pocket folders and look around to take it all in.
Every single teacher had a very specific drawing on their white board right outside of each classroom and NONE of us erased it; none of us. If this was an Indie film you would see me in some kind of a time lapse situation where 50 or more whiteboards would be swiftly displayed while I run past them in dramatic grandeur.
A couple months prior to this moment I came to school one morning and saw this sketch on my whiteboard which I later understood was supposed to be my guardian angel. I had inquired about the artist and learned it was in fact an extremely talented, kind, funny, and smart student who I am proud to know and also realize that all of us as teachers are and will be better people just from knowing this magnanimous, and creative young person.
Main point of my tale is that I find it absolutely beautiful, and utterly hysterical that this student made sure we would all be somehow taken care of after a long year AND that NONE of us checked that box off our EOY checklist.
Some people in our lives are so gracious with gratitude and know when we need support; some people give support in silent, stealth, magnificent ways and then disappear into the gentle night. Some people thank you, love you and leave you in a way that tethers you to the why. The Why is why NONE OF US erased our whiteboards.
Student R, AKA AWESOME - Artist of Guardian Angels - gave me full permission to use sketches as well as initial. There is so much more of a background story and this lends to many more literary adventures to come!
