BACK TO SCHOOL; TEACHING HOPE

Every August it happens.  Long before the charming sound of leaves crunching underfoot and the unbidden glaze of an early-morning frost have signaled the season and start of another academic year, my brief dance with summer ends.

I don't suppose I am alone in this, and I know that for many summer is merely a sunnier and warmer variation on their every working day.  But for a significant portion of my life summer had meant only one thing:  No School;  and although it has been decades since I have been an active participant in any student body, the rhythmic passage from spring to summer and summer to autumn still remains scholastic and wound around the theoretical loins of entrapment versus unrestrained freedom.

I say entrapment because as a child, I was of the opinion that school was a vile, cruel and unnecessary punishment heaped upon the smallest and most vulnerable of society by adults who merely wanted to get us out of their field of vision for several hours each weekday, and who were either too inexperienced or too soft-hearted to thoroughly punish us themselves.  Therefore, they sent us to school where other adults, trained in such torture, could to it for them.

Needless to say, I was not a fan of the school environment nor of the dastardly educators that ran the place, and although my appreciation for learning evolved over the years, the hugely negative experiences I had of most of my teachers from kindergarten through high school failed to soften my view of educators in general.

However, in keeping with my altruistic resolve to hold no hatred, I sought to remedy this prejudice:  I married a teacher.

My husband has been an educator for over forty-five years, and after nearly twenty-eight years of marriage, I have not only come to better understand just what that title infers, but I have thoroughly eaten my prior perception of and distain for them as a whole.

While I still believe that there are an unfortunately large number of poor teachers out there, those who began suffering burnout in their fifth year of teaching and are now in their twenty-fifth, there is also that small but stellar number for whom teaching is not what they do but who they are.

Every August I watch with fascination as my husband winds down his summer of tutoring and shifts his focus towards those students as they will sit before him in his small classroom.  He is a reading specialist in elementary school and as such, he will see only those children who have fallen behind from either a learning disability, emotional handicap or otherwise.  They are the ones who struggle and they come to him in those small bodies with the massive baggage of repeated failure.  They are far too young to see themselves in such a dim light.

At the start of every school year, my husband gets to know each child as they arrive at various times of day to his classroom, and eventually every one is assigned a nickname based on personality, a play off their given name or a preference.

They all call him "Mr. Spongebob." Some whose innocent affection and comfort extends beyond protocol just call him "Bob."  But because he has taken the time to really notice them, they adore him and find it their greatest joy to work hard on their lessons in appreciation of his sincere attention.

His success rate is mind blowing.

But it isn't only that he teaches non-readers and poor-learners to read; he offers them a tomorrow laced with the promise of remarkable.  How many of these children if gone unaided, would resort to darker corners in which to brood and find relief from self-loathing and peer cruelty?  Teachers like my husband give these kids the chance at a future with a softer edge and a more promising bloom.

And they never forget him.  Especially those young souls who by design or fate, are meant to walk the periphery of inclusion well into adulthood.  These are the ones that as children are most in need of validation from the adults in their lives because adults represent the future and a time when they themselves might be free of the pain of ostracism and more able to cope with the lamentable label of different.


My husband still receives phone calls and cards from students who are now adults yet remain walking that unforgiving road on the outside of in while continuing to overcome the stigma of their brand of different. 

Some are now into their forties, but they have not forgotten the teacher who helped them learn and more importantly, who helped them find value in themselves during those fragile and formative years at a time and in an environment when their chief value seemed to be only as the target for a good laugh by their peers.

A good teacher is more than what the name implies.  A good teacher bridges the choppy waters of insecurity and ignorance with a sturdy rope of confidence and enlightenment and instructs his or her students how to knot and weave one of their own; so that in future days when passage becomes dicey, they will have recourse to the other side.

A good teacher holds hope when his students grapple with despair and indicates the way towards that point of light and out of dark confusion.

My husband came home from the annual teacher's convocation last week with a story that illustrates this point:

A fellow teacher at a nearby elementary school had noticed that one of her third grade students was not like the others.  She saw that he was always sullen, that his hair was frequently dirty and his clothes, seldom washed.  He quickly became the target of the other children who mocked him for these things.  After inquiring about his history she learned that his mother had very recently passed away and that his father was desperately struggling to keep providing for his family and, consequently, was not always available to his children.

But she also saw that this young boy was extremely bright and she championed his intelligence.  As the year progressed, he came out of his shell and gradually, as a result of his classroom successes and her obvious encouragement, the other kids eventually ceased their taunting.

On the last day of school as the students were giving the teacher gifts of appreciation, the boy approached her desk with a small package wrapped in the brown paper of a discarded grocery bag.  At first the other kids began to chuckle, but she motioned them to silence and opened the gift.  He had given her a small, rhinestone bracelet with one or two missing stones and a half-empty bottle of perfume.

The teacher expressed her delight and in front of the class she put on the bracelet and gave herself a light spray of perfume after which the boy looked up at her, smiled and said, "You smell like my mother."

Teaching does not begin in the fall and it does not end in the summer, and the lessons we learn from those teachers dedicated enough to listen and wise enough to care have no season and exist beyond time.

I am proud to count my husband among them, and I extend my gratitude to the many like him.
Because of teachers like these Back to School can become the very beginning of everything good and all that verges on remarkable.


They do more than change lives, they help create them.

Mr. Spongebob taking one on the sponge at the school fair