Twenty-five years of teaching

There are thousands of students who will never make it into this blog. Not because they were not memorable, but because there are only 180 days in a school year and so I have had to carefully select which stories I share. Sometimes I don’t share things because it makes someone identifiable, sometimes I don’t share because it is something I don’t think will translate well outside of teaching, and sometimes I don’t share because it is one of many similar stories, one of which I have already told.

One of the things I can guarantee you though it that I don’t share anything to make light of my students. I love them dearly and I hope that by sharing their stories, other people can learn from them like I have.

In the twenty-five years I have taught I have had perfectly put together beauty queens who won titles while in my class, and I have had children fall off giant slides and break their arm and have the filthiest cast I’ve ever seen at the end of the year. I have had children dress up for Halloween and had years where I had a classroom full of Jehovah’s Witness who don’t celebrate Halloween, and we did something fall themed while the rest of the grade was somewhere else in costumes. Now that I teach older children, I have had students who have experienced every possible emotion and every tragedy and victory I’ve ever heard of. I have students who travel between family members in different countries; and I have students who live with extended family because their nuclear family is in another state or country for work. I have students who have lived in the state’s care, students who have lived alone, students who have brought children into the world while still unsure of their place in it, and students who are de facto parents for their siblings. I have students who have fled the country they were born in to escape gang violence, students who have survived natural disasters, and students who have survived religious persecution. I have students who are monolingual, bilingual, and multilingual and I’ve watched them all struggle with the same kinds of problems because when it comes down to it they are all teenagers and there is something universal about being a teenager that almost supersedes every other cultural, religious, and financial norm in existence. Teenagers all over the world want the freedom and power to make their own decisions and both enjoy, and learn from, their own choices.

So why do I write about my students? Because they are amazing, challenging, fantastic beings who deserve to have their magnificence documented. Why do I pick the stories I do? Because they are the ones that touched me the deepest or taught me the most, and I think the world can learn something from their experiences.