The Stranger in the Photo

Have you ever written an essay with your students?  When I have the time, I try. This time I wanted to do this assignment, which was modeled after Donald Murray's "The Stranger in the Photo is Me," and I'm so glad I did. While the students taught me so much about them, I was able to learn so much about myself.

Here is my essay:

I have many childhood photos I can recall. 

One where I am in red overalls with a Raggedy Ann, holding a pie fresh from the oven, on the front flap. My golden brown hair frames my chubby cheeks. I’m wearing blue canvass shoes that have a Snoopy and a Woodstock on the side, but one shoe is obscured because I have my leg tucked under me. I am not yet four, and in my big brown eyes, I have all the brightness and delight of a child that age.

In another, my long hair hangs over my tan shoulders as I lean down above my puppy dog cake, ready to blow out the seven candles. I’m with my mother and grandmother in an Amtrak train that’s Chicago-bound. My Snoopy doll, which I called Snoopy Snoopy Smup Smup, is sitting in the seat next to me. A sense of delight and wonder as I embark on my biggest journey yet and another year of life fill my eyes.

In these photos I’m a gregarious, fearless child. I’m gregarious because I know no stranger. I’m fearless because I don’t yet know the sharp edges of this world. In these photos I’m the same child who, at five years old, walks onto a stage in a dark theater and sings “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” to a row of balding, cigar-smoking men who are casting for Damn Yankees. The spotlight and the whispers of these now faceless men do not intimidate me. I sing with the confidence of a child who knows no shame.

But one picture in particular haunts me. In this photo I’m about four years old and I am neither happy nor sad. Kermit the Frog, who hangs around my neck, is smiling, but I am staring at the camera as if I’m in mid-sentence. I have on my pajamas with the little elephants and lions—pajamas I remember well. They are pink and footed, and they are the ones I was wearing when, as I unzipped them, discovered the horrors of chicken pox.  

In this photo I am striking a pose, but not like that kind of pose. It’s someone else’s pose. I can tell because my little magnetic number and alphabet board is faced toward the man taking the picture, and not me.

In this photo I see a sense of sadness that I could not have known then, but as my older self—the self who has seen what’s on the other side—I see an eerie foreboding. At times I think that my child self is standing on a precipice and staring down into the rabbit hole of my adult life. At times I think that my child self—trapped in this forever mid-sentence—is saying, “Stay right here!”  

But as a child I wanted to do everything myself. I wanted reassurance, but I wanted independence more, like the moment I first tried out my lifejacket. At five years old I was ready to swim in the big lake, but I had my mother hold on to my lifejacket so I was sure it worked, and then I was off. Just as I rushed into big girl swimming, I rushed to my adulthood, but as I did so, I was inadvertently rushing into moments that shattered the person I could have been. Along the way, I collided into the men who stole my innocence, my mother abandoning me, my grandmother locking me out of the house, my hospital stays. In each moment, that gregariousness, that fearlessness, that independence died.

Life can chisel away at a person’s soul, and in my rushing, I never knew that. I hadn’t watched my great-grandfather die, hadn’t watched my grandmother age, hadn’t watched my baby brother find a juvenile record, hadn’t felt the punch of unemployment.

Just as I was posed in this picture, I was posed throughout my childhood, mostly as the victim. As I grew up, I tried different poses myself, and never ones that benefitted me: the depressed one, the silent one, the angry one, the defensive one, the shamed one, the bitter one. 

As I look back at those moments that killed what I could have been, those moments—and many other wonderful ones—are what gave rise to what I am today. My arms, which were the first to hold both my little brothers; my hands, which held my wife’s as we spoke our vows; my eyes, which have stored in them all the stunning mountains and canyons I’ve seen; my mind, which can give poetic language to what I think and feel; my feet, which allow me to stand before my students each and every day. 

The little girl in the picture doesn’t know any of that. She just wants to cling on to her innocence, and she wants me to stay with her forever, but I can’t. I have to grow up and become what life intended me to be: a wife, a daughter, a granddaughter, a sister, an aunt, a teacher, a friend, and ultimately, a survivor. 

A Series of Firsts

I've really missed this place and it feels good to be back. Unlike last last year, I've been busy, but busy good for once.

The last time I posted I was still raw, and in many ways I still am. Each day I feel the absence of my colleagues, my friends, and while I may get used to it, I won't get over it. The first day of school--and I'll tell you about that shortly--I talked to my students about my feelings. I got choked up and almost started crying, but they got it. They saw how we were with one another, with them, and they recognize the loss. During lunch, several students will hang out in my room. I joke that it's a displaced student camp because all the students are former (the name of my pre-merger school) students. But it's nice because we can reminisce about the "old days," bonding in unexpected ways and keeping the spirit of what we were alive.

So, our first week at school--any school for that matter--is PD (professional development). Some schools I've worked at have meaningful PD, others not so much. This year was the not so much category. All schools gathered that first Monday, and it was a lot of bla, bla, bla, then we were told all other PD for the week will be at our school sites. That PD was basically setting up our rooms. However, during that Monday, all of us from my pre-merger school were able to see one another--with the exception of two colleagues who are still looking for employment--and that was amazing. We all sat together and it felt, for a second, like we were still a team.

It's a tradition for my charter organization, during this Monday, to award the teacher of the year for each school. The woman who introduces this part of the ceremony--if you want to call it that--is our chief academic officer, and she is the only person from the central office who has recognized or verbalized what has happened to us. Her word for the layoffs, the merger, the nuttiness of last year is "sketchy." She explained that things were sketchy last year, but some teachers excelled and went above and beyond in spite of this, then she had the principal of each school come up and announce their teacher.

I thought for sure it would be my colleague who taught history last year. He was a first year teacher, and he was teaching AP, two other history classes, art, student council; he was finishing his masters; he broke up multiple fights and caught several kids doing drugs. This poor guy--I don't know how he's still teaching. Last year really took a toll on him, but he was never bitter like I was. I was expecting to hear his name when my principal said mine. I felt like those actresses who win the Academy Award and look around to see who won, when really, they won. I don't remember what my principal said, but I walked up to the stage and gave her a hug.

It was a bittersweet moment for me. That's a trite phrase, but that's the perfect phrase. I've never been recognized in that way by a school I've worked for, and it felt good for someone to say in such a public way, "You matter, and what you do matters." That was the sweet part. The bitter part was that last year my dear friend, my work wife, won this award for our school. I wanted to celebrate with her, with our staff, but that wasn't to be. In a way, I felt like we all deserved this award for what we went through. In another way, I wondered if I deserved it all. Reflecting back on last year, all the thoughts I've vented on here, and the many others which did not make it on here, would a teacher of the year think or say or believe those things? My former colleagues were really happy for me, telling me I deserved this award, then we parted ways.

We all went back to our school site (that is another blog entry), and this year I'm happy to report that I'm sans pigeons, though I will miss the joke that I have the smartest pigeons in the metropolitan area. And, for the first time in two years, I am able to have out all my fun school stuff. Last year I shared my room and it was always unlocked. Things would go missing all the time, so I never had out all my decorations, and the year before that my materials were in storage since I was unemployed. This year my room is me--it has my books, my posters, my desk decorations, my stool. My room is clean, and the door gets locked at night, so I return and it looks exactly the same.

Everything was set up perfect, just the way I wanted, so the only thing I was waiting for was my students. I think all teachers, no matter how long they've been teaching, get butterflies that first Monday. We wonder if they will like us, if we will like them, and that's normally what I am concerned about, but this year I was wondering if they were even coming back. Our new school site is quite far from where our previous site was--probably 15 or more miles. All our students take public transportation, unless their parents can drive them, and I thought for sure they would find a school closer to home. I was devastated at this thought, particularly with my AP class. I spent all summer preparing for them, and I was convinced that these kids, the ones who I said I would come back for, weren't coming back. If they weren't there, why stay? Why have AP if the children I built this program around weren't coming?

When I opened my door second period, that first Monday morning, I heard shrieks. I thought a fight was breaking out right outside my room. Instead, I was bombarded by hugs. "I missed you!' "I couldn't wait for this class to start!" "I'm so excited about this class!" They all came back. Literally, every single student who was supposed to be in that class is there. I couldn't believe it. And they were so happy to see me and to see each other. For the first time in a long time I felt like things might, for a second, be okay.