Ah, the heady, slow tempo,the sonnet of June --
with summer stretched out in a languorous tune,
her notes sweetly pedaled and perfumed with sighs,
she vows lazy mornings and evenings sublime.
With a go-nowhere-fast song, she’s pool-water chill,
for screen-porch rain listening and napping your fill.
Crack open the book spines, the bottles of wine,
and relish her at-ease, adagio time.
Wake up to slow measures, dipped silver with dew,
as deer tap staccato while tiptoeing through.
At dusk, come the cymbals in lightning bug sets
of quivering selfies that make you forget
next month, bringing emails with pre-planning news,
and all the bleak back-to-school rhythm and blues.
We celebrated the seniors last night, and now summer is here. It’s time to recover. And boy, do I need to recover. It feels like there’s sludge in my shins and sawdust in my stem cells. I ache from overuse.
But the grass is newly green, the sky’s a sun-drenched blue, and the summer stretches out like a deck chair reserved just for me. It’s time to slow down. Time to feel the sun on skin, the clover beneath toes, and a heartful and houseful of family and friends.
I can take long walks and even longer naps. I can taste homegrown tomatoes and sip store-bought wine. I can float in the pool and lounge on the porch. I can read in a swing and write on the patio. I can bake with the boys and hold hands with my husband. I can host barbecue and pajama parties.
I can rejuvenate my mind, so I can prepare for my final year of teaching. I’ve got just one more year..
I was trying to calculate how many students I’ve taught throughout this journey. How many “babies” I’ve mothered in all that time. And from my calculations – and math is not my strong suit, so it’s probably an underestimate — I’m thinking it’s been close to 4,500. Forty-five hundred angst-riddled, hormone-fueled, drama-driven teenagers. Multiply that times the myriad of emotions and behaviors that fuel a classroom on any given day, along with hours of lectures and lessons and the number of assignments to grade and you understand why summer recovery is a very real necessity.
Teaching is exhausting. It’s challenging. It’s overwhelming. It is.
But it’s also feeling exhausted and challenged and overwhelmed and unbelievably proud with a heart bursting with love and gratitude for all your kids and their accomplishments when they cross that stage in late May to a cacophony of tears and air horns and applause.
If you do it right, it’s worth every ounce of energy. If you do it right, it’s your calling.
Hearts as good
as grits and gravy,
passions that run
like over-easy eggs,
my first block class
of seniors
is a heaping helping
of Heaven Help
with a whole lotta
Gotta love ‘em
thrown in too.
Scattered, smothered,
and covered up –
that’s what they keep me –
along with on my toes
and on my No’s,
but oh-so-many
Yes-es, too.
We should all be
this way, their way,
full of pushing ourselves
and our limits,
pouring our magic
into this, our magic hour
in this wild and precious world.
We should all be grabbing our minutes
by the forkfuls, the spoonfuls, the plate and bowl and platterfuls,
with hearts as good as grits and gravy, passions spilling off the edges
like
over-easy
eggs.
Before the grit
and grave
overtake us all.
Children who are in my classroom to learn. Children who are in my classroom because their parents love them dearly. Children whose parents want the best for them.
I learn so much about who they are, where they come from, how they’re raised, what their dreams are, who they love. They write their stories. And boy, do some of them have stories to tell.
Stories of fear. Of poverty. Of attempted kidnappings. Of actual kidnappings. Of violence. Of arduous journeys. Of near starvation. Of cold nights. Meager possessions. Endless red tape. Parents left behind. Siblings left behind. Sadness and struggles. Heartache and love. Family and sacrifice. Hardwork and gratitude, perseverance and pride.
In my classroom we share voices and dreams and experiences and connections and empathy and understanding.
From these children’s stories I’ve learned so much about what bravery and love really look like.
We share our most precious parts of us and we become family. And I will continue to do my best to keep my classroom a safe place.
But as I read these articles and see the footage about ICE showing up at schools, my blood boils and runs cold all at the same time. Because while I’ve done my best to keep my classroom a safe place to learn and grow, we already know schools can be far from safe. Gun violence is a real threat.
And now, so is government-sanctioned trauma.
Teachers go into this job because we love children. All children. And when they hurt, we hurt.
Dear God, please be with these children and their aching, breaking hearts. And please, dear God, keep these children safe.
This week was a rough ride. The kids are amped up on holiday vibes and election results. They’re practically vibrating. I’ve been shushing and redirecting and encouraging and fussing and trying my utmost to keep them focused and remember every day that I love them. I really do love them. But they are exhausting right this minute.
And I get it. Nobody is excited to be sitting in English class writing a perspective poem or a Great Gatsby essay.
This rowdy, raucous week was full of glad tidings for some and dark omens for others — the conversations running the gamut from Christmas carols and Thanksgiving-food-favorites to trending red and blue TikToks and tweets. From elation at the prospect of gas prices coming down to the horror at the slavery texts going ‘round.
Deportation headlines were tossed around like confetti by some, striking like anvils some others. There were book banning and family planning conversations. I even heard about the “her body, my choice” tweet that garnered thousands of likes.
And then there were the students who never even talked about the election at all. It hadn’t even been a blip on their Instagram algorithms.
And while I’m glad those students are innocent to the dark drama of politics, I’m sad too because I know they aren’t immune to the repercussions. My students are 17, 18, and 19-year-olds. So soon, they’ll be out in the very real world and learn what’s most important and essential to each-and-every one of their lives.
Through it all, I did my best to steer them back toward our task at hand: their education, their growth and understanding.
I teach literature. I teach other people’s perspectives. I teach how to walk two miles in somebody else’s shoes. I teach incredibly important lessons. But most importantly, I teach young adults. Young adults who will soon be grown adults who will soon, I hope, be intelligent rational, caretakers of our country. Because I really do love them all. And I really do believe in them all.
And Lord knows, we need intelligent, rational caretakers who can heal our nation and ensure all of us have the fundamental rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. All of us.
(and for all our schools)
So much depends
upon
a brown door,
hollow,
framed with glass
windows,
between the gun &
children
It’s not enough.
Do something.
Sincerely,
Heather Peters Candela Teacher and Parent
The boys and I didn’t go to the game last night. We stayed home to recover from a short week that wound up being waaaaaaay long. Between the school-shooting horrors, a problematic medical finding, and some soft-lockdown stressors, the boys and I needed a quiet night.
I only wish my husband could have had that luxury. But he was in Calhoun helping commandeer a decided victory. He’s tired. God knows he is. He got home at 1:00 AM after a loooooong night.
While we were in the comfort of our home all-night-long – eating chicken nuggets and milk shakes.
And it does not escape me that there is a football coach from Winder, Georgia who will never return to the comfort of his home or the comfort of his wife and kids. Nor will they ever be wrapped in the comfort of his strong arms.
When the scores scrolled across the screen last night, the games in Barrow County — followed by the chillingly understated CANCELED — left me feeling hollow and sick and furious and afraid and fed up. And guilty.
I felt guilty that we were home safe and sound and four people from Winder are not. Guilty that my husband is still on the sidelines doing what he loves, while another wife’s husband is not. Guilty for thanking God it wasn’t our school. Guilty that our sons have parents who love them and shelter them, who clothe and feed them. Who don’t lock them out of the house at night. Who don’t buy them assault rifles for Christmas. Who don’t leave our weapons out and unsecured. Who don’t need FBI agents to tell us to do so in the first place.
I’m so tired of all these feelings. So tired of feeling hollow and sick and furious and afraid and fed up and guilty all at the same time.
But I don’t know how to make any of it better. I know what the problems are.
We have a mental health problem. We do.
We have a parenting problem. We do.
We have a gun problem. We do.
We have huge deficits and we have huge surpluses… and that creates a very big problem.
But y’all… teachers are not the solution. We aren’t. We can’t be.
We can’t be counselors. We can’t replace parents. And we can’t combat guns.
Our job is to love and educate the children of our country.
But somebody’s got to help us keep them alive. Somebody’s got to help keep us alive.
Somebody help.
We’re sending out an SOS. Please save our schools.
T. S. Eliot said it was April, but he would be wrong. For schoolteachersn, it’s most definitely May.
Some would argue I’ve gone completely off the deep end. That May brings summertime and a stress-and-student-free stretch beneath a benevolent sun.
And some of that is true. School years are tough and summer offers a reprieve. But in teaching, we find ourselves anchored to children for a season of their lives and we become invested in them all, those who flourish and those who flounder.
We love watching the stellar students sail like racing vessels, sleek and smart, seamlessly navigating subject matter. They make teaching an easy, breezy ride, and in these instances, May is a celebration.
And we take pride in working with the ones who struggle to learn the ropes, who make waves and challenge us to batten down the hatches and get creative. When they turn the corner and make up leeway, we cheer them on, and May is a momentous and magical month.
But it’s the other students – the ones caught between the devil and the deep blue sea –the distracted, the detached, the loose canons and the ones taking on water, going under, fighting against the current, or worse, not fighting at all– these students are the ones who make May the cruelest month.
Because these kids live in troubled waters and we feel helpless against their storms. They battle bleak circumstances, hungry bellies, haunted pasts, and their futures are so heavy that many will sink. And in May we find ourselves parting ways before finding a way to get them to safety. We’ve tried. And we’ve failed.
We’ve failed them.
So we watch from the pier as the sun sets on the horizon of another year, praying that somehow, somewhere, someone will find them, reach them, get them out of the raging storms before it’s too late.
Yes, we know we can’t save them all, but the ones that we haven’t saved haunt teacher souls so very, very much in May — and forever more.
These kids.
These beautiful, incandescent kids
Floating from grad party to grad party
In bright dresses, pale shirts,
Cowboy boots, and sneakers.
Lightning bugs in their element,
flickering among the tree-lined, sloping lawns.
Fire flies from their mouths
In arcs of energy,
Crackling while they sip soda, crunch crackers and chat
— about fashion, gaming, senior trips, and the beach —
One final, carefree summer,
While on the horizon, shimmering and soon:
Medicine. Engineering. Economics. Design.
A glittering nebulae of promise
drifting in the space between now and later.
Truly the brightest, most beautiful,
Highly-nuanced, and oh-so-noble group
of students I’ve taught in a generation.
They work hard, dream big, take no prisoners
And still play nice. They are Wunderkinds,
These mid-May lanterns
Bobbing, breezy and effortless, and
Soon to scatter the planet as stars.
Their souls stoked with passion,
Their brains hardwired for change; but also
(thank God for the also),
Hearts breathlessly buoyed in goodness.
And in light.
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