I Thought I Was Just Gonna Tutor Some Kid

Putting on the Teacher Uniform, I had flashbacks of getting ready in the darkness of the early morning before settling in for the long drive to Danville. Something felt so familiar, nice even, about The Uniform; the pressed dress pants, the conservative but fashionable chenille cardigan, the reasonable pink high heels with the little bows on the sides, pinning my hair up to seem just a little more "professional "… the modest couple rows of necklaces (hey, I had to put a little flare into it somewhere). Looking in the mirror, I saw the teacher whose summer break was going on five months now.

Realization: This would be my first time back in a school since student teaching last year. Huh.

Walking through the halls to classroom #611, my heels clicking on the tile. The floors marked with black tape in a way that’s reminiscent of the track circling the football field at the high school across the parking lot – taped to remind our kids that we always walk on the right side of the hallway.

Approaching my friend Chyla’s classroom, a tidal wave of pre-pubescent, high-pitched laughter crashes through the hall (I was later to find out that it was over a joke of someone liking someone else … some poor kid, shuffling to gym class, probably mortified at the notion that someone could actually think he’s cute.)

Entering the classroom – colorful bulletin boards, graphic organizers, and trapper-keepers pop up into view. Strangely enough, its here, with the taped floors, students’ artwork lining the hallways, rows of desks, the shiny overhead up front, that I feel at home. Safe. Comfortable. Crescendo-ing Passion.

There’s something about being surrounded by a mob of eleven year olds just beginning to try to figure out life, how to be loved, that makes things not about me, my time, my unmet needs, my apathy.

Driving back down Springfield Ave … passing Grainger, professors wearing suit coats with the patches on the elbows, the girl in pajamas, the guy with the hangover.

Jaded from my last high school placement, buried in the cynical theories of burnt out adults on how not to solve America’s problems, buried in a community often solely fixated on all the social injustices and ignorance of the world and how no one but post-doc students could ever possibly do anything about it anyway.

There’s a sinking as the weight of “academia” drops back down on me, like those old-fashioned heavy velvet curtains that go around a canopy bed to shut out the light – ya know, like they always have in movie versions of Dickens’s A Christmas Carol when the ghosts are appearing to Scrooge. Don’t get me wrong, I love this campus … but sometimes it just feels like that heavy curtain -- keeping everything in as to keep ourselves comfortable, satisfied, able to sleep soundly; hiding in our enlightenment; out of touch.

Mmmmm. Middle-schoolers.

I’m refreshed.

I’m so ready to be a teacher. Not necessarily ready to grow up; but ready for my life not to be about myself.