The Question on Everyone’s Lips

[Editor's Note: The Drama Club is a pseudonym for a first-year high school teacher in the Bronx.]

‘Tis the season in teaching that brings the same question to everyone’s lips: “So are you coming back next year?”

Am I coming back next year……?

Hmm, good question. My response for about two solid months now has been, “I’m on the fence.” The fence is getting higher. Whichever way I land, I hope it’s on my feet or else it’s gonna hurt.

New events and discoveries have transpired over the past few months, and I can’t help but notice - I’m still here. I’m still living, still breathing, and actually staying pretty healthy. I’m getting the teacher thing down pretty well, I dare say. Sure I have my struggles but to quote the great philosopher Alanis Morisette:

I’m broke but I’m happy, I’m poor but I’m kind…

Lately I’ve had a bizarre string of luck that is making me knock every piece of wood I come across and checking for black cats in my path. Last month, after a very emotional final act with my roommate of six years, I moved out. The very next morning, there was a house fire. No one was hurt but everyone had to move. My former roommate found a new place immediately and moved the following day, with a gas mask on to protect from smoke inhalation. “Boy are you lucky,” everyone said. I guess I am…

Last week I took a personal day from school to celebrate my birthday. Again, the call came in at 3:05pm. “Boy are YOU lucky,” my friend and colleague began. I prepared for tales of a fight or an expected substitute teacher-related drama in one of my classes. He went on to detail a full-on riot in the hallway, with 30 police officers, handcuffed students, and arrests on sight. Then one of my students had an epileptic seizure. Right outside my classroom. During my class. Oy.

I felt a mix of guilt for missing the eventful day and relief at having missed it. The relief made sense but I wondered at the guilty feelings. After all, it seems like only yesterday there was that horrifying act of domestic violence right before my eyes during a parent-teacher conference. Or that time I was forcefully shoved out of a doorway by a student I was trying to help. Why shouldn’t I miss a good lockdown in favor of the comfort of my living room? (And did I mention it was my birthday?)

But I guess…. I guess I care. I care about our students. I care about our students put in handcuffs and brought to jail, there I said it! The riot was a result of longstanding tension between the school and school safety personnel, and quite honestly, it might have been difficult for me to keep my own temper at the way things went down. I might have landed myself in jail in an unexpected attempt at defending a punk-ass student who can’t even be bothered to remember my name. But (sigh) it doesn’t stop me from caring. Like an idiot.

I’m sad but I’m laughing, I’m brave but I’m chickenshit…

Last week, as I was preparing to give a quiz, T, one of my 11th grade students, entered the room with her mother and her one-year-old son in tow. Her mother began to gush to me about her daughter’s progress in the class, how proud she is of her, how she wanted to come in and speak to her teachers in person. Never mind that parent-teacher conferences were the week before, I had a quiz to give! I suggested we talk after class. T sat down to take her quiz, her mother handed me the baby and went to talk to another teacher in the back of the room, and the class went on. Walking around the room with the toddler child of my 16-year-old student perched on my hip (while she took a quiz on reproductive anatomy, of all things), it occurred to me: I am the American Teacher. My student, though some may say her life is “over,” is succeeding. She’s learning. She is feeling the thrill of victory and knows the taste of accomplishment. She smiles so much more than when I first met her. And this adorable little boy on my hip, who knows nothing about teen pregnancy rates in this country, seems very well-loved and cared for. It’s not all a tragedy. So what if she didn’t know what a fallopian tube was? (ps she does now.)

I’m green but I’m wise, I’m hard but I’m friendly baby…

Maybe it was karma that I missed those unexpected recent events. Maybe a fire and a riot in the same month would have sent me over the edge of my sanity or running for the door to polish off my resume. Things happen for a reason, and maybe… maybe there is a reason I am in this school. I’ve never been much of a masochist before, so that can’t be it. Starting over at another school - even if it was a “better school” with more arts and more resources, closer to my home - would still mean starting from scratch for me. None of the colleagues I love, none of the students I have grown to love. It would be me alone with the lunch tray in the middle of the cafeteria trying to look nonchalant. Again. And I’d really, really like to see this kid graduate.

And what it all comes down to my friends
Is that no one’s really got it figured out just yet

I’m giving myself until the end of the month to figure it out. But I suspect that everything is going to be quite all right… 

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