It's just hitting mid-June and I have been rolling this post around for a couple of weeks. I have been walking more, and that has given me a chance to think through, mentally compose, scrap, rewrite, revise, and file away what I have to say, then overthink it and avoid writing it, only to think through it again. Today, after coming back in the house, drenched sweat after walking the Kansas humidity, I finally started scribbling in my writing notebook. That helped, and led me to now transfer many of those scratches onto the digital page. So, here we go.
As summer began, I was speaking to someone not in education who told me he had heard that a lot of teachers are really stressed out right now, maybe even looking to leave teaching. He said something about not understanding it, that we were getting the summer off, which he followed with the chuckle that seems to always follow that statement. (I won't go into that one right now. Maybe later.) He wondered “What did teachers really have to be stressed out about?”
Now, there are many reasons teachers are stressed. Some are seasonal, and while it is relaxing to take a deep breath and exhale at the end of the school year, the transition routinely creates an odd sense of discomfort for me as the routine shifts (although my routine is still fairly regular each morning since I help supervise summer workouts). The energy of a full day of teenagers filling my classroom disappears, and I struggle with not seeing some of the people who I work with every day for 10 months no longer being regular, face to face figures in my day to day. (Once again, working with athletes and coaches all summer helps with this, and soon enough we will get together to plan or socialize.) Some of the stress is more chronic and has built up over the last few years. That has taken numerous forms. Some of the stress is more acute. Painfully acute.
This conversation took place during the last week of May. Yes, that week.
What could teachers be feeling stressed about?
The day after the tragedy at Robb Elementary, I received a message from a young person who graduated in the spring of 2020 and is on track to graduate with a BS in Nursing in a couple of semesters. Messages from former students are special. They talk about a song they heard that we had discussed, or maybe recommend a movie we should look at for Pop Culture Lit class. They will recommend books they have read or fill me in on milestones that have reached. Sometimes, they just want to say "Hey," ask about a Tweet I had posted, or call me by my first name. I love them. This message, as the kids say, hit different.
On one hand, it warmed my heart, and it reminded me why I love teaching. And yet, in the next breath, it was gut-wrenching and turned my stomach in knots. With her permission, I will share a few bits and pieces of what she wrote.
"The tragedy that happened in Texas made me want to share my outpour of gratitude for you. Your classroom always felt so safe for me..."
Your classroom always felt so safe for me.
That part. When someone tells me that, it warms my heart; it makes me feel that I have done something right. For a teacher, or at least for myself as a teacher, creating a place where people feel safe is important. If someone feels safe, they can breathe, they can relax. They will be more willing to be themselves. In writing, we often talk about how intimate or vulnerable writing can be, how putting yourself on the page takes confidence and a willingness to take risks. It takes a certain level of safety. Discussion is the same in that way. We so often talk about how we can create that environment for our kids, and how much it can affect their learning and their growth. The more I have learned about trauma, the more significant it has become in my mind that I continue to improve in helping to create a classroom, a school in fact, where kids can feel that way. Where they can breathe.
She continued. "If anything in that manner were to ever happen, your classroom was the one I would always hope to be in - or if I was close enough, the one I would have ran to."
Bigger than feeling comfortable enough to allow herself to be vulnerable. A place she would feel protected. Physically protected. She is literally speaking of life. Life and death.
Life and death.
That hit me. The idea that she had thought about that, that she had looked back to her time in school, and she had considered this. She kept going. The next part I will share is what truly hit me with a gut punch.
"...I am so so thankful that all three of my sisters have a teacher like you to run to in such a scary and cruel world."
I wanted to immediately tell her thank you for everything that she had written, to let her know how much it truly does mean to me that she feels that way. But before I could type out a message, I had to let fall the tears that I had been holding back. (Yes, I cry. A grown man, a teacher. A football coach. It happens in my classroom. I have teared up as kids read their own poetry or when something we read hits in a new way. That is another post too.)
Why did that hit me so hard at this moment? Here is a young person with the kindest of hearts. She sees good in people. She feels she is destined to help others. She finds the good in the world. It is simply part of who she is. This person had played out a scenario in her head, mentally composed a scene that no one, let alone someone so young and fresh in the world, should ever envision, in which people she loves, people she cares deeply for, have to run to a place they hope is safe, within a place, school, that they should be able to assume is, in fact, safe. She has run through that scene, and in it three sisters find a place, my room, where she believes they are a little less likely to die.
If you haven't already, think about that. They should never have to.
I know I have. A lot of teachers I know have. We have awakened from those images in the middle of the night, and we have planned what we can do to avoid seeing it play out in reality. How we can truly create that place where kids feel safe.
And that is the key. Not so much "how will we deal with this when it happens?" More "how can we keep this from happening? How can we - WE as in all of us, not only educators but all of us - reduce the possibility that it occurs?”
So, why are so many teachers feeling stressed out? It’s actually fairly simple. We’re teachers. We work with people. Often challenging, sometimes infuriating, and many times amazing people. And we care about them. As people. (Yes, I know there are teachers who do not fit this mold. That too is another post. A long one.) And that caring that so many teachers feel for so many young people does not evaporate simply because the bell rings. It may take on a different form, but it is still there.
The message I received, a message written so eloquently, ended, in part, with these words: "Lastly, I am sorry you are put in this position. It was never meant to be this way."
Listen to the kids (and the kids who are no longer kids).
It was never meant to be this way.
