“Ms. Wilson, I’ve read the little instagram devotionals you do. They’re really good. But you do use A LOT of commas.”
Ah, yes. After months of online school, I had nearly forgotten the average teenager’s unique ability to give a compliment that encourages and kinda stings at the same time.
I like to spend at least half of my lunches hanging out with students. Thanks to my stature and the pesky zit that seems to have taken up permanent residence on my forehead, when hemmed in by the usual small group of high schoolers, the unknowing stranger might lump me right in with them. Not every lunchtime involves a discussion about (or critique of) my punctuation tendencies, of course. Some days we sit in a group and pass around my coworker’s 40 year old guitar and a packet of worship music and sing together. Some days we chat about everything from Edward Cullen (how do they even know who that is??) to last night’s presidential debate, to ranking local thrift stores by how wealthy its donors are. Being a teenager in 2020 is a trip and the last thing they need is another adult who thinks they ‘get’ them but doesn’t. I’m at that age where I can quote their memes but I don’t have a Tiktok, so I’m not quite cool, but I’m accepted.
When I was in middle and high school, none of my teachers were particularly young. The closest thing we got to young was “cool” and those frisbee playing enigmas always struck me as inaccessible. I’d like for my students to at least know that I’ve been through what they’re going through now. And while this is also my first pandemic, I have felt out of place, too awkward, too shy. Part of me wishes they knew that I sometimes feel these things in front of the classroom.
Anyway, I’m teaching English now!
Of course, with any new role comes new opportunities for embarrassment–and my best one had to be the first day back to in-person learning. I had picked a favorite thrifted find of mine to wear for the first day/picture day: a navy chiffon INC dress that I intentionally wear backwards so the little pearlescent buttons face the front.
Well, the dress wasn’t a bad pick for a shoulders-up photo, but it was ultimately a mistake. I didn’t notice when I was getting ready, but a few of the bottom buttons must have peaced-out on my drive to work, because it wasn’t until parents started arriving with students that I realized that my outfit had gone from conservative to club-worthy. With the buttons from the bottom gone, the split, which blew wide open when I walked, came about three inches above my knee. Yikes.
With less than one class period to make my dress a little more Kate Middleton and a little less Miley Cyrus, I grabbed an extra jump ring from my keys and pulled the bobby pin out of my hair. I had to put a small hole through the fabric, but better that than greet parents and put a permanent hole in my reputation. The rigging looked a little ridiculous while sitting down so I just… didn’t sit at all. In fact, I felt myself trying to cover it up the entire day–with my lunchbox; with a folder full of syllabi; with a stack of books that I dropped and then awkwardly had to scramble to pick up while still trying to keep covered. It was a first day to remember for sure!
I’m lucky to have since avoided any more wardrobe malfunctions, but I have felt myself running for cover, embarrassed at my own inexperience. I’ve never taught English before. I’ve never actually taught the same subject or even had the same group of students two years in a row for the three years I’ve been in the classroom–and there’s a certain beauty to that. I learned different things getting 7th graders to memorize the Fruit of the Spirit than I did doing science experiments in the hallway and getting a Bible degree on the side. In a way things have beautifully come full circle. The high school class which got me interested in English and Bible in the first place was Classical Literature, and now I get teach it 5th period every day.
Now that it’s October, we’re deep in the trenches with Senior Thesis projects and Augustinian confession write-ups, but if there’s one thing I want my current students to learn, it’s that they’re not finished products. That God is still working on them and in them–because He’s clearly still working on me. When I see my need for His grace, I have more grace for them, even on days when I’m sure that particular reservoir has run dry. Their teacher is impossibly human, and sometimes she has to Wikipedia who Catiline is when Augustine mentions him or gives the wrong root for ‘predicate’ and remembers it halfway through class because oops, she took Spanish and not Latin in high school. But she’s trying. Oh is she trying.
It brings me so much joy when a 9th grade boy comes to me at lunch telling me he’s been making a model of Hector’s helmet at home because he’s enjoying the Iliad that much. But it brings me even more joy when I see the kid who has consistently counted himself out as a non-writer actually give himself grace and try again.
I’m sure that’s just God giving me a glimpse of how He feels watching me. 😊
Philippians 1:6 “And I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ.”
Also, here’s the song that’s been running through my head for the duration of my writing this. What a great throwback!
Kayley Chartier 