Go Confidently in the Direction of Your Dreams

"Go confidently in the direction of your dreams! Live the 

life you've imagined. As you simplify your life, 

the laws of the universe will be simpler." 

Henry David Thoreau

The first class of students I taught graduated last night. Our school uses trimesters, and I only taught senior classes for the first trimester; my time with them seems like a memory of an old rain cloud that has since past. At the beginning of this year, I was very green (I'm not talking being eco friendly here; I mean green, the old-fashioned way). I butted heads with a lot of students; in fact, practically my whole period 5 class. They hated me, I tried my hardest not to hate them, they didn't do homework and wanted to talk all during class, I tried to get them do work and wanted to cry all during class (shockingly I've just about made it through my first year without shedding one tear; I came quite close once but the tear did not fall), and basically period 5 and I shared a mutual existence in school hell. 

I have since come to better understand the good that exists in each of my students as I have let go of our roles of student and teacher and tried to embrace our mutual humanity. I remember it being really hard to read students' work when papers had comments like "You are only my teacher and nothing to me, so don't try," " This was supposed to be our fun senior year and you've ruined it," and my all-time favorite, "This class makes me want to put a bullet through my head." At least the last comment was the final line of a poem that utilized each of the five senses. It was very challenging and practically impossible for me not to take these comments as an attack on my teaching and me as a person (Eckard Tolle's A New Earth was a great help for moving past these types of judgements). So to say the least, this graduating class, which embodies my first round of mistakes, carried some baggage for me.

Graduation was amazing. As I watched each signifier of my various mistakes walk across the stage at graduation, I realized that we both made it. I just smiled and clapped to my palms hurt for every student because I wanted each of my students to see that despite our head butting, I recognized, supported and was pushing for their accomplishments--their humanity--the whole time. The most rewarding part of graduation was having students who I failed smile at me as they walked by my seat; some smiles were a bit uncomfortable and some were genuine. Such smiles seemed to be mutual recognitions of our mistakes and our successes. 

The best smile I shared was with A. He was a student I admired from the beginning because of his natural ability for symbolic, analytical and artistic thinking, but at the time he wasn't ready to give respect to a young, first-year, female teacher, and the young, first-year, female teacher had no idea that his anger towards her stemmed from something deep within and reacted to it very personally. Last night his smile was bright, just like his soul, and being on the receiving end of it felt good. No, it felt great. It gave me hope for him and it gave me hope for me.

After I went home, I was lying in bed and was reflecting over the course of the night. I was thinking about the various mistakes I made (some that will be hard to let go of), and it dawned on me why I made every single one of my mistakes--I was trying my best to do what was best for my students. Sometimes while watching out for one, I hurt another in the process, but my motivation was always to give students the tools to become better people. This realization brought a bit of sunshine to that rain cloud in the distance.