A Bajillion Kids

One of the things I love about Facebook is catching up with my kids.  Not, as I often make the distinction, the kids I personally gave birth to, but the ones I have taught in my now 20-year history at my alma mater, Farrington High School. I am sincerely thrilled to receive messages from them, to see pictures of them with their partners and children and to catch up on the many little details that transpired since our last meeting.  What's hard to take is how OLD all of this is making me feel! 

For a number of years, some of the members of the class of 1998 and I made it a point to meet for dinner several times a year.  When we started this ritual, they were 17 or 18 years old.  A few years after that, they were ordering alcoholic beverages. Now many of them are married and having children of their own.  Perhaps predictably, our meeting for dinner tradition has dropped off appreciably but thanks to FB, keeping in touch has never been easier.

I made a comment about my current students on my status recently and one of my students from the class of 2000 wrote, "How many kids do you have now?  A bajillion?"  The question made me wonder:  Just how many young minds have I tainted in the last 20 years?  I did some rough calculations (and those of you who know me well know how rough these probably are).  When I first started teaching, we were on a 6 period schedule so each teacher taught 5 classes (approximately 30 students/per class).  Then in 1997, we switched to the block schedule (4 classes per term, each teacher has 3 classes) but that same year, I also switched to the Health Academy where I was blessed (for a time) to have smaller classes than the norm AND where I sometimes I had students more than once during their 2-3 year stay in the Academy.  By my calculations, subject to extreme human error, I have had (give or take) approximately 3200 students in the past 20 years!

About 7 years ago, I found out one of my students was the son of my classmate.  Since then I have had 4 more students come through who were also the children of my classmates.  This year I again noted an unusual and familiar surname on my roster but with a noted difference; this surname did not belong to one of my peers, it belonged to one of my very first students.  When SGR walked into the classroom on the first day, there was no mistaking who her mother was; the resemblance was striking and I was hurtled back 20 years to a time I often would much rather forget:  My first attempts (and I use that word charitably) at teaching.

College did not, in any way, prepare me to teach.  It taught me subject matter that I would eventually pass on to my students and it offered theories on how and why the subject matter I found so interesting and exciting would bore the crap out of the not-so-eager young minds I was responsible for nurturing.  College did not give me tips on how to efficiently set up my grade book (in the days BC--before computers), offer strategies that were relevant to an increasingly video-oriented generation, teach me how to console a grieving child who just lost a parent or to maintain control over 30 almost-adults, most of whom wanted to be anywhere but in the classroom.

My kids are the ones responsible for teaching me these things.  Their behavior, their interest or lack thereof, their cultures and their attitudes helped me to shape my teaching style in a way that best suited my audience:  Them.  For most of the first few years of my teaching career, I was about 2 lessons ahead of my students and often worlds behind in comprehending who they were and where they were coming from.  If I am a confident, effective teacher today, it is due to the contributions of all 3200 of them. 

Sometimes, it takes a village...to make a teacher.