365 Days Of Love. Day 96

Yesterday, when the yellow school pulled away, filled with teary-eyed 12, 13, and 14 year olds, I felt like my identity was being shipped out as quickly and readily as the students were.

For two years, my life has been defined by lessons plans, grading, investing students, investing families, test-making, tracking, teaching and, inevitably, re-teaching, coaching, and repeating it all over and over again. Social ventures have often turned into best practices for classroom management or brainstorming sessions are getting to that one student who insists on putting his head down. When I’ve spoken with my friends and family from home, my side of the conversation has been filled with, “my students this, my principal that, Teach For America, work, work, work, students, students, students.” So, when my kids left yesterday, officially unteachering me, I asked myself,

“Who am I without them? Without a classroom? Without lesson plans and grades? Who am I, period?”

My students are the greatest things that ever happened to me. Because of them, I was able to think so far beyond myself, to learn responsibility in an entirely different degree than I had ever learned it before, to be confident in my intelligence and my ability to transfer that intelligence to other humans, to work unremittingly towards a goal that brought me no personal gain, to love myself deeper so I could love them deeper, to burrow deep within myself to uncover the passionate lifeblood that has sustained me for the past two years. It’s no wonder I felt like, with them, the school bus took such a huge part of me as well.

Through a teary 6 mile run this morning, I sought to piece together the parts of pre-teacher me and teacher me to figure out what it is to be me now. Frankly, this puzzle has copious amounts of piecing to endure, but I’m certain of a few things:

Culture has created pockets of our country that are grossly underserved. Life where I live now is vastly different than life where I grew up. Whereas I have a ticket out (just as easily as I had a ticket in), many people here have broken wings, incredible feats to brave before their ticket greets them. I come from privilege, even though my parents aren’t wealthy. I come from privilege because I knew how to read and write and speak before I entered kindergarten. I come from privilege because never did I worry about not having food or clothes or shelter. I come from privilege because every single adult in my life expected me to work hard. There was a time when I thought my life was the norm, but it isn’t. It is normal for those of us who aren’t born in a small border town, or the ghetto of a city, or rural America. Culture has made far too many people believe that my students can’t achieve, that their parents don’t want them to achieve, but this just isn’t true. I’ve seen students grow 6 years in the single school year I had them. I’ve seen parents dodge bullets and grenades to ensure their child is in school. Culture, with its fangs of injustice, has placed on my students a horrible burden. Culture has attempted to keep them in the fields or across the Rio Grande, but One Day, they will snag the tooth of culture and they will rise above, their light will grace this earth in the only way they deserve for it shine. And, we, culture, are dependent on the fast cultivation of that day, we are dependent on my students and students like them, we are in dire need of their light.

We are responsible.

So, who am I without them?

Incomplete.

We are incomplete without them, which is why my new identity is rooted in my experience here and my responsibility, wherever I go next, to pursue the wildly passionate unveiling of our students’ light.