I’m being haunted.
It’s October, so I suppose it’s only fitting, but the haunter is not a ghost or phantom, sadly not a monster or a zombie.
Instead it is a pile of white papers all trailing me from dawn to dusk and even into the night. A stack of the 150 narrative essays from my five classes of high school students this year- my year after the sabbatical.
They are in my car. They are on my counter. They are at my desk at school. I can’t go anywhere without seeing this gigantic collection of personal narratives reminding me that grading needs to happen. I estimate it will take twenty-seven hours to grade the essays, these essays about getting a dog, falling off of a horse, stepping onto the basketball court, hitting a homerun. Giving birth to a son. Finding out a friend has died in a car accident.
Despite the fact that I am moving to a new apartment and still taking a class at grad school and working full time and trying to have a life, I need to find an additional 27 hours to get this work done. And the problem is that my body is rejecting my plan to dutifully grade these papers and get them back quickly to my students. It keeps getting sick. It took me three weeks to get over a cold. I’m losing weight. I carry this giant stack of essays like a pack of sins from childhood around with me from coffee shop to apartment to school and it weighs me down with its guilt. I feel like a stick, unsteady and anxious, carrying a burden that keeps me off balance.
It’s not a good situation.
Today I called in sick to work in order to spend eight hours grading these specters and writing comments in the margins, but my body had other plans.
“Lan,” I said last night to my friend. “I’m feeling so sniffly and I keep trying to pretend that it’s allergies but I think it might be another cold!”
“I think it probably is,” she said sagely, in an uncharacteristically pessimistic, yet pithy declamation. “I think this will be the year of the colds.”
And sure enough- this morning I woke feeling totally congested and miserable. I think the allergy my body cannot tolerate is my career.
My illnesses are not my only problem.
The other problem is that, unfortunately, I am a pretty good teacher.
I plan lessons, I design quizzes that build on skills we’ve worked on in class, I call parents, I post grades, I enter scores into the gradebook quickly. I design assignments that will be beneficial to students. I read what they write. I respect their efforts in my class. I greet each student personally when she walks in the room.
And it’s just killing me.
“How’s Cody Peterson doing in class?” asked my co-worker when I walked into the office at 6:30 am on Thursday morning.
“Pretty good so far,” I said, thinking of the cheerful, skinny boy who wears skinny jeans with sandy hair always in his face. The one I had put in the front row after he spent the first two days in class talking to friends. The one who lost his drafts of his essay and had to start over. The one who comes late at least once a week. Who reads clearly and competently, but softly. The one who raises his hand often and listens well now that he is in the front.
“Take him under your wing,” she said to me. “He’s a good kid and if he likes you he’ll do anything.”
“Ok,” I said, thinking about the many tasks I had to accomplish before class started at 7:20 and not really in the mood to adopt another student. There is already quite a collection living under my wing.
“He has a son,” she said.
He has a son? I think. Suddenly I am very tired.
“Yeah,” she said, “and he’s such a great kid. Last year was a lot of chaos and the mom wouldn’t let him see the baby, but things are better this year. Anyhow, we were talking about grades in advisory class and I asked him how English was going. He said, ‘I like Fuller. She’s really nice. It’s going good.’”
I nod.
“He’s happy in your classroom,” she says.
“Oh, great- that’s good to hear,” I say, but in my head I think I wish I was.
The truth is that even though Cody Peterson is a lovable kid, even though I am touched that he likes my class, even though I sincerely wish him success and happiness, I just can’t. I just can’t. I don’t know how to articulate this, but all I know is that I can’t teach without caring and doing a fairly decent job, but if I am doing a fairly decent job at teaching, it usually means I am doing a pretty awful job of living myself. I am getting sick, getting skinny, not writing, not sleeping. I am not well as a teacher.
I feel sad saying that.
Simply put- it is an impossible task. To teach students to write means thoughtful conversation one-on-one in which you are acting as coach/mentor/teacher and explaining complicated concepts like how to link ideas and be concise. In a room of 35 14 year-olds during a 47 minute class, I get one minute per student to do this.
Two years ago, as a teacher going through the battle of divorce, I was a safety net for the bleeding hearts. I cared so deeply for the kids in my classroom that this year they beam when they see me and greet me with a hug. I don’t have room to take care of more students if I also want to take care of myself.
Who’s taking me under their wing? I thought after the conversation with my co-worker. I need help! I’m a mess too-- I thought about the ways I fail to take care of myself, the way I skip breakfast each day, the way I sometimes skip lunch, the way I don’t get enough sleep. I thought about the unhealthy excitement of my weekend, the not-so-classy way in which I had repeatedly called a friend who pissed me off (at 3 a.m, and by repeatedly I mean about twelve times in a row), the way I continuously (adorably?) crash into my surroundings, the people in my life, and occasionally even stationary objects. Who am I to be a model of responsibility for my students? Who am I to be any kind of example? Who am I to be a mentor? To take someone under my wing?
I married and divorced a sex-addict. I attend a twelve-step program for codependents of sex addicts. Everything that I attained in my 20’s is lost. I have spent the last two years dredging up the skeletons of my past. I am clumsy and troubled and sensitive and honest. I’m not sure Cody Peterson would even want to be taken under my wing.
Thus I went to a coffee shop with my stack of papers and sat down to try to focus. I pressed on the sinus pressure on my face. I ordered breakfast. I graded an essay- I checked email. I graded an essay- I checked my bank statements. I graded an essay- I took an online quiz about whether or not “he” was more than just a friend. I graded a dozen of the papers and couldn’t do any more. I needed to eat lunch. I needed more cold medicine.
I need to accept my limitations.
I need to find another way to do this.
I love teaching, but it doesn’t love me. I see this in the way I am getting sick constantly. I know I need to write more. I know I need a new plan for a career.
I need to not be haunted by these papers anymore.
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