Reasons to Teach

The email came out of the blue. “From Former Student D: I know it has been a long time since I last saw you, but I would like to come in to visit you during your conference period tomorrow…if this works for you. […] If not, hopefully we can come up with another arrangement. I hope this e-mail reaches you.”

I said yes. This is a student whose time in my class and post-graduation visits I had enjoyed. I hadn’t heard from her for about three years. The last time she visited, she updated me on her challenges in her courses related to her pharmacology major at a one of our respectable state schools. I had wondered how she was doing.

Of course, when the day rolled around, I kept thinking about how much I needed to get done during those 55 minutes. She arrived right on time, a little heavier than the last time I had seen her, but still very recognizable as herself. We hugged and moved inside my classroom, and as we began to talk, all thoughts of trying to get things done that conference period evaporated from my mind.

She related her difficulties with her upper division courses, that she had graduated but with a 2.7 grade point average, that she had been unable to find a “real” job since graduating. Those realities, along with family trauma and drama, had sent her into a depressive spiral unlike any she had ever thought herself capable of. She quit receiving friends’ calls, stopped reading their texts – just turned inward and went dark.

At one point in the conversation, she said, “Ms. CGM, I’m going to show you a picture,” and pulled her camera out of her bag. She was hardly recognizable in the photo, sitting on a couch with her mother, enfleshed in exponential unhappy weight gain. “That should tell you what condition I was in.” It did.

The turnaround began five months ago. She could not identify what prompted it. She had been taking courses at the local community college all along, since her graduation with a bachelor’s degree. About five months ago, she took a half-unit physical education class that required just 25 hours in the gym for the entire semester. She met the requirements but did not go above them. And she is taking the course again. She now has a retail job and a second one-day-a-week job at an orthodontist’s office. She has started developing new-old friendships, has started going out with the girls again, is even considering the attentions of a young man in one of her classes. She is taking the prerequisites to get into pharmacy school.

What struck me about her is her ability to speak analytically about herself, with great clarity and openness about what she has learned about herself, her weaknesses, her strengths, her busted assumptions about herself, her approach to relationships. She has identified what did and did not do – she tried to save a needy friend and instead enabled the friend to be an energy-suck; she compared herself to others; she stuck with the “supposed to” program instead of listening to herself and figuring out her own needs; she did not take risks, did not take advantage of office hours, did not develop relationships with professors; she did not enjoy her four years of college. She knows what she did and what she should have done. If only I’d had that kind of clarity fresh out of college! I’m still working on that kind of clarity, or at least on doing something with the clarity that I have. She has plans for how she will take the next step. She will attend the information session for the pharmacy schools she is interested in attending. She will speak with the presenters and find out what she needs to do to complete her course correction, get back on track, and fulfill her intentions. And she will do it, too.

This is what I love about teaching high school. Every couple of years, you get one of those students, one who clicks, one who will reach out after graduation and keep the relationship going. I appreciate the adult friendships that those former students have cultivated with me. There are not a lot of them. Oh, I have Facebook “friendships” with many, but that’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about the former student whose wedding I attended several months ago, who attended my last birthday party, and who talks with me every couple of weeks about her college lit classes. I’m talking about the former student I’ve been to concerts and poetry readings with.

I often question my career choice, especially in these crazy times in education, and then one of these conversations will happen, or someone will comment on something I taught them, or some other little sign will be given...and I will be encouraged to stick it out a while longer. I keep looking for reasons to stay in this profession (I still consider it a profession); I feel as though God keeps sending me those reasons.