Can Anyone Around Here Tell Me What It Means To Be A Teacher?

I don’t come here very often, not near as much as I should. I get writing ideas while I’m swimming. What’s a guy to do? I can’t post at school because the state blocks non-educational blogs and it doesn’t matter how great the idea is while I’m driving home cause when I finally get there I’m too damn tired to think, much less write something down.

But today was a red-letter day for demonstrating what it means to teach and it happened in my room and yoga was cancelled tonight (without warning, I discovered after I reached the library, rrrrggg). So I’m here…telling my story.

I’ve got a student in my room; let’s call her Joanne, since I don’t actually have a student in my room named Joanne. She’s raising herself with a little help from the person in whose house she lives; it’s a far too often told story about kids who’ve been abandoned by their parents. When she got back from a disciplinary visit to the office, I asked if she was going to be suspended. “Well, I will if I don’t bring a dollar to school tomorrow,” she replied.

“Do you want me to tell you what happened?” she asked. “No,” I said, “I want you to sell your story to me for a dollar.”

While Joanne laid out the tale of a group of students leaving the office one day with an extra fiver in change and knowing the office’s mistake but buying a coke for each one of them instead of taking it back, I slipped a dollar bill out of my billfold and sealed it in an envelope.

JOANNE’S EMERGENCY DOLLAR – TO BE USED IN CASE OF AN EMERGENCY

I wrote on the front while telling her I wasn’t about to let her get suspended for three days (which added to her earlier 3 day suspension would put her over the limit and cost her all her credits) over an effing dollar. Except I didn’t say effing. It was a no brainer really, for while much of the rest of the sophomore class drives parent-provided cars and can always find a few bucks in their pockets and will buy a coke whenever they want one and sometimes even when they don’t, Joanne never sees money. The perks in her life are limited to food, a few pieces of clothes, and enough toiletries to make her presentable. Her emergency dollar is in her binder.

When the class period ended, another student, a senior, who I’ll call Tonya, because I don’t have one of those either, showed me pictures of her new puppy. She’s wanted a dog for a long time and mom wouldn’t spring for it so she pooled all the money she’s made from her minimum wage job and got the dog, some food, and dish to put it in. The food, I mean.

When I got home today I asked Cindy if we were ready to let go of our dog paraphernalia we’d kept since we lost our Golden Retriever a few days before last Christmas. We still had Gabriel’s water and food dishes, grooming stuff, and the big travel carrier he rode in from the Netherlands. I looked through it all as I put it in the car and I was okay with giving it away until I saw the royal blue leash. I wrapped the end of that around my hand countless times; it was literally the thing that bound us together whenever we were out of the house.

But tomorrow it will all become Tonya’s, if she wants it.

There. Now that’s what it means to be a teacher.