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I wonder how my chickens are doing?

I was just reading the message board at Brother Tom's web site, and he has a lot of my former students in his classes this year. Reading through the posts and seeing familiar names caused me to feel a flutter of excitement or a ping of annoyance or a jab of regret.

Oh, there's XXxxx...I wonder if she's still going out with Xxxx...

There's Xxxxx...I should have paid more attention to her in class...she just blended in...

Mmmmm hmmmm, there's Xxxxxx, probably participating because there's some extra credit involved somewhere...

I read Brother Tom's journal all the time, but not just to scour it for references to my former school. He's a wonderful writer, and if he only wrote about his cat and her antics, I'd probably still read each word. However, when he does mention his job, I read a little more slowly and carefully, checking to see how I feel as I read.

His latest entry touched on parent/teacher conferences. Do I miss those crazy conference weeks where the administration would trap us at school until 9:00 at night talking to parent after parent after parent for 8 hours, then expect us to show up the next morning, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed and ready for a day of in-service meetings? Do I miss seeing all my fellow teachers in their jeans and sweatshirts, hurrying down the hallway happily because their session broke up early and they got an extra 2 hours to get some grading done?

Well...

I will tell you what I don't miss about teaching.

I don't miss weekdays at 3:30 when my classes had cleared out for the day and I would sit at my desk, surveying the wreckage of 150 people stampeding in and out all day long, looking at the piles of work they had turned in that needed to be checked over, looking at the pile of "things to deal with before I leave" that had accumulated in my in-basket, looking at the syllabus to see what we were going to be doing in class the next day and wondering where I should start working: here or at home.

If I stayed, I would work slowly and daydream a lot because I was physically and emotionally exhausted and used-up. It would be my first time sitting for more than five minutes at a time all day. Instead of working, I would think of errands to run that would result in hanging out and chatting with whoever happened to be around, which wasn't bad, but didn't exactly help my work load.

And the later I stayed at school, the worse the traffic would be for my ride home. I used to nod off while driving home all the time, especially when I was in a 20-minute-long back-up waiting for my turn at a 4-way stop sign.

But if I packed up and left right away, by the time I got home my motivation would be gone. Sapped up. I would see the clock say 4:30 and feel sorry for myself. I'd been working since 7:00 that morning. Didn't I get some time off? To sit and surf the Web? To watch bad TV? To perhaps (perhaps) cook a meal for my husband and me?

I'd talk myself into relaxing and I wouldn't touch my bulging book bag. After dinner, I'd tell myself. Later.

Of course, by the time Andy got home and dinner was either prepared or ordered from a menu and consumed, it was 7:30. Would I hang out with my husband? Work on my web page or other projects? Read a library book? Or...open my bag?

Either result was painful. If I chose to finally open up my bag and do the work I needed to do, I would work until past my bed time and not really even make a dent in what needed to be done. I would plan for the next day in one class, maybe make 2 handouts and do some refresher-reading of tomorrow's material and then I'd look up and it would be 10:30 and I'd have to go to bed or I wouldn't make it through the day tomorrow.

I always felt like I was only doing the bare minimum. I hated it.

On the other hand, if I decided I needed a night off, I'd work on something else or, more likely, as all of my energy was gone by that time, sit and surf and watch TV, but feel the guilt weighing heavily in the back of my mind, knowing how panicked I'd feel the next morning at 7:00 when I began to unpack my bag and see tangible evidence of what I didn't do.

I remember back when I was student teaching. I would stay up late doing homework, calling my friends who were student teachers as well, and we'd take turns yapping about who was the most behind, who had the worse night ahead of them, who was the most looped-out on coffee and pretzels.

But that wasn't fun for very long. I don't think it was ever even fun at all. Sitting up at the kitchen table while everyone else was in bed was not fun. Panicking as I watched the hour grow later and my task pile not shrink was not fun. Try as I did, I could not figure out a way to work faster. I read countless articles about "lightening the paper load," about not spending so much time doing certain tasks, about relying on worksheets (those dreaded worksheets!) instead of original, engaging activities, about doing what you could and forgiving yourself for not doing it all.

I never got it. I was too much of a perfectionist to let my students have half the period of every class to "work" just because I was too lazy to plan out an entire hour or because I needed time to grade. Once in a while, yes. Hell yes. Every day? No way. There was just not enough time for that. Too much to cover, not enough days in the school year.

I respected my students too much to not look at the homework they completed for me. To just put an automatic check mark at the top and not even read what they wrote. Once in a while, yes. Every day? No way.

And that's how I became exhausted and frustrated and on my way to a complete freak-out at the age of 30, after four years of teaching high school English.

So when I read Brother Tom's page and think back to other Novembers when I was one of the teachers who was tired on a Friday morning because I had conferences until late the night before; to when I met up with my friends in the line for coffee and donuts and we compared horror stories about appalling things parents had said to us; to when I was so bored in an in-service about how to use the computer grading system that I wanted to just sprawl out on the floor of the library and pass out until the session was over; to how grateful I would be for an extra hour alone in my classroom after a session broke up early: radio turned on, papers spread all around, no one interrupting me, progress being made at a reasonable time of day; when I read those words that evoke those memories, do I miss it? Do I miss my old career?

Career: no.

Teacher friends without whom I would be living in a padded cell today, even five months after I left my job: yes.

Chickens: yes. Yes. Forever and forever I will miss the chickens.

But did I make the right decision?

Yes.

Support the people you know who are teachers. If you have kids, send a note to school with them tomorrow, telling their teachers that you appreciate them. If your sister (or mother or friend or cousin) is a teacher, call her (or him) tonight and tell her she's doing an important, often thankless job and that you are proud. More than likely, she'll either be working or feeling guilty because she's not. Your phone call will make a difference.

And in closing, I'd like to announce that Boston Public is the biggest steaming load of crap I've ever seen in my life.