Saying Goodbye

Last Monday I went to the retirement party of a beloved French teacher who has taught at my school for many years. I didn’t expect to, but I cried. I cried after four students played Chopin on the cello and collegues read The Little Prince aloud. I cried during the speeches and the photo montages, cried at the hand-made center pieces on the tables and the group of retierees who surrounded Jack for a photo. I cried at all the mommies and babies in the wings, bouncing and cooing. This school is such a family—it is really hard to divorce yourself from the cyclical ceremony of it all, the comfort of feeling part of something larger than yourself.

Everyone feels the year winding down; it’s like reading the last few pages of the favorite book you want to read quickly and slowly at the same time. Does so much emotion bubble up annually at jobs outside of academia? Do people cry when they leave boardrooms for the winter holidays? When they retire from 25 years of ibanking? When their airline goes bankrupt and it’s time to seek a new management job?

I’m leaving too—off to work at a small private school in Kapolei which, new and unformed with regard to tradition, is the polar opposite of the established school I now part from. So perhaps my tears came partly from selfish attachment, or a sense of personal loss. But I mostly just felt overwhelmed by the evidence that careers unexpectedly end and begin and take sudden turns. Therefore, the time we spend together is finite and must be honored and relished like a dragon fruit devoured with a spoon. I am grateful to have been at my school for two years (the second really helped me to ground myself in the classroom) and awestruck by the opportunity I had to work with such talented faculty and students. I hope I teased the fruit's flesh from the rind, munched through the seeds, and cleaned my plate.

Teacher 1, Teacher 2

My friend Nick wrote me a great email in which he described two of his favorite high school teachers.

Mr. Miller, who taught physics and AP Bio, was renowned as the coolest teacher in the school. He was about 50 and skinny, with a wily black beard and a ratty blue lab coat. His room had a piano and herbariums, and full-spectrum lights and classical music always playing softly on the stereo. Every student in his classes was required to read the entire NYTimes every day. He always told us about how he had taught in every possible kind of school-- private, public, big, small, boarding, Quaker, catholic, Jewish, hippie, suburban, inner city, middle of nowhere--and that that was how he learned how to teach. And he was damn good. I got a 4/5 on the AP bio exam without memorizing a single thing. I don't even remember taking a single test in his class, just drinking tea and dissecting squid and talking about evolution and the anatomy of the eye. He came to my school during my sophomore year and after my senior year his "contract was not renewed." The administration always thought he was kinda unconventional.

The other teacher, Mr. DallaGrana, taught recent American history, global issues, and American political systems. Except for the survey intro to American history class, all the classes he taught he designed himself. "Global Issues" was devoted to the influence of one country's history on another, with special emphasis on the history of apartheid and democracy in South Africa. DallaGrana organized charity 5K run/walks, took students on trips abroad (even took my brother to South Africa junior year), was an ultra-marathon runner, and lived a block away from school with his wife and kids. He was and is still an institution at the school---took a bunch of kids to Obama's inauguration this fall. He was also a peace corps volunteer in the 70s in Lesotho, and goes back to the village where he lived EVERY YEAR! He did a 1 year Fulbright exchange a few years ago, where a South African teacher brought her family to live in his house and teach in his classroom and he took his family to live in her house and teach in her classroom. The guy is completely committed to TWO communities on opposite sides of the earth---and for most of the time he was doing it the internet didn't even exist.

They really both sound wonderful and raise questions about what it means to be a teacher rooted in place. I originally thought teaching was attractive as a profession because it would help foster a global perspective but it is becoming clearer to me how central tradition and culture are in schools and how being a part of that takes physical presence. There is a "this is how we do it" feel in schools that I'm not sure pervades in other institutions and it takes a while to learn that, become part of that, and then shape it in some way. I don't know which teacher (#1 or #2) I aspire to be, but I'm thankful there is more than one way to be good at this job.