Heartbreak

This damned job rips your heart out sometimes.  

I have friends who are not in education.  Those friends will often complain that something is missing in their work.  Some feel that their talent is being wasted. Some feel like glorified salespeople. Some feel undervalued, or derive little personal satisfaction from the end goal of making money.  When I’m in those conversations, I am reminded of why I chose education.  I don’t suffer from that particular affliction.  I find a deep purpose in my job.  It’s not overstating to call education a calling.  Those of us who do it, do so in spite of the many drawbacks… we do it because we feel deeply called to teach.  

We all know that teachers don’t enter the field because of the financial allure of a big paycheck. We don’t have a lot of hope for advancement.  We do count on decent benefits to provide a counter to the constant financial and emotional drain of this particular career.  

And we start out with an idealistic sense of our own power for good.  We start with boundless energy and enthusiasm and optimism.  We start with a deep love for humanity; for children in particular.  We want to be a part of something bigger.  We want to change lives and show love and impart knowledge along with confidence and character and a love of learning.  

And then. 

We learn some hard lessons. We learn that our best efforts will often be rewarded with a lack of support or even outright opposition.  We learn that those parents we thought were on our side may actually view us as an enemy force, conspiring to corrupt and demean their children.  We get slammed by grief, as if for our own children, as we watch our students experience trauma or violence or heartbreak.  We load our desks with snacks and spare toiletries for those who are homeless or struggling or simply without supervision as parents struggle to make ends meet.  We run clubs and after school events on our own time and our own dime, so that our students have a safe place to spend a few extra hours after school.  We pool our resources to ensure no student will be without a gift for the holidays.  We buy coats and shoes and gloves to leave with the nurse, for the kids who come in without them.  

And when my husband and I decided to become foster parents to take in a student with nowhere to go, do you know what the intake worker on the phone said to me?  She said, “Oh, you were her teacher?  God bless teachers.  I don’t know where half these kids would be without teachers who step up.” 

Teachers do.  They step up.  And the financial sacrifice is nothing compared to the emotional sacrifice. Because you can’t do this job well without putting your heart into it.  If you’re not capable of loving other people’s kids, then teaching isn’t for you. If you’re going to make a difference, first you have to make a connection.  You have to look at the students who are hard to love; you have to really get close and you have to find their best qualities, and you have to bring out those qualities over and over and over again until the student begins to recognize that they, too, have gifts to share.  The kids that are hard to love are often the ones who need it most. And if you’re going to connect with those kids, you have to be willing to let your own heart get broken over and over again.  

And when these kids move on, you wish them luck.   You check in on them occasionally.  You clip newspaper articles and leave them in the staff room with a smiley-faced note that proudly proclaims, “Former student! ”  You run into them at the bank and the grocery store and some will come right up and hug you while others sneak by with a shy smile and the briefest eye contact. You go to high school graduation for each class that you’ve had the privilege to teach.  You cheer loudly and you congratulate them by name.  

Because that’s just what you do.  

Teachers know that.  

So how is it that I know all this, and this week still took my breath away?  This week shook me like a rag doll and then left me breathless and bleeding emotion.  

The foundation of this crappy week is sadly something pretty typical for special education teachers. I’ve been teaching for 18 years, and this is the third time that I’ve had to work with a lawyer to prepare for a hearing because parents are suing.  Of course, I can’t get in to the details of the case, but I’ll give you some background.  If a student needs an out of district placement, I believe it is my responsibility to advocate for that.   I will never lie and say that our school is meeting the needs of a child if I don’t believe that to be true.  That’s the good thing about teachers’ unions.  They protect teachers so that we have the freedom to advocate for kids instead of being puppets for the financial decision makers.  But there will always be parents who want something different for their children than the school district is willing to provide (read- finance).  And so. We have to gather all our paperwork and dot our I’s and cross our T’s and take precious time away from our students to prepare to go to court.  As a general rule, teachers are pleasers.  We’re pretty confrontation-avoidant, and because we put our whole selves into every ounce of this job, we take any criticism as a personal attack.  A hearing is pretty much the opposite of how we’d choose to spend our days. 

So this week started with preparing for court.  

And then come the state tests.  I won’t write all of my thoughts about state tests here.  A measure of progress makes sense.  Eight year olds having panic attacks and bursting into tears because the teachers who have always guided them and encouraged them aren’t allowed to support them at all?  Come on. Eight hours of testing? Unnecessary. A computer-based assessment when all the research tells us that kids’ reading comprehension deteriorates on a screen? Well, that’s just nonsense.  There’s got to be a better way.  

State testing layered over court preparations.  The week was off to a rocky start.  

And then the unthinkable happened.  Our community was rocked by tragedy.  A murder- suicide involving both parents of five children who have moved through our school system.  I couldn’t breathe for a moment when I found out who it was.  I shoved all of the emotion to the back of my mind and I proctored the test and I taught some students and I prepared for the hearing. 

And I turned into a puddle when I got home that night.  I told myself I was overreacting.  I told myself that my tears didn’t make sense.  This wasn’t my family.  I barely knew the parents.  

But the kids.  I taught the youngest.  I could see his face when I closed my eyes.  I thought of him and my heart broke into a million little pieces. I cried.  And I cry every time I think about it.  

You know that phrase about having kids?  “It’s like having your heart walking around in the world every day.”  Well, imagine that times a thousand.  Or more.  How many students have I taught over the past 18 years?  They’re all walking around out there, with a little piece of my heart.  

The next day, I spoke with one of my teaching partners.  She had the kid in class, too.  And I confessed that I was totally shaken; in a way that almost seemed inappropriate. I was more upset than should be warranted, given my peripheral relationship with the mom and dad, and the fact that the kid had been in my class several years ago.  

But her eyes widened, and she looked at me and said, “Yes.  Yes.  Me, too.” And we both held back tears for a few minutes as we reflected on our time with that kid and we shared the common thread of our helplessness and the overwhelming emotion of knowing that this kid whom we had cared for so patiently and carefully and lovingly…. this amazing young man just had his life ripped apart.  His heart was broken and ours broke right along with it. 

Because that is what we take on as teachers.  We take on all the heartache.  

Today, I just have to sit in the sadness. I have to acknowledge that this job requires more than just my time and my energy and my commitment.  It requires connections and relationships.  And what makes it good is also what makes it hurt so damned badly. That’s the risk of relationship. That’s the price of a job that makes you whole; it also has the power to take a piece of you.