Into the Colors

Today one of the three kindergarten teachers was walking her students through the hallways, showing them around the building. I'm on the total opposite side, so we rarely see the little ones on our end. I love them. For weeks they wear these felt apple-shaped nametags that seem to curl like a wilted peel as the days wither on. They struggle to line up after recess. They push each other quite frequently and someone is always crying.

So here comes these four adorable little girls. Hair perfect. Shoes without any scuffs on them, jeans with a crease. The teacher walks them over to the double doored exit, explains to them what it beyond the door and to never open it. And here I jump in and say, "Cause there's a huge dragon waiting to get you!"

No one screamed, thank goodness.

That's been my first few days of school. It's that slow walk through a new, well-lit hallway. I know why teachers always freak out over kids keeping their hands off the walls, cause that's all I want to do. I want to spread my arms wide and run down one, jump into the colors of the construction papered cork boards. They are seas of fruit-of-the-loom colors, reds, oranges, yellows.

There's a newness to every year, and it's not like I never had a certain expectation or a rote feeling of teacher-ness. Many years ago, I would stand outside of my old school, crying on the steps that led down the front like some regal courthouse scene in a movie, crying as if I'd lost a friend. In the middle of the ghetto, crying.

Over the last few years I haven't cried as much. I used to tell myself that when I stop, then I'll stop teaching. That's my sign. But I also feel more accomplished as the years grow. (Lately, a veteran teacher is being misrepresented as a burden on a broke retirement system. I don't quite get that and perhaps that's for a future blog) Maybe I cried because work was what I lived for, what I thought defined me. What would I do all summer when I had nothing to prove, no ability to show off? At home I had to be a husband, and later, a new father. That terrified me more than a roomful of unruly kids.

My first year, a kid ran out of the building and home to his uncle's house. I thought for sure I was fired. Later that year before November, I screamed at a tandem of boys who were taking advantage of a kid from Africa who knew no English (I ran into this kid a few years back. He was playing soccer for a high school down the road and spoke very good English.) When we all came back from the weekend, those bully kids both moved and I lied that I had "kicked them out." This teacher means business!

But I loved my first year. So much drama, screaming, laughing, bombing horridly and helping. I remember holding a kids' hands and telling him they weren't for fighting. God knew I was the man for the job, I just didn't trust him to know.

Many of my students have grown and my first year group just graduated and entered college. They too are walking through the academic halls of their respective colleges like new kindergarten kids. Some of them didn't make it there, maybe they've faced their dragon too early. Others haven't reached beyond their comfort zones. The background of their facebook pictures show a maturity their desk drawings never showed. I hope they jump into the colors that await them. I'm crying just thinking about them.