It was a strange week.
Sunday was deceptively calm. Old movies (including one with a hilarious supporting role played by my spiritual godmother Eve Arden), watching the football playoffs and the goofiness thereof. But it was all with two thoughts looming in the background: it all changes tomorrow, and it all changes next week.
The more immediate change happened Monday at noon, and that’s been the gigantic thing that has dominated the entire landscape before and since. Others have written volumes about it, and we’re not even through the first week. For my part, since I try to keep this place reasonably family-friendly and there’s no way I can discuss it without using language that’s not at all family-friendly, it’s best if I preserve silence. I didn’t have long to think about it, anyway, because an hour after it all began, I was in our front yard helping to free a delivery van whose driver got it stuck in our wet grass. (It’s a long story involving some poor assumptions on his part.)
The other change I had to cope with this week was more personal: the end of a lengthy winter break. A few years ago, the college went to an academic calendar that built a very brief January term into the schedule, which then bumped the start of the Spring semester by about two and a half weeks. For those of us who don’t teach in the January term, it effectively means half of December and almost all of January are out of the office and self-directed.
Those who don’t understand what we do in our trade (and it’s a lot of folks, including most people in my family) get the idea that we coddled professors use all this free time to lounge around eating bon-bons while regular folks work for a living. What many don’t know is that my work doesn’t stop. It’s just not in the office. We have to rewrite our syllabus documents, write and revise lesson plans, develop assignments, take care of requests from students (which continue regardless of what the calendar says), develop and submit course schedules for upcoming semesters, monitor e-mail…a ton of things. In my case, I’ve also had to continue producing episodes of the television program – which, even though most of it is assembling features and connecting segments we recorded in advance, still involves about a half-day to stitch everything together, round up the latest game information for the scoreboard segment, QC it, render the final version and deliver it, etc. And in between all that is when I see after the things that are hard to fit in my schedule during the school term: taking the car in for service, taking the cat in for her annual exam, meetings with colleagues at other institutions to share/steal ideas, etc.
And, sometimes, we have to attend things on campus. There were a couple during the break, but few are as sobering as the one I attended Thursday, which had to do with preparation in the event of something that’s happened with increasing frequency over the last many years (and, indeed, happened again this week). It was a presentation of about two and a half hours, and it forced me to think about things I really don’t want to think about – including, again, how vulnerable a campus is, and how easily some nutcase could shatter the peace and goodwill that we take as a given.
Now, none of this is that new. In 1988 it happened at an elementary school near my hometown. I was in high school at the time, only a few miles from that school, and I remember hearing about it when school dismissed that afternoon. Three years later, the semester after I graduated, an isolated incident happened at my high school (more disturbing is that my mother, who worked at the school, was just over in the next hallway when it happened). And over the years, these kinds of incidents have happened in all kinds of places; not just schools but just about anywhere groups of people can gather.
You would have hoped at some point enough would have been enough, but it keeps happening. At one point the presentation showed, on a map, the number and magnitude of these incidents over the last 24 years. The word “disturbing” isn’t enough to describe it. The incidents themselves are disturbing enough, but the lack of meaningful action by those who could do something about it is even more so, and on the notes I took, I wrote some rather pungent commentary about this sorry state of affairs.
Part of the presentation included a network interview with a teacher who was at the school that got attacked not long before Christmas 2012, and she talked (through tears) about what she did to protect her students. We were told about another teacher who got on top of her students to protect them, and then paid for their futures with her life.
I remember that day very vividly – or, more accurately, the following days. We were going to a Christmas party the next afternoon, but it was so difficult to feel any kind of joy after knowing what had happened. Even though it was hundreds of miles away, the horror of it all was overwhelming. On the way home, as we listened to a radio news story about it, I had the first genuine crisis of faith I can recall in my life. It frightened me. What kind of world could this happen in, that this could happen to these little kids and the adults who took care of them? And it was my hope that something would get done about it. But we know what happened: a whole lot of nothing. My faith in God survived, but my faith in a few other things has yet to recover, and my scorn for a few people in particular only deepened.
And that’s what accompanied me as I sat through this seminar on Thursday. Not only do I have to know my subject area, not only do I have to know about classroom management and assessment methods and all this other stuff, but I have to constantly keep one ear open. I have to know where the nearest exits are (or can be made). I have to keep a special app on my phone, just in case. I have to know how to use the things in my classroom to defend or fight. And I also know that, in the worst case, I have to make sure my students are safe before I can see after my own safety. I’m the last one out of the danger zone. And I also know in my heart that if I have to, I’m going to be the one on top of the pile, protecting them.
It’s a hell of a thing, but it’s what we have become, or what we have allowed to happen. I’m in this business to give these young people knowledge and experience. And yet I know there’s a very real possibility I could pay for that with my own life. I know if it came to it, I would, and without a moment’s hesitation. But it shouldn’t be that way. (And any time somebody suggests that the solution is for teachers to carry…well, please don’t go there with me. And I write this as someone with a small arsenal of my own.)
Over the years I’ve become more reclusive. Some of it is because some things I used to enjoy are no longer out there to be had. But, to be honest, some of it is because I’m turned off by the amount of rudeness and lack of consideration so many people display any more. It’s everywhere from the drive over (try going anywhere without somebody zooming up and tailgating you) to people plowing you over in store aisles, people using their phones in movie theaters…there’s so much that’s counter to how I was taught to behave. But on top of that, when you go anywhere, you also have in the back of your mind…what if somebody comes in to cause mayhem?
And with all that, being out here in the woods has an appeal that’s almost narcotic. We’re away from so much of that, and to an extent we can control how much of the outside world reaches us. We interact more with animals than with people, and they’re often much better company. It’s easy to get into a groove with all that and wish I could just work from home. But I also know how much I enjoy my work, and how much working with the kids does for me, even on days when they drive me crazy. I spent a year teaching over Zoom during the pandemic and, although it was the prudent thing to do given the circumstances, it was missing something. I didn’t think the students were getting everything they needed from me. And, for my part, it hurt my style. The way I work in a classroom is just this side of improv, and unless I have a live audience I can play off, it just doesn’t work.
It comes down to a calculation. Do I let the possibility that something horrible could happen cheat me out of the joy of doing my job? Do I let it cheat the students out of what I could give them?
Do I let the horror win? Or do I accept the risk, learn what I can about how to protect them if the worst happens, have a plan in the back of my mind, keep one ear open, and move forward?
I know what’ll happen Monday. I’ll go in and do my job, and make the most of it. But part of me will regret that I have to think about those other aspects.
This time of year is my least favorite. It’s the start of a new year; the days are still too short, the shadows are at weird angles, the weather is cold and sometimes fierce. My mood tends to sag, not only because of the environmental factors but also because it’s a new year, full of uncertainties. And within the span of this week, that was driven home anew.
I can’t let that keep me behind a moat, though. I’m cheating myself if I don’t keep my courage, and move toward better days. They are coming, even if I can’t yet know when.
