I swore I would never be one of those teachers. Chalk on my pants no matter how many times I washed them, frizzy hair sticking out of a ponytail perpetually coming half undone, oversized glasses that bobbled on my nose next to a smudge of blue ink that matches the stains on my hands. The kind who hangs the school-issued ID badge with a squinty, smiley headshot from a beaded lanyard around my neck in a half-hearted attempt to accessorize. Constantly hunched over from carrying papers to and from the copy room or the car.
At my first job out of college, I got my fill of one of those teachers firsthand - Laura. While I made an effort every day to coordinate my outfit, my shoes, my hair and jewelry in a way that was polished and professional, but still relevant, still relatable – Laura was made of flung-together pieces of fabric, swishing skirts and bright sweaters, layered with scarves that constantly trailed in her wake as she darted distractedly through the halls. It felt like in every way I was most meticulous, prepared, and considerate – my appearance, my lessons, my behavior around the other teachers - Laura skid around corners at top speed and got away with it. Laura got on my very last nerve, the victim of my mental diatribe – It's her blatant disregard for common professional courtesy! Her unnatural peppiness in the 7:30am meetings! She's always using the copier when I need it. She's always asking to borrow my stapler. She's always leaving her lesson plans in the resource room. She's never prepared. She's never got it all together. It's not just what she wears or what she does, it's who she is!"
While Laura was something of a free spirit, the rest of the teachers at our school carried themselves with the kind of resigned confidence and control that, to me, could only come from experience. Being fresh out of school, newest of the new, I felt the need to prove myself – I packed a lunch and my best manners and took them both to the teachers' lounge every day, eager to make connections but more so to dismiss any doubts of my capability. Like all new teachers, I was pretending – I caked on makeup under my eyes to hide the circles from late nights of lesson planning, I faked my way through discussions of productive weekends, flinching when I thought of the mountain of ungraded papers in my living room I was falling further behind with every class period. I laughed along with the jokes around the table, groaned at the stories of troublemaking students and added my own gossip to the pot, ignoring the rush of guilt I felt when they came through the door in my class later in the day. I went home every day exhausted, not just because I was inexperienced and overwhelmed, but because I was constantly having to try harder to be the kind of teacher I thought that I wanted to be, and live up a precedent I perceived as set by the examples all around me. I dreaded those lunches, I dreaded getting up in the morning – and I forgot why I started teaching in the first place. I would have continued to fall headlong into that dark hole and let it eat me and my career alive, if it hadn't been for a Monday in January.
Halfway through the year, it dawned on me that I never saw Laura at these lunches in the teachers' lounge. I wasn't surprised exactly, just intrigued – her absence from this circle made sense, but whose terms was it on? For a few weeks, I went on wondering, until the fateful Monday: I overslept. I jolted awake with a half hour to spare, threw on the first things my hands touched, pulled my hair in a bun while I ran down the stairs with the keys in one hand and a granola bar in the other, making it into my classroom just in time to take attendance as the bell rang for first period. After a hectic morning of holding on to my composure by a thread, I was listless and lunchless. I glanced at myself in the mirror in the bathroom as I headed out to grab fast food, with stray strands of hair slipping lose from my tidy bun and a mismatched sweater hastily pulled over my wrinkled blouse. I could swear that was a swipe of chalk on my skirt, and I hadn't even used chalk today! A wave of disappointment overcame me: I had become one of those teachers. Unprofessional and unprepared. Shamefaced, I left to find something to eat. That's when I passed by the cafeteria for the first time, and answered a question I'd forgotten that I had.
Because there, surrounded by students at a table on the far side of the cafeteria, sat Laura. As I watched, rooted to the stop by surprise, a girl with blonde braids finished telling a story, complete with excited hand gestures, and the whole table erupted in laughter. No one was more engrossed than Laura, and no one laughed as hard or as loudly. I cringed inwardly, simply imagining the attention she was drawing to herself. But then I realized that the louder she laughed, the more confidence the kids seemed to have, collapsing against each other with snorts and shouts of laughter, their giggles shaking the whole table – and my whole idea of who Laura was. In an instant, I stopped seeing her messy hair, her mismatched wardrobe, and I started seeing her compassion – she was someone who saw, who cared, and who acted. I saw the way our students not only adored her, but trusted her. She put her whole self out there as exactly who she was, not in an effort to eschew the social norms of the other teachers, as I had always thought. It was clear from the gleam in her eyes, as I watched the way she connected with each student and made them feel valued as they put away their lunches, pulled out pens and papers and began working through an assignment together, that the driving force between the way she acted, the way she dressed – the person that she was – was an intentional desire to invest in her students as people in progress. What I saw as imperfection, they saw as authenticity, and it was contagious.
I thought to hurry on my way, but I couldn't move, couldn't ignore what I seeing. Isn't that why I started teaching? Not for this hierarchy of professionalism, but to pour into students' lives, to pinpoint their passions and equip them with the skills they needed to chase them. To stand alongside them, to support them. To help them discover the power they have to utterly change the world. The cafeteria table was electric, and I knew: all of that started right here. This is where I should have been all along. Somewhere along the way, I'd lost track of my own passions.
In that split second of realization, Laura spotted me from across the room. Her face split in a wide grin. I couldn't help it – my mouth twitched up and I smiled back, hesitantly, then more broadly. I mouthed Wow and she gave me a quick wink, then glanced back at the student who had the floor while reaching behind her to pull up an extra chair. Her eyes zipped back to mine – a question. It was a crossroads. Where did my loyalties lie: the cafeteria, or the teachers' lounge? If I sat down now, would I become that teacher? Her eyes softened, and I realized: this was no interrogation. The only person questioning me was myself. No, this was an invitation – and I took it.
