Failure

This post is not about my failings as a parent, although there are many of those. I don’t know of any parent who goes to bed at night and thinks, “Man, I sure did ROCK at being a mom/dad today!” Most of the time we beat ourselves up with what we said/didn’t say and how we handled the monkey circus that day. This post is about my failings as a teacher, and how I particularly failed a troubled student of mine this year which subsequently caused me to leave Dorman on a very sad and bitter note…my alma mater and second home for the past 12 years.

At the beginning of the year I shared with students how my emotions were all over the place because of the incredible loss I was experiencing, and I pleaded with them to give me extra grace and understanding. I also warned them that my patience was wearing thin…this was in January as we started a new semester, and I had already taught 3 classes of 30 back in the fall. I could feel my spirit and energy rapidly depleting. What should have been a blissful respite with 2 weeks of Christmas vacation prior to school starting back was anything but restful and relaxing- it was the first holiday without my son and it was also his very favorite. Devastated just doesn’t come close to how I felt, but I was determined to power on and finish strong.

Things for the most part were fine in the beginning. Students were understanding and kind, and I thought maybe that the spring semester would be better than the fall after all, which is almost never the case. Then February arrived…Carter’s birthday month. I found myself struggling in a way that I hadn’t before…I was easily set off and irritable.

Things came to an ugly and scary head after leaving a birthday party for a child at church one evening. I was by myself after dropping Caroline off to spend the night at her Nana’s house. It was late, and traffic was relatively sparse. Suddenly, a car came out of nowhere and started riding my tail. The more I sped up, the more it did, too, and it even had its bright lights on. How RUDE (in my best Stephanie Tanner voice). As soon as it could pass, it did, and it flew right beside me like a lightning bolt which royally ticked me off. I wasn’t going slow…the driver was being a jerk, and I’d had enough. All of a sudden, this RAGE just consumed me, and I pressed the pedal to the metal and took off after the car. I was driving as fast as I could, careening around curves without a care in the world, and hoping in the back of my mind that I would just crash and be put out of my misery. When I got behind the driver at a four-way stop, it was then MY turn to shine bright lights to give him a taste of his own medicine. I then crossed the double yellow line as soon as we could go and passed him with screeching tires and a big middle finger to let him know that I thought he was #1. Next thing you know, we were at a red light- just the two of us, and as he pulled up beside me, I was ready with my window already rolled down. He screamed, “What is your PROBLEM?!” I screamed back, “YOU are, you (blankety-blank-blank you get the idea).” He just stared at me dumbfounded. I know that when he pulled up beside me, he wasn’t expecting to see someone like me. He didn’t really know how to react. I’m the least likely person to ever be caught up in a fit of road rage, but it happened, and it was scary because I didn’t care. I WANTED him to jump out of that car and come at me. I was ready to throw down. I would have clawed his eyes out and kicked where the sun didn’t shine, and if by chance he had a gun, it wouldn’t have fazed me. I would have gladly stared down the barrel and prayed to a merciful God to just end it already.

But none of that happened. He just kept staring at me blankly while I unleashed all the fury I possessed, and then finally he drove off without another word. I guess he just didn’t feel up to dealing with my special brand of crazy that night. Immediately afterward I started shaking and crying. I couldn’t believe what I had done. That wasn’t me. That wasn’t how I acted. I called Joseph and told him what I had done as soon as I came home, and surprisingly, he related to it and said he gets that way, too. I posted about it on FB and was told that it almost sounded like symptoms of PTSD and that I needed to consider counseling for myself. I knew that I needed some help, but I just didn’t have time. Life was going at a breakneck pace with school and all of its demands, so I simply put it off.

In the meantime, I had this one kid in class (we’ll call him Amos ’cause it rhymes with anus, and he was a royal pain in the butt). He was rude from the get-go and anything he did in class was done on HIS terms. If he wanted to learn and do the work, then he would, but most of the time, he was more concerned with playing games on his phone. He was lazy, disrespectful, and antagonizing. After class one day, I’d absolutely had it with him, so I contacted his coach. Coaches are a great ally. They can make kids run as punishment, so I often will contact a coach before a parent for this very reason. The coach came to me immediately after receiving my email and apologized on behalf of the student and offered some insight as to his frequent misbehavior. Although it wasn’t an excuse, he explained that Amos lived with his grandmother and that his grandfather had passed away recently. I said that I understood but that grief didn’t give him liberty to be blatantly disrespectful to me, and I wouldn’t tolerate it any longer. I, too, was grieving, but I had done my best to treat Amos with fairness and was making a sincere effort to show kindness and understanding. Unfortunately, it appeared that he was mistaking that for weakness. The coach 100% had my back, and the next day, Amos came and apologized. Things were OK for a little while after that.

I even shared with students the road rage incident and told them that I was having a hard time. One of them didn’t believe me and said that I had to be making it up. I assured him that it was true and that I would be seeking help soon. Help came in the form of a retreat called Healing Hearts around Spring Break. It was in NC and provided Christian counseling in a group setting, which was preferable to me since it reinforced that I was not alone. Biblical truths were presented to help guide me on this path to healing in addition to shared personal stories and many prayers. All of that stuck with me and was profoundly helpful, but when I returned home I still had over 6 weeks of school left, and it was a struggle because nobody wanted to be in school learning diddly-squat after Spring Break. NOBODY.

Amos and several of his comrades were pushing my every button at this point. Admin. support was a joke…I couldn’t get a tardy referral to be addressed, so I figured what was the point in a discipline referral? I didn’t make parental contacts like I normally would, either, because I was too tired to care. Truly. Towards the end of April I wasn’t even staying after school for hall supervision…I was leaving as soon as the bell rang with the students. They were getting on my nerves like never before, it felt like everything was spinning out of control, and I was losing momentum rapidly. Rather than ask for help like I should have, I just kept silent and tried to keep on keeping on.

With only 6 days of school left, however, I ran out of steam and made a grand exit that students are probably still talking about. I’m not proud of it, but it is what it is. Amos came to class after having been absent for 3 days. The deal was that once students spent a week completing practice exams to review grammar points, we would spend an entire day playing vocab. games, and winners could earn extra credit points to use on their final. Amos hadn’t completed his exam reviews, so when he came to class, I gave him the necessary copies. Granted, it was a lot of work, but that was what he had missed while absent, and it counted towards his participation grade. He got an attitude with me because he wanted to play the game instead, and he kept mouthing off to me when I told him he couldn’t. Finally, I’d had enough of it. I took the Bingo chips that I had in a tall glass cup and slammed a handful of them down onto his desk and yelled, “You wanna play Bingo? FINE! LET’S PLAY BINGO!!!” It felt so good slamming those chips down that I then proceeded to slam chips down on every desk…after all, he couldn’t accuse me of being racist for only doing it to him…it was equal opportunity for everyone unfortunate enough to be present that day. Most of the chips were falling to the ground due to the force of my hand pounding each desktop, but I just kept going. After I made the rounds, I glanced down and saw that more chips remained in the cup which was simply unacceptable. I shook the cup up and down as hard as I could and red Bingo chips poured down like rain. It was glorious. Crazy, yes…but glorious all the same and felt spectacularly GOOD.

I then proceeded to calmly go to the front of the room. I sat on my stool and started calling out words. Students were eerily silent. They didn’t know what to do. Their teacher had just lost her shit. Not her stuff. Not her marbles. Her shit…there’s a difference, and if you don’t know the difference, then you clearly have never lost your shit before. It’s not a pretty sight, let me tell you. When I soon realized that I was calling out words faster than they could possibly locate them and that my heart felt like it was racing out of my chest, I knew that I had to get out of there. It wasn’t going to work. I was done. If I didn’t leave right that very minute, then I was going to lose my job. For the first time ever in the classroom, I could honestly say that I didn’t trust myself. I had only felt that way once before, and it was on the road when I acted like a psycho. Here I was again, but there wasn’t a dumbfounded driver there to simply drive away. I had 20 kids who had no choice but to sit there and take whatever I was dishing out, and it wasn’t fair to them. I quickly texted the secretary to get someone up there right away, and soon afterwards, a co-worker appeared, and I left.

I texted the principal from the parking lot and told him what happened and that I didn’t know if I would be coming back. He assured me that administration would do whatever I needed to close out the year and give me necessary support, which they did, but I didn’t come back. What should have been a happy week packing up my room, celebrating the end of the year with students and colleagues, and skipping down the hall on the last day of school didn’t come to fruition. I stayed home because I didn’t trust myself not to lose it, and I graded exams on graduation night when I reported to school that evening to supervise an overflow classroom due to inclement weather. I didn’t say goodbye to anyone. I just walked away. No fancy send-off, no farewell hugs, no promises to keep in touch. Nothing.

I didn’t feel any regret for my actions up until tonight. I just figured that Amos deserved it- he was old enough to know better, he had it coming, and it was a wonder I had even held it together for as long as I did. I felt bad for the “good kids” who had to witness it, but several of them reached out right away apologizing to ME, saying that they felt bad that things had gotten to that point and that I deserved better than how I was treated. Far as I could tell, most weren’t blaming me, so I just let it go…but then I got on FB yesterday and saw on a mutual friend’s post where a woman had passed away. She looked familiar. I even showed her profile to Joseph and asked if he knew her. He said no, but I just couldn’t shake the feeling that I knew this woman somehow.

Come to find out she was Amos’s mother. She looked familiar to me because Amos has her eyes- the kid who gave me a fit and caused me to pitch an epic hissy fit, has now endured another devastating blow- first, Grandpa (who was raising him) and now his mom. And there’s more…his deceased mom’s FB page called out his biological dad just a few days ago for allegedly killing his wife. His dad is now on the run, and from what the pictures on FB show, he is a bona fide loser to the tenth degree. I don’t even know how to process all of this. Once I made the connection of my friend’s post to Amos, my heart just sank. I reached out to him on Instagram (a person had commented with his user name on the FB post), and he confirmed that it was his mom who has passed. He went on to apologize for how the year ended, and my hard heart softened even more to the point where all I felt was sadness. No more anger, no more bitterness towards him…just overwhelming sadness for this kid who is only 17 years old and who is facing sheer heartache tonight.

I wish that I could have been stronger for him…that I could have been more understanding. I tried, Lord knows I did, but I should have been more consistent with my discipline with him. I let him get away with too much in the beginning, and it just snowballed from there. That’s MY fault, not his. When I looked at his mom’s obituary, I read that she was born in 1982. I was born in 1981…I could literally have been Amos’s mom. Maybe that was part of the problem…maybe I reminded him of his mom to some degree. Maybe he resented it. Who knows?

I can’t go back and change last semester. What I CAN do is try and be the responsible, kind, and caring adult that Amos deserves today, tomorrow, and the days after. He’s still my student…once my student, always my student. I told him that I planned to be at the funeral on Sat. and asked if there was anything he needed. He could have very well said, “Kiss my ass, Mrs. Robinson, you crazy nut” but he didn’t. He said that attending the funeral would be fine, and he called me ma’am in his message. Bless him…I hate that I failed him so miserably. I really do.

Just like I am a better driver than what I displayed back in late Jan/early Feb, I am a better teacher than what I displayed the last week of May. I can’t use grief as my excuse, but it IS the catalyst, and I have to be really careful not to let Carter’s death turn me into a monster. It’s so very easy to succumb to those feelings of rage. They’re right there most of the time-just simmering below the surface ready at any moment to boil over. But it’s not fair to let those feelings of ugliness pour out and cause hurt to people around me…even if I feel that they deserve it, they don’t. Nobody does. What I DO know is that hurting people hurt people. I’ve been on the receiving end of it many times. Amos is just one instance. He was hurting, so he lashed out at me. That doesn’t give me an excuse to take my hurt and lash out at him or anyone else…we truly never know what people are facing. We must be kind. Always. And if we can’t, then we need to humble ourselves and step away…immediately, before more damage is done. I am really sorry that I didn’t do that sooner. I was too proud and too stubborn, so I failed. Teachers aren’t supposed to fail! It’s not supposed to be an option for me, for my students, or for anyone else, but you know what? Sometimes it happens, and we can either let it define us, or we can move on and try to do better and learn from our mistakes. So yeah, the verdict is out and this teacher is still learning- very much so, and get this- she doesn’t pass all her tests. Some lessons are way harder than others. This one was very, very hard. A doozy.

Thank God for second chances. I really hope that when I see Amos on Saturday at his mom’s funeral that he will accept my apology and the kindness I plan to bestow upon him and his family. It’s the very least I can do.