Caring for your students

One of the hardest things about being a teacher is that you develop personal relationships with your students.

It's actually part of the job, and one of the many and unexplainable qualities that make a good teacher. I've heard lots of teachers at my school talk about how much they care for their students. They go to games, buy suckers and chocolate from them because their faces are so eager, give them hugs in the hallway. I have a hard time typing "students" sometimes, I would rather say, "kids." My kids.

The problem with caring for your kids, is that they all start to feel like Your Kids. So in addition to the three under my roof, I have one hundred kids I see for an hour a day, and they're all mine (and yes, they're other people's too, namely their mothers and fathers) but for the hour a day, they're mine. Pretty soon it starts to feel like they're yours all the time, especially when you wake up in the middle of the night puzzling over a solution to one kid's problem, or wondering what kind of words you can use to crack their shell, rejoicing with their triumphs or feeling deep sadness at their tragedy.

There are some kids, of course, that you're closer to than others. This could be because you click with them more than others--something about them reminds you of yourself at that age. It could be because they make a point of seeking you out and they tell you all about what's going on in their lives.

Or, it could be because of some unspeakable tragedy that you had no idea of which that kid is going through, and then it hits you; all the information slides into place, a pool of darkness and despair and you struggle with words: what words would be right; what words should you say or not say; should you even say anything at all.

You're just their teacher after all, and they may or may not have given any signs that they like you or even respect you, because you got after them once and they have hurt feelings, or you just have never made the attempt to connect with them because of being busy with work, or because the class has 29 other kiddoes clamoring for your attention or not paying attention at all.

Sometimes teaching is a heartbreaking profession. Kids break your heart right and left and you're expected to just keep on going, smiling when they walk into the room, holding your head up at meetings and speaking the technical language of educationese like nothing is going on. Anything from a special kid graduating to someone's parent dying can throw you for a loop and make you feel like your heart is a dish of chocolate that any of them can come along and take a piece of.

The reason I like teaching so much better than my other career taking care of artwork, is that kids are a much better thing, if you will, to bounce off of. What I mean by that is, you can't coax a better essay, thought process, or tone quality out of a piece of artwork. What the artist has done, the artist has done, and there it sits. Yes, you can look at the same painting time after time and see new meanings it, but you can't bounce off of it, you can't interact with it so that the time and the blending of personal interaction create something new in both of you.

You can't whisper to a sculpture you've lost your voice and then see what kind of reaction that gets; you can't transform a room full of pushing, shoving, loud-mouthed, giggling 6th grade lithographs into a musical ensemble that will make you cry with joy. You can't measure the progress that five paintings make when they bounce ideas off of one another, yell, laugh, and jam, and eventually turn into a tight, grooving rock band.

You can only do those things with kids, students, the young bodies that traipse into your room every day whether you're ready or not.

And in doing so, you yourself are transformed. Sure, there were works of art I loved, paintings I'd go up into the gallery specifically to see again and again, or boxes I'd visit secretly, working in the vault of the museum, to take yet one more peek at a sweetly carved netsuke that captured my imagination.

But it's not like caring for students. Loving them, in a teacherly sort of way. Watching them mature, change, and grow.

And then letting go.