Goodbye, my Birds

Goodbye, my Birds Karalee Riddle, Third Place ~ August 25, 2020 ~

One month marks the passing of a difficult decision, one that will leave a mark. I can only now begin to look back at the door I’ve closed.

The emotions of the people I care about are palpable, and I imagine looking into the eyes of those I wish to explain myself to.

An inconvenient truth I’ve only just realized about myself: I’ve never been particularly good at goodbyes. Perhaps a childhood of moving often or my own insecurities have contributed to that startling fact. Either way, my spirit is healing from some deep wounds I have been unsure of how to face, until now.

I’ve wanted to be a teacher since the earliest days on tap. Just ask the poor neighborhood children who endured my vision of “school” when it was my turn to pick what to play. Like following a compass, I knew my direction and was constantly walking toward what I thought would save me.

For eleven years, through life’s pickles and pleasures, I chased my North. Arriving was bliss. Right where I needed to be, I flourished. Teaching was love. It was a gift, and I blazed my own trail, surprising some, but confirming what I had always known: that it was my special place. So many great kids, so much to learn. My philosophy ran deep, braided with human integrity and curiosity. Through science experiments, service projects, songs, and debates, I challenged my students—my birds—to look with observant eyes, taking in more than facts and figures. I hoped they’d see the zest, the magic in one another and themselves, to see through a larger lens, one that carries us through the subtleties of the human existence, drinking the secret wisdom offered to us if only we watch and listen. It worked! A lot of the time it did, and there’s a spark you see in a student’s eyes. You teachers out there know the one. And that moment of ignition, that bit of energy is enough to fuel you for a year, through all the other bullshit—the bureaucracy, the politics, and opinions that are placed at your classroom door—shoved at you, and handed to you in baskets with handshakes. You carry it all, put it in a corner, and guard against the darker parts. You keep your spirit light and clean because a classroom is a sacred place. Your students need not know the dark. So you light yourself up like the Fourth of July. You dance, do voices, wear many hats, and you burn so bright that your kids will only see the light. You burn. You’re the last car there, the one to

take on a parent night or club that no one else will. You stay after to tutor, to plan your magic much past paid time because that’s what it takes to do it right.

You arrive home late and the guilt settles in, a gut-punching fog, as you see the state of your house, the need for dinnertime, and the faces of your own children who have partially given up on needing things from you because they know what you won’t say out loud, that there’s not much left for them.

This takes a slow toll, and you start to wonder what it would have been like if you had chosen differently. What if you had the kind of job you could mostly leave at work? What if taking a day off wasn’t more work than it was worth? You see your students’ faces though, and you remember why. You work with a talented, empathetic group of educators, and you’re not alone because they are wading in it with you. It’s a calling, not a job. It’s deeper than a paycheck.

It’s deeper than a paycheck. What is my value?

A pandemic. A pause. A shift in perception.

I looked around at my worn out family, and we healed. Through walks, rides, dinners, and conversations, we became what I didn’t know we were missing. I relished in it! I’ll forever be grateful for that slice of light in a strange and difficult period.

Just like most, we missed some of our routines, social aspects of life that helped fill us up before, and we wished for a return to our normal. New normal came with a price though. In negotiating this new space, my idea of being a teacher took on new meanings.

Words were slung like mud, and many of them stuck to me. Each hit dented what I thought was prestigious armor, and I couldn’t clean it off. I could no longer pile all the baggage up in a corner of my classroom. I could no longer muster the energy to dance, to sing, act, and inspire with so many holes in my veneer. Words like, “If you don’t want to go back, then quit,” or, “Teachers just want to sit at home and collect a paycheck!” Didn’t they know the truth? The truth of costumes, long days, late nights? Wagons of work going home on the weekends, supplies from Amazon delivered to my door every few days to fill the gaps that a tight, public budget couldn’t touch? Couldn’t they see the magic created inside those four walls?

Or was it worse than not knowing? Did they care? Maybe I was just a warm body to man the classroom so we could all go back to normal. This thought grew like a tumor and darkened my typical energy I banked to start up a year, and I knew I was different. My spirit, at odds with itself, played tug of war. Faces of future students pleaded with me to battle though. It went on and on and neither side won. It stings to say, I closed my classroom door for the last time, before I knew I was finished with it.

It’s still so fresh and tender, but there it is… My own truth, leaking from me like a broken yoke. I know it’s ugly to some; I know it’s hurtful to some. I cower at the thought of it sometimes.

But, each day, I have one less bag to carry, one less package to hide in a corner. Each day I see revealed the nature of what I have chosen—me. My family. My health. The survival of those is paramount to other peoples’ normal. As much as it chokes me to admit, I can’t shoulder the shit this year. And I definitely can’t shoulder it and be the teacher I demand of myself, because in the end, I wouldn’t come out quite right.

Please take this last thing with you though. I still love every student I’ve ever had. I love the ones I haven’t yet had. I see them; I hear them, and I hope great things for them. While this profession seems sadly less prestigious than it did to my less-battered self, I still believe in education all the way to my core. I genuinely love teaching and learning. While I don’t know what doors will open to me from here, I deeply respect and feel the loss of the one I have just closed. Goodbye for now, my birds.

With only love, Mrs. Riddle

Room 36