I’m a ninth and tenth grade English teacher. I assign a lot of papers, which means I grade a lot of papers (I know, I know. I signed up for this. Unless you signed up to be a rebarbative pest, please go away). I teach approximately one hundred students.
Let me tell you something. One hundred papers is an insane amount to grade. It’s inhumane. I’m not complaining. I’m stating a basic psychological human fact.
I’m also complaining.
Wednesday evening, I graded papers. Thursday evening, I graded papers. Friday night, I played violin for a wedding, and I slipped five essays into the outer lining of my case and snuck off to make margin notes in between wedding toasts. Saturday afternoon, I spent five hours at a coffee shop while, somewhere in the world, somebody baked an entire casserole, cleaned the house, and did seventeen loads of laundry. Saturday night, my boyfriend went out with his friends, my roommate went to a work party at the Gilmore mansion, and I spent my evening with a fraying knapsack and an immortal stack of essays in the 28th street Denny’s.
Grading stresses me out. My heart feels like it’s in a doorless, windowless room that’s slowly filling with water. My eyes get crusty. My head gets hazy. My body feels like someone has stabbed two violin pegs into the place where my shoulders meet the bottom of my neck, tightening all my muscles like strings near the point of breaking.
When I grade essays, one of the biggest psychological roadblocks I encounter is the unshakeable feeling that it’s all futile. Nobody cares.
Friends say “That sucks. See you next Tuesday!!”
Inconsiderate jerks say “You signed up for this.”
Students throw twenty-two minutes worth of margin notes into the recycling bin, if they’re feeling environmentally friendly.
It makes me want to cry. It makes me want to quit my job. It makes me want to gather everyone I’ve ever disapproved of into one giant lecture hall, to stand behind a lectern and present an articulate, well-reasoned multi-media presentation of rage on every perceived injustice I’ve ever experienced.
I quiver on the edge of defeat. I snap at my friends. I whine to anyone who will listen. I pick at my boyfriend. I begin to hate most things in the world.
This particular Saturday night, in Denny’s, my vanilla ice cream and characteristic joyful temperament were melting into a puddle of white-chocolate raspberry pancake balls and self-loathing.
My waitress was a young person around my age, with a genuine smile, square-frame glasses, and hair in shades of fuschia and teal.
“Are you ready to order?”
“Can I get you any more water?”
“Refill your hot chocolate?”
“Will that be all tonight?”
She tapped her fingers on the computer screen, waiting with my debit card in her left hand, and glanced down at the stack of orange-markered, poorly-stapled papers resting on the counter.
“Are you a teacher?” she asked me, smiling.
I gave some sort of half-crazed blink that indicated the accuracy of her assumption.
And then, this dear person with Buddy Holly glasses and My Little Pony hair said “I think that’s amazing.”
And I said I think I want to buy you a summer home off the coast of Maine.
Aloud, I actually just sort of half choke-sobbed a word that may have been “thanks” or “shbuurr.”
***
When I got my wisdom teeth out in high school, I reacted very poorly to anesthesia. Not in a physical, life-threatening way, but instead, in a weirdly melancholy panic attack. I have a very vivid memory of sobbing in an elevator, touching things repeatedly and begging my mother to tell me whether or not they were real.
With her words Saturday night, that waitress had done the emotional equivalent of re-introducing me to what was real, but instead of my instability wearing off gradually, as the anesthesia had done, her words caused human gravity to return all at once.
I cried on the way home, and thanked God for the existence of this person. What an easy thing it is, for us to affect other human beings. What a wonderfully and frighteningly easy thing to do. And also so difficult. I can write comments in the margins for years without altering a student’s trajectory even a degree, but one off-handed comment in a Denny’s altered my trajectory for a month, bare minimum.
Words are important.
I believe that, and I suppose it’s one of the reasons I teach English in the first place.
I also suppose I became a teacher in hopes that the thousands of margin notes, probing questions, rebukes, and gentle reminders would pile up into a ramp that will lift a student just the tiniest bit closer to the height they aim for. (If I die young, you can read this line at my funeral. Side note: I’d prefer not to be buried in satin, or laid down on a bed of roses. Laying me down on a bed of Nutella and Disney VHS tapes will suffice.)
Sometimes, I wander around in that anesthetic fog of discouragement and feeble apathy, then I’m reminded by someone’s gentle words that there are things that are real, that are tangible, that are worthwhile.
And I think that’s amazing.
Lauren (Boersma) Harris (’13) is a spontaneous, idealistic, independent, fierce, over-thinking, damaged, adventurous, ordinary megalomaniac with a healthy sense of self-worth and a high word count. She has been a teacher both indoors and outdoors; she loves improvised comedy, backpacking, and writing, even when it’s required.
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hoo boy, I remember the feeling. It’s so hard. But one time the parent of two of my students — one previous, one current — told me that the previous student told his younger sister, the current student, that she should READ ALL MY COMMENTS on EVERY PAPER and now that he’s in college he realizes how smart and helpful I was. I cried for about a week after that.
Lauren, this is wonderfully written and so important.
As a lifelong nerd who LOVED teacher comments: keep it up. They do matter.
Thanks, Lauren. Teachers are heroes.
Bless you. Bless you, Lauren. Bless you bless you.