As the school where I once taught for 27 years invites children into its doors today for the first time this year, I have a confession:
When I walked the halls of my school, I would whisper the names of teachers who once taught in each of the classrooms I passed.
Every day. Without exception.
It served as a reminder to me of all the educators I had once stood beside, teaching young people and supporting one another. As someone obsessed with holding onto the past, it was an easy and sensible thing for me to do.
I almost couldn’t help it.
These were people who had retired. Moved to new schools. New careers. New opportunities. Given birth to children and never returned. After 27 years of teaching in the same school, there were a lot of them.
Many of them were people as close and dear to me as anyone ever in my life.
Thankfully, many of them still are.
Remarkable educators. Good people. The best of friends.
My wife.
Her classroom no longer exists.
But other classrooms had a list of former teachers’ names that often seemed endless.
I remembered them all.
But it wasn’t just a simple accounting of the names. I would see these people in my mind’s eye. I think about the days they spent teaching children inside those brick walls. The laughter we shared. The unforgettable moments. The occasional heartbreak.
I didn’t love them all, and not everyone loved me, but I loved most of them, and I missed so many. For a long time, I felt like I was playing a game of Last Man Standing and losing badly. So many of my closest, dearest friends had come and gone, and though many remain in my life today, the difference between spending time with your friends and working alongside them is immense.
Today, someone else will be teaching in the classroom that I occupied for 25 years.
That is a strange thing for me.
I was the only teacher to ever occupy that classroom until today. Before it became a classroom, it was the school’s library. When the new library was built, a wall was added, dividing the room in two, thus creating two new classrooms.
I took the room at the end of the hall. My friend and mentor, Donna Gosk, took the other. Later, my friend Tom would teach in that classroom, and then, for the last dozen years of my career, my friend Cindy.
I got very lucky with who taught beside me. All people I love and still love today.
When the architect came in to discuss the layout of the room, I requested a connecting door and zero bulletin boards.
I got my door, mostly because I didn’t tell my principal about the request. But he forced me to accept one stupid bulletin board, which I promptly covered with an enormous world map and never touched again.
I hate bulletin boards.
For a quarter century, I was the only teacher to teach in that classroom. For 20 years, my classroom was dominated by a stage, complete with curtains, sets, a sound system, and lighting installed on the ceiling girders. The pandemic removed that stage for social distancing, and then administrators deemed an elevated platform too dangerous in a classroom, even though elevated platforms exist all over the school district.
When I tried to protest this decision, administrators refused to even respond to my calls, emails, or a registered letter.
Nevertheless, for a long, long time, that was my space. I spent more than 32,000 hours of my life in that classroom, teaching 601 students. Living a dream come true. Loving my life more than I ever thought I could.
Walking by that classroom for all of its existence, a single name was whispered.
One person.
My name.
Today, a second person will take my place. A new teacher will occupy a space where so much happened over the course of my life.
I hope they have the same joyous, ridiculous, hilarious, unforgettable career that I enjoyed. I hope they fall in love with colleagues, parents, and students as I did, and I hope they hold those people close as they come and go.
It’s an odd thing to spend 27 years in the same job, in the same school, and it’s even stranger to spend 25 of those years in the same room.
I got lucky. Luckier than I ever deserved to be.
Happy first day of school, everyone. I miss you.
