“I am so glad to see you,” a smiling, tall, thin-haired man said to me holding out his hand in greeting. Beside him stood an attractive woman with a similar, warm smile. “You were our 8th grade American History teacher,” she said. “We saw your name on the guest list and had to talk with you.” The grade and the subject narrowed my memory to several hundred names. However, when she said their names and that they were married, I whispered “1971, fifth period. You sat in the second desk in the row nearest the door and you sat halfway back in the middle row.” They smiled and nodded. “How is your twin brother?” I asked him. “Your smile still lights up the room,” I told her. “Married,” I commented, “Everyone at school knew you would be one day, even when you were in 8th grade.” And we moved to a corner of the room and talked about their lives since junior high school.
There is a moment in the movie Dead Poets Society when actor Robin Williams walks his class down the hall to look at pictures of past students. Behind the showcase windows are class pictures of students from 10, 20 and 30 years ago. Some are pictures individual actors and athletes posed and in action. Some are photos of students in science labs and art and music studios. “Who are these people? What dreams of life did they hope for? What became of them?”
These two former students instantly morphed from photos from the 70s to flesh and blood people today. She is a retired elementary teacher in a neighboring school district. He is a retired, decorated police officer. How wonderful! And how exceptional is this occurrence.
They grow up but our memories do not.
Teachers and their students share moments in time. For the span of a school year, sometimes two or three years, they share the space together, a classroom or a gym or a stage or a playing field. Teachers teach and students learn. Lessons are planed and acted out in class with these students in mind. Each student’s “school personality” is exposed to the teacher incrementally over 180 school days: likewise, the teacher’s school persona is exposed to students. School personalities are curated for school purposes and seldom show the person’s real characteristics. So, we take them for what they are.
Some students and some teachers are so guarded about their personalities that they present one dimensional, flat image of themselves. They could be cardboard sitting in desks and propped behind a desk. Their school life and non-school life never intersect. Others are highly animated, and, like a glaring headlight, it is difficult to get out of their beam. We know what they did Saturday night though we would just as soon not know. For most, however, their school personality is exactly who they are at this stage of their adolescent and adult life.
I have a scrapbook of class photos and a collection of yearbooks spanning five decades. I can name many of the faces with immediate recall of incidents from the school year(s) we shared. Some faces require a glance at the cut line below the photo to attach a name. With that clue, a memory may return. For too many faces, not even reading the name retrieves a clue about that person. The “Dead Poets” students and I share this perspective – we see faces captured in time, faces of one-time students who graduated and lived lives beyond their brief time in school. And we do not know anything about those lives.
At class reunions, I play a game with fellow Class of 66 mates. “Can you name every one of your K-12 teachers?” I can all my teachers and most classmates name about 80% of theirs. This is not unusual, I think. Teachers are memorable. A different question is, “How many teachers did you stay in touch with after graduation?” For most classmates, the answer is “zero.” With a smile, I explain, “I taught with several of our teachers and several others were on the faculty in schools where I was their principal.” Unusual, and my stories about these career intersections stay very professional.
Teachers and students grow their degrees of separation
There are many reasons that explain the transitory nature of teacher and student acquaintanceship. For one, it is how the “conveyor belt” structure of school runs. Students move annually through a schoolhouse spending one year in each grade level and one school year in a teacher’s assignment of children to teach. There is no stopping the conveyor belt. A second reason is the professional distance kept between teachers and children. Knowing a child as a student is to know their educational likes and dislikes just enough to be able to engage the child in learning. Professionally, a teacher wants to know the intellectual, socio-emotional, and psycho-motor characteristics of a child that will help the child/student to be a successful student without knowing any of the personal intimacies of the child. It is a proper balancing and distancing that works both ways.
Mobility also causes separation. Just as students move through K-12 education from school to school, teachers change teaching assignments, schools, and school districts. Since teaching my former 8th grade students, I changed from teacher to principal to superintendent to school board member and served in three other school districts in three different states.
Staying in touch
A best friend and fellow teacher from the 70s is the opposite of me. He lives in the city where he taught, moved from the feeder junior high school to the high school where students matriculated and knew many children/students for six years of their school lives. And they knew him. He was a teacher/coach who relished his relationships with classroom students and football players and can, at the drop of a hat, retell their exploits 50 years later. My friend, now in his 80s and a few of his former student/players, now in their 70s, see, phone, and text each other just to “stay in touch.” They relive stories as well as update each other.
Several of his former students are now teachers in their own classrooms. My friend is their career-long mentor. Although his real-time classroom experience ended with retirement in the early 2000s, they value his insights and instincts about good teaching.
The Big Duh!
The iconic “Johnny” of school stories grows up. Years ago, Johnny was a student in our classroom and a team or club or cast member under our tutelage. For a brief period, we were engaged, teacher and student, in teaching and learning. We shared our “school personalities” to optimize student learning and in those learning activities created memories, many that last over time. However, Johnny does grow up and life after our classroom is what Johnny’s life is about; not the memories of our class-time together.
At the same time, Johnny’s teacher also evolves within professional experiences. Hundreds, if not thousands, of Johnny faces become part of a teacher’s memory bank of students. Often there “a” Johnny that really sticks out in a teacher’s memory, but even that face is a photo in time and does not resemble the adult Johnny who grew up. I was in a checkout line at a local grocery market two years ago. The tall man pushing a cart in front me turned, took a hard look at my face, and said, “I know you. You were…” In that instance, I was vulnerable to our shared past. I wondered, “Who is this and what did I do that was memorable for him?” You never know when former teachers and students will cross paths.