As I get older, I'm starting to realize how much of a challenge it is to watch students who stay the same age (not literally, of course, but because I teach roughly the same age every year) and for me to continue to grow older. When I first started teaching I was extremely young: 22. My biggest fear then was that I was going to be too close in age to the kids and they wouldn't respect me, or know where to draw the line. Or, worse yet, because I'm a woman, I would have to deal with the whole 16-year-old hormone thing. But as the years pass, I have started feeling less worried about our similarities and more worried about our differences. It seems that there are less similarities and more differences as time goes by, and that is scary for me, not only professionally, but personally, as well.
I mean, there will always be core similarities between me and the students I teach. And one of the things about being a teacher is finding that link between you and the child so that you can pull on it and leverage it to promote learning. But at some point, the generation gap increases and there are new things I don't understand about their culture. Scarier yet, there are old things, I remember understanding at some point in my life, that I don't understand anymore. One of my students said to me the other day, "Do you go to bars?" I always try to respond truthfully and maturely so I said, "Yes, but I doubt the bars I go to are the kind of bars you are imagining." Feeling really hilarious, the student said back, "No, Miss, I said BARS not BARN. I wasn't talking about Pottery Barn." While I then proceeded to laugh hysterically, not only because of the yuppy implication, but also because of the jab, I thought to myself, "You know what? I actually really like Pottery Barn!"
I guess the thing that I have been thinking about as I retell my student's funny moment is that the older I get, the more split I feel. There is a part of me that wants to be the adult in the room and buy furniture for my house and get married and have children and go through all of these societal markers of maturity. I have a drive to be successful in everything I do and that drive doesn't end with work; I need to accomplish the expectations that others hold for my sex and my class and the "American way of life" to find satisfaction - it's just part of my personality to want that ideal happiness. But then there is another part - a part that is sitting with the students at their desks, laughing and planning the weekend like it is the most major event that will ever happen, and feeling like the only thing that could possibly be important is the next relationship or drama that comes into my life. I remember sitting there full of hope for all the options that are available to me and the million things that I could accomplish in my life or that will happen to me before I decide to settle down. So, I find myself split between being in that "settling down" place and rebelling against it, because I see both of them so clearly, every day. Being with kids at the age of possibility is inspiring and, unfortunately, depressing.
I know that people refer to that feeling as "nostalgia." But, to me, inherent in that word is a positive connotation - that nostalgia is that "happy" feeling that you get when you reminisce. People even go so far as to say "bittersweet." But honestly, it is so much more bitter, than sweet. For me, I want to be there again. I want to get to choose another road, not because I don't like this one, but because I want to know what the others were like. I want to make different decisions and have more options and make more mistakes. People always say, "I wouldn't want to relive that age again. It was so difficult." Or maybe, "Only knowing what I know now, would I go back." I think that is a way for them to cope with the fact that inevitably, as you age, you realize how much you missed out. That's what makes it so bitter. I didn't get to try every option. I didn't get to have a different personality or identity in high school. I didn't get to try playing a sport or talking to that group of girls I never liked. I didn't get to try to do something bigger with my life or go on some fantastic trip or even just move somewhere else. And my students are all sitting there, making little individual choices that they will someday feel bitter about too. They are going to wake up one morning and realize that they were happy and at one point in life had more possibilities and, even if they liked the way it turned out, they are going to be upset that they don't get another opportunity to just try another road because they are too far down one already.
I don't mean this to seem morbid. I don't really think it's that desperate of a situation. It's just one of those things that you are constantly reminded of when you work with 150 students that live and breathe that energy and hope in your classroom throughout the day. They set up a mirror, where I see myself as a young adult again, but I see my future too, and I can't decide sometimes what brings more happiness or more pain. I guess, ultimately, it never goes away. There is always a simultaneous existence of hope for the future, regret for the past, bitterness for the roads not taken, and remembrance for the times you wouldn't have traded. It must be that within this multi-faceted existence I somehow continue to reach my students, and hopefully always will, simply because of that split, not in spite of it.
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