I live here. It is my home.
I teach 29 classes a week, all of which need to be planned and graded.
Additionally my hobbies include writing curriculum and writing about teaching. For real.
And, every year, there are some students who just sort of live here with me. All of you coaches and drama teachers and journalism advisors and choir directors know what I mean. There are some students you just see more often than you see your own partners, friends, and family. These students eventually become part of the classroom. Like the desks and the whiteboards they are always there. They eat lunch there. They charge their phones there. They meet their friends there.
On Friday night, at 5:15, there were a handful of students hanging around with me, waiting for rides to some place where presumably another adult occasionally feeds them or gives them advice.
I talk to these kids about their schoolwork, not just in my class, but in all of their classes. I help them solve for x; I explain to them the law of supply and demand.
I advise these students on their love lives. I exhort them: be strong, independent women and men! If someone wants to know where you are every minute, find someone else. Wear what you want. Tell the truth.
We argue about sports. For the last time, LeBron James is NOT the greatest basketball player of all time. And no, Tom Brady is NOT overrated.
And I teach them about nutrition and tattoo care and hidden checking account fees.
We exchange song suggestions.
It is still my job to grade them. It is still my job to push them. It is still my job to make them tow the line.
And I do not need to know how they party and where and with whom. I do not need to know who they love and who they hate and who they wish they knew better.
Because proximity may engender rapport, but I am still at work. And I tell them this all the time.
“I love you!” I shout. “But I am not your friend.” And sometimes, “I cannot pass you just because I love you! Get to work.”
There is a line between affection and friendship and one of the hardest aspects of being a teacher is having to draw that line every day.
But we do it. Because, after all, we all have to live here together. And I think the students respect us more in the end for being firm.
