Do You Have School Phobia?

Here in Florence County, school has started. Teachers have decorated their rooms and planned their lessons, students have chosen first day outfits and labeled their notebooks, and for 180 days, school is back in session. It’s interesting the different responses elicited by the first day of school. I, for one, have always loved it. By the time I got to kindergarten, it seemed like I had wanted to go to school for as long as I could remember. I played school for many years before I ever went inside of one, but, as the baby sister, I was often a mere student and rarely got to play the role of the teacher. I remember back-to-school shopping adventures, choosing an outfit that was just right for the first day, and eyeing my momma as she carefully used a Sharpie to write my name on every single marker in my marker box. Then, I was known as Amy M. as Amy was apparently a very popular name for 80’s babies. Regardless, there has always been something about school that has absolutely excited me.

My momma will also vouch for the fact that I’ve been that way at every level. When I “graduated” from sixth grade, I cried my eyes out and knew that I would return to teach second grade right beside Mrs. Pam because the idea of ever not being in an elementary school was too much for me to bear. Two years later at eighth grade “promotion,” I went through a pack of Kleenex because I loved Junior High, and I thought that after I went to college, I’d make a nice addition to the staff at Ronald E. McNair Junior High School. High school commencement was one of the saddest days of my life (seriously), and we pinned tissues to the inside of my sleeves of my graduation gown to catch the tears that fell for the entire ceremony. Then, I planned to major in secondary education because I knew high school was the place for me. I loved college, too, and I made a lot of great memories there, but college didn’t have pep rallies or prom or Spirit Week…things I’d absolutely loved about the culture of high school, so at the young age of 21, I went back to high school, and I’ve loved it ever since. It was a great choice for me, and I’ve never regretted it for a moment.

My husband is my opposite in many ways. School, or rather our attitude toward school, is most definitely one of those ways in which we differ. He never enjoyed school when he was growing up. In fact, he claims to have a severe case of undiagnosed school phobia. This phobia of his resulted in him throwing his clothes out of the back window of the family car when he was on the way to school as a little boy. He was quite smart because while no amount of whining and crying would get his momma to let him stay home, he knew he couldn’t go to school naked. He’s probably used every trick in the book. In elementary school, he snuck out of his classroom and went to a custodian closet to use the phone and call his mother to come get him. He’s chewed up pencil erasers and spit them in the toilet to prove he was “sick” enough to go home, and he has millions of school horror stories. He works in a school now as an alternative program instructor, and he loves his job and his kids, but even now when we go to work in our rooms during the summer, he says the “smell of school” just makes his stomach ache.

We have no children yet, but when we do, I hope they take my school attitude instead of his. I’m not ready to deal with two cases of “school phobia” in my house!

So what do I love about school…even now as a teacher? I love that I meet new people every single year. In so many careers, the work is stagnant. As a teacher, my work changes daily, but it goes through a major change every single year when I get a new group of kids. I also love watching my students grow, though this is sometimes difficult for me. I teach juniors (and a few sophomores), and it is so special to watch the transformations they undergo as they get ready to graduate. I love that I am always learning something new. Sometimes, it’s a new teaching strategy or a new great author, but sometimes it’s things like when to show compassion or what an acronym means on Facebook. The lessons a teacher constantly learns are varied, and to be honest, the most important ones aren’t of the academic nature at all. I love that I work in a field of endless opportunities. On any given day, I could be teaching the author of the next great American novel, a CEO of a technology-based company, a humanitarian whose goodness changes the world, or a medical researcher who finds the cure for cancer. When you look at what we do through that lens, it makes every difficult moment a little more bearable. Just remember during this first week as you approach your new students to look at them as opportunities and see what potential lies within them. Don’t listen to what the teacher down the hall experienced with that student, and try to forget what his sibling did that you didn’t like. Give each and every child a chance. You might have a student in your classroom like me, the one who loves school dearly and will do any and everything you ask her to, but you might have a student like my Hank, one who claims he’s going to the library but is really on the phone with his mother in the custodian closet. You are the one piece of the puzzle that can keep him from making the call.

Just for some further proof of our opposite ways, I was a Pilgrim in kindergarten, and he chose to be a Native American.