I ran the kid’s face through my mental database, aged it down several years and brought his name back up, first the last name — which was easy to do right away since there were four kids in his family and I taught all of them — and then a moment later his first name. He grinned widely, obviously happy to be remembered. “Good memory!” he said (a nice thing to hear after you’ve just turned 50). The manager, who was also standing right there, gave me a respectful nod and said, “Impressive.” Then he spontaneously went ahead and knocked a few dollars off my bill, which was a nice way to end the school week.
I could have gone deeper. I could have told him how I remembered him being one of the kids on the broadcast team, and on the school patrol. I remembered a few weeks of the winter when, for some reason, he was answering to the nickname “Pizza Man Joe” even though his name isn’t Joe, and he was the first person to take up what had been my standard challenge for kids who claimed to not have ideas for Halloween costumes, and came to school dressed as a box of cereal — a brief Lake Emily reference that was my private joke for a good number of years. Of course I remembered him. He was an awesome kid. Even though he’s a working man rocking a full beard now and I remembered him as someone I wasn't sure would ever have it in him to develop any facial hair at all, I still remember how smart and quick and funny he was.
A few years ago, I had what was nearly an opposite experience. I was out to eat again, not just in the takeout line but meeting someone. I felt the stare of recognition settle on me from one direction and turned to see a vaguely familiar face. I smiled, looked at the rest of the family at the table, recognized her mother, and politely waved, thinking that was the end of it. I ate most of my dinner in peace until the family was on their way out and the girl stopped by our table to say hello. I greeted her, said it was nice to see her, blah blah blah blah because for the life of me I could not recall her name. The whole time we spoke the only thought I had was “You were good in math. You had a proficient score on the state test.”
It bothered me I couldn’t bring up her name, because I’m usually pretty good at that. I was internally humiliated that the only thing I could remember about her was the range of her test score.
To a too large degree, schools in 21st Century education have become data factories. I can think of students I’ve had this past year who have taken standardized tests no fewer than six times in three trimesters, to say nothing of the unit tests they take in math, the regularly scheduled tests they take in reading, and the sporadic formative assessments intended to tell us if they are making progress toward grade level performance. Teachers meet regularly to analyze this data and make determinations about who needs to participate in two or three week small group intervention cycles and to what degree these cycles were successful. On staff development days, teachers usually have an option on a training session of how to analyze and manipulate student data. I’ve even heard recent rumors that during some job interviews, teachers are being judged on the test performance of their students, straight by the scores with little to no regard considering any of the seventeen other factors that could affect how successful any one person could be on a standardized test on any given day.
Two weeks from this very moment, I’ll be sitting at home enjoying the first hours of summer break after closing out my twenty-sixth year as a classroom teacher. I think that’s an important distinction to make, too — classroom teacher. There are a lot of roles and positions people take on in education, but to be someone who can take on a room filled with kids who are only there because they have to be, then find a way to make them want to be there, then get them to learn the things the state has dictated people their age should know, and to do this while following a curriculum that you may or may not agree with and trying to safeguard the emotional well-being of an incredibly diverse group of anywhere from 16-34 students with just as many differing abilities and needs? It’s like playing three dimensional whack-a-mole with your eyes closed and your dominant hand tied behind your back.
The day will come in a number of years when my last day of school won’t be followed by the first day of summer vacation, but the first day of the rest of my life. As that day gets nearer with the closing of each school year, it makes me think about what I hope to leave behind when I’m done. I know I don’t want to be thought of as the teacher who made a big deal about test performance and lived and breathed the almighty spreadsheet. I’d be okay remembered as the teacher who picked awesome books for read aloud. I’d like to know the kids I worked with remembered at least most of what I’d taught. I’d be perfectly happy knowing they had gone on into the world with some sense of value I’d at least partially instilled in them, whether they recognized or acknowledged it had come from me or not. I’d hope not too many would think of me as that a-hole who was always after them about something, although I’m sure there are some who feel exactly that way.
Ten, fifteen, twenty years ago it would have been important to me to be remembered well, and to have my efforts acknowledged. Now, on the down slide portion of the bell curve of my career, I’d be happy knowing I had done or said something, either over the course of a school year or in what might turn out to be a particularly defining moment, that gave my students a fighting chance to become the best versions of themselves.
And hey, if doing that means I might get some free food when I eat out every now and then, all the better.
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