Green Tea in the Storm

Fall is here.
Hear the yell,
“Back to school!”
Ring the bell.
Brand new shoes.
Walking blues.
Climb the fence.
Books and pens.

I can tell that we are going to be friends.

The White Stripes, “We’re Going to Be Friends”


“Isn’t it ready yet?”

Four brand-new Ingraham students are loitering near the window—two sitting patiently, two wandering with restless curiosity—and they are waiting for the water to boil. They are waiting because there was a promise of tea if they can be patient enough to wait for it. Green tea from their teacher’s desk. What could be better?

“Not yet,” I shrug, looking up from the email I’m writing. “It’ll be ready soon.”

One boy kneels down next to the rickety green desk that holds a basket full of tea things, a plant, and the now-decrepit electric hot water pot. He’s staring at the empty teapot, a white two-cup affair, which is waiting for the steaming water.

“That’s the smallest teapot in the world,” he comments.

“Nope,” a companion replies sagely. “There are prob’ly smaller ones somewhere. It’s just regular small. Not the smallest.”

I smile and say nothing. I am surprised they are here at all, actually. This is only the fifth day of school, and at this time last year most of my students were too shy or too busy to wander into my classroom at lunch. But two of them are in my fifth period class, which has only eight students (consequence of many minor miracles of registration and staffing) and has grown extraordinarily chummy in this first week. Seeing me standing outside the classroom at the end of lunch, always holding a steaming cup of tea, they voiced the demands that immediately came to mind.

“Hey, can I have some coffee?”

“It’s not coffee. It’s tea,” I replied.

Unperturbed by this information, the duo persisted. “Can I have some tea then?”

“Not now,” I shrug. “Maybe if you come at the beginning of lunch I’ll make you some. But not it’s time for class. So no tea today.”

This was repeated a few times in the first week of school, until today, when they both arrived twenty minutes before class, taking me up on my halfhearted offer. Oh well, I thought. It’s a cup of tea. So I got out two Styrofoam cups from the cupboard, asked them to fetch a bottle of water from the water fountain, and began to boil it.

The two original boys now pace the room, wailing about the slowness of the tea and wondering aloud if it was worth it at all, while their friends wait for tea. I get the sense that the friends are curious if they are going to be included in the impromptu tea party. Also that they might actually like it more than the first ones, who seem to be essentially testing the limits of my good nature.

My thoughts and energy return to the classroom as I wrap up my email. It’s a pleasant place again, the scars of June healed and washed away by the promises of September. I have hung new posters on the walls, moved the furniture to include some computers and tables for the journalism class that I am teaching this year in place of one of my ninth grade English classes. At the windows are the familiar curtains and twinkle lights, covered with the origami balloons that two of my students made as decorations on our final presentation day last year. I told myself a few weeks ago that I was purging the class in an effort to keep things clean and simple, since I never want to be a teacher weighed down with eight file cabinets full of examples and mementos. Perhaps I also wanted to start over, and bare walls were the solution.

How naïve of me. Though all but a few cherished drawings have long since gone to the recycling bin, last year’s students remain. They are in the halls, calling jokes and news as they rush off to their new classes. They are outside after school, still watching the boys’ football practice, even though now we laugh about it, while back then I told them they were embarrassing themselves and all teenage girls. They are in the classes of my colleagues, from whom I hear tales of genial class clowns and abrasive untapped potential.

And my students, the ones who brought me through these last and hardest twelve months, are here. In Room 120 at lunch. Telling me about teachers and summers, classes and cell phones and new outfits. They whirl in from the dramatic sophomore world, in which feuds and friendships seem to have picked up without interruption, stepping through the doorway with a sigh. Some come to talk to me, sitting close and telling stories. Others have dropped by in pairs, or come in, realized that the dependable group of guests has dispersed into the sunny streets of Upper Aurora, and rushed out to bring them back again. Today I am hearing one of them strategize how easy it would be to steal a fanny pack, should they ever come back into fashion, while another peers out of the window, looking for someone. One sophomore girl decides to do all her homework in one lunch, while her friend laments how difficult her new LA class is.

I wonder what they’re looking for here, back with me now that I have no formal role in their lives. I wonder who I am to them now, so nervously aware the input they seek will no longer fall within my areas of expertise. They will ask about relationships and the future, not books or mountains, and I know that these questions will challenge me more than any that have come before. Yet I am filled with gratitude and joy every time I see them here.

I stand up as the water clicks off with a satisfying boiling noise, reaching over to pour it into the small teapot.

“Can we drink it now?” demands one of my new guests.

“Not yet. In a few minutes. It’s not ready yet.”

“Tea takes forever!” wails the second tea-drinker. The quiet friends merely watch, wide-eyed, as I get more cups from the cupboard.

“Do you want tea, too?” I ask them. Mute nods and half smiles reply.

I remember thinking, during my first year of teaching especially, that in most places in education the relationship between teacher and student was broken, perhaps beyond repair. In our mythical battles, teachers were the villains that threatened kids’ free time with meaningless tasks, while students were the ghouls that threatened adults’ sanity with their ceaseless noise. It was no mere wall that divided us—our positions were fixed on opposite sides of a barbed-wire fence. As I decant four small Styrofoam cups of tea to the mixed reviews of ninth grade boys, while tenth-graders bask in their experience and try to hide their confusion, I feel the barriers falling. Sharing green tea in the storm of urban high school, we begin to know one another.