New Seasons

“Hey, Ms. D,” a student greets me as he walks in a few minutes after class has started.

“Welcome,” I reply, glancing up from the lesson I’m teaching.

“Sorry I’m late.” He sits down quietly, gets out his binder, and begins to work on his independent project. Just like that. No coaxing or cajoling. He just starts writing.

I stare at him for a moment in unmasked curiosity, but he is too busy to notice. He apologized for being late. He never apologizes. In fact, he usually begins on the defensive, entering the room and saying, all in one breath, "ImnotlateIhaveapassdontmarkmelate!" Today he apologized.

“No worries. Thanks for being here.” I return to the lesson; he bends his head toward the paper in concentration. I understand after a few minutes. He was not apologizing for being late. Or not ONLY for being late.

I think back to five hours before, when he was in my first class, of an irritating interaction with him that ended with a wordless stare from the front of the room. I have often found this silence a better—and safer—correction than anything I can say. Now, he is working quietly, a model of politeness and generosity. This is his apology.

The sun is shining again in the library, while my students read busily. We have reached a rare equilibrium, that comfortable place where I can trust them to work hard and they can trust me, in return, not to bother them too much. There is a time for direct instruction, for those lectures and announcements at the front of the room, but this is not it. For a moment, I am silent, free to enjoy the return of light.

The routines of life here at Ingraham—perhaps as a teacher, in general—allow me to appreciate fully, as I never have before, the seasonal nature of life. Before this, years have been divided into artificial sections by activities. I had Cross-Country Season, AP Test season, College Application season, Playing-Frisbee-on-the-Lawn-Behind-Hill-Hall season, SMC Application season, Frappucino Season, and (as an accountant’s assistant) tax season. Like real seasons, these had their routines, things I could expect as the times returned each year. Unlike them, however, these seasons were not constant through the changes of my life. As I left high school, jobs, and finally college, I left behind the seasons that had marked my life.

Now, I have new artificial seasons, which divide life into Summer and School. Summers are short and unpredictable. The long school year, on the other hand, stretches through three seasons, carrying the earth from summer through autumn, winter, spring, and back again to summer. Each day, between 7:00 and 7:20 AM, I turn north off of Greenwood and greet the sun in a new place in the sky, hanging eagerly over the Cascades in the early morning. Daylight savings affords me extra sunrise drives, extra hours when the sunlight spills golden down the eastward-facing hallways in the school, reflecting in gilded pools on the linoleum. My five weekly apples get expensive and mealy in time for me to purchase oranges, then grapes, strawberries, bananas. And the year spirals around on itself. Winter, miraculously, turns to spring again while we go through the rituals of our days together.

This pendulum is so symbolic, for me, of the relationships I have developed with my students. I had once believed that student-teacher relationships were static, for better or worse, decided by circumstances very early in the year. I now know that, like the length and temperature of days, there are cycles, patterns, to each one. Just like any other relationship, we have our ups and downs. We make mistakes and jokes. We hurt and apologize. We forgive. We forget. We laugh again.

This student, now diligently reading across the room, has traveled from cruel to kind in under six hours. Neither version of him was false. There are days when I leave school delighted, and others when I wish I never had to return. Every afternoon, however, I know that I will return the next morning. We will have to solve our problems, get to know one another, understand when to speak and when to remain silent. There is no escape, and for that I am daily thankful. The hard days will not last forever. They may not even last a whole day.