Being Remembered

One of the lovely things about being a teacher is that you have moments when you run into former students, and they recognize you in the wild. Sometimes you're in sweaty workout clothes with NSFW sportsbra cleavage hanging out, holding a jumbo pack of toilet paper or something equally embarrassing in the grocery store, and sometimes you'll look totally respectable and have a cart filled with vegetables. Even when it's awkward, it's lovely to feel a little locally famous.

Yesterday I had two of these recognition moments, at Wegmans after work (while looking tired, but respectable).

As I walked in, I saw a student and his mother ahead of me, and I'll be honest...I booked it so I could say hi. I had this student two years ago, and tutored him in the summer. He and his family were lovely.

Being a special education teacher is tricky... Sometimes kids AND parents do not want you to see them, and they shuffle away and avoid eye contact like you have leprosy or rabies or something. We aren't typically the ones yearbooks are dedicated to. While we work to unlock potential and help students find success, we are also a living, breathing reminder of struggle, difficulties, and other-ness. Which makes it all the sweeter when you've been sighted and people are genuinely excited to see you.

I yelled out the student's name just inside the entrance, and he and his mom turned around and then lit up with recognition.

"Mrs T!" he said, and then we had a 15 minute conversation by the cold beer case. In my defense, the beer case is right when you walk in this particular entrance. His mom said, "It seems like just yesterday that you were his teacher!" and that sounded like a good thing, so it made me all warm and fuzzy inside.

On my way out, I saw a former student and her father at the self-checkout. I did the awkward smile and neck turn without success and then again, found myself shouting a student name in Wegmans. She came over all happy and smiley and I introduced myself to her dad. "Hi, ___'s dad, I'm Mrs. T." Then HE lit up, and he was like, "OH MY GOSH! She LOVED you! She used to talk about you ALL THE TIME!" It was crazy, because I WAS HER STUDY HALL TEACHER. She wasn't on my team, she wasn't on my caseload, I saw her once a day in my crazy study hall last year.

But clearly, all the math and English help and the answering of weird awkward questions didn't go unappreciated. I've never had such a clear sense of recognition from a parent who I've never met before, so it was clearly not lip service to make small talk. She really did talk about study hall and the nutty teacher who ran it. Something about that connection stuck.

She was super bubbly, and talked about how she's made some new friends, and is doing okay in 9th grade, but her study hall isn't as fun. I made a joke about how that's okay, because study hall probably shouldn't be super fun anyway. Ha.

This was my third period study hall where I had to split them up because 1/3 of the football team was in the same room with me and they were NAUGHTY, and there were a lot of seventh graders without any work to do so the whole idle-hands-devil's-work thing, and this was the study hall where we had a lockdown drill (my first day back from the hysterectomy) and one of my students got on a filing cabinet and TRIED TO CLIMB UP IN THE DROP CEILING like Tom Cruise in Mission  Impossible. It was a crazy, crazy study hall.

The point, though, is that it is so wonderful to be remembered. To have those days where you can really feel the impact you have on these young people. It's one of the perks of teaching -- it has ripple effects that just go out and out and out. And as someone without kids, this legacy is very important to me. I love these moments of brief, minor celebrity, and hoping that maybe years on down someone will stop me in the grocery store and I will have taught them forever ago, and they'll still remember. My best friend ran into our 3rd grade teacher while on the Jersey Shore this past summer, and she was in her 90s. It made her cry to be remembered so many years later.

I would love to experience that, tears and all.