Learning How to Be Me In Time: How I Struggle Connecting

     The best teacher I ever had was my seventh grade science teacher. She made a cell out of jello for us to eat (and learn the parts of the cell) and dressed in a full body skeleton costume when we were learning human anatomy. This might not seem like a big deal, but she also was the only teacher who took me outside of the classroom the day after my grandmother died to make sure I was doing okay. All of these things were done in a traditional education system where all desks faced forward and worksheets were passed down the rows. While most of my teachers asked us to memorize facts and read aloud from the textbook, Miss Lewis--a first year teacher--was on the cutting edge of education. She still is teaching today, and I can imagine she only continues to inspire with age. Miss Lewis made a connection with me--with all of us--in a way that very few other teachers did. And she did it by being herself. She had her own style of teaching that no one else could match.

My seventh grade teacher, Miss Lewis, on her wedding day

     I want to be that teacher--the teacher who works hard to instruct her students in her own style. I try not to get caught up in what's "trending" in education; I try to bring relevant experiences to my classroom that I think will help connect with students.  Yet this is not always easy to do in a world where things go out of style faster than I can write about them. Recently, I have been worried that I wasn't connecting with you, my students--that we didn't quite understand each other. I'll let you in on a little secret and tell you that I have had to Google so many of the popular culture references you write about in your work and include in your presentations more often than not. Today I heard  one  you sadly announce that Netflix was cancelling the show, Friends. While this means very little to me as I don't have much time to watch t.v., the first thing I thought of is that this was something that connected my generation to yours. This was something you could talk about that I actually understood. Years from now, my future students won't ever have that connection.

     I constantly try to connect with you by discussing content in relevant terms of today. This month we wrote open letters to the characters from A Streetcar Named Desire and created videos mimicking tv broadcasts like Meet the Press to discuss Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God. 

To continue to make my teaching relevant, I also present you, my seniors, with a daily meme. In doing so, I hope it will bring a common understanding to the twenty-plus years that separate us. Let me explain how drastically wrong I was.  Every day I receive a grade from you that doesn't even scratch the surface of a C. "That's just pictures with words," you tell me. "It might be relevant to the topic we're studying, but it's not current." I've learned that cat memes and memes from The Office are no longer funny (maybe they never were funny) and that I should no longer use the traditional "meme font." Memes seem to trend for a week or even a few days in your world, not the months (or years) of existence in which I use them. My favorite comment from you is "That's not a meme." I receive that one regularly as you smile and throw out a D+. These may be some of the lowest grades I've ever received in school, by the way, and they've somewhat damaged my confidence in believing I could connect with my students. Yet, every day I continue to try. Every day, like Miss Lewis, I will attempt to put on the skeleton costume. And for that, I thank you.

     Ultimately, I'm okay with the low grades and the disconnect because I've learned something about myself as a teacher through all of this. Maybe the disconnect is what keeps you interested. In much the same way that Miss Lewis intrigued us by wearing that full body skeleton suit in a school full of worksheets, maybe I need to continue to do "me." And maybe the "me" is that teacher who doesn't quite know the popular culture references you're talking about and who thinks memes about The Office are still funny. Maybe the "me" is the teacher who watched Friends the first time around because she is from the generation when the show originated. Maybe that teacher is the one who listens to the Beatles and likes unsweet tea and still refuses to use an emoji when texting.

      I think that's what I most want to tell you in this blog. This is going to sound cliche, but it's really quite simple. Don't be afraid to be yourself. Don't try to please other people to the point that you lose yourself in the process. Don't fear you won't connect with others because you're different or you think they won't understand you. Instead, make connections with others by showing them who YOU are. Be yourself. Even if you find yourself far different from others--or there seems to be a large disconnect--continue to be YOU.

     If you take one look at my classroom, you can deduce that I am a fan of the Beatles. I was not alive in their prime, but I grew up listening to their music. In one of my favorite songs, "All You Need is Love," Paul McCartney and John Lennon sing, "Nothing you can do, but you can learn how to be you in time." That lyric says everything to me about the importance of being ourselves.

I often think back to Miss Lewis walking into class in that skeleton costume. She didn't care if she looked ridiculous. She didn't care what we thought. She didn't care that no other teacher in that school was teaching like she was. She knew this was going to peak our interest. And it did. After all, I'm writing about it thirty-one years later.

       I genuinely hope my classroom is a place where you feel like you can be "you." I loved what I saw when we did a silent Socratic seminar at the start of our study of Their Eyes Were Watching God. I witnessed unique and individual thought and a sense of humor.

And seniors, your math projects and ways of thinking during that unit truly showed me a lot about who you are. Do you remember the class where you "invented" a whole new number system--a conversation that occupied all of flex block (and even into your math class later that day)? You are unique thinkers; not every high school student would think about things that way. Continue to embrace who you are.

     That was how I planned to end my blog until today happened. Today I walked into class with my meme projected on the board, and you gave me an A. After all of my worries of feeling disconnected, today I got it right. Tomorrow I will probably be back to mediocrity, but it made me think and believe that somewhere in all of this, I still have the capability of  connecting with you. To speak metaphorically, in a world full of worksheets, I still plan to wear the skeleton costume.You might have to continue to explain cultural references to me, but I'm going to continue to connect--in my own way--and learn how to be me in time.