We Are Clapping Again

I curved and weaved through the woods, passed a lush mountain peppered with paragliders, and wondered if I would ever arrive. My new commute was further than I expected.

My stomach flip-flopped as I parked and walked cautiously into a very old school building. 

I was greeted by a woman in a long dress, her hair in two simple braids at the sides of her warm, gentle face. Her spirit was the spitting image of my Auntie Kathleen, a woman who spent the majority of her retired life clipping out newspaper articles and writing letters to everyone she knew on scraps of recycled paper. 

I was enveloped in a strong, warm hug. 

“We are so happy to have you here.” The words weren’t a formality. I could tell she genuinely meant them. Everyone in the office smiled my direction, surrounding me in a surreal feeling of joy. 

“You will love it here.” 

I heard those words at least a dozen times that week. Every colleague I met said them to me with an earnest smile. 

On the first staff training day, I entered the library to discover a banquet of home-made breakfast foods spread out across a long table. Egg frittata speckled in veggies and bacon bits, fresh steaming coffee, home-made granola, bowls of fresh fruit. 

Where am I? I thought with awe. The library buzzed with friendly, relaxed conversation. There was no anxiety in the air, no trace of trauma or trepidation about the upcoming school year.

At my other school, my co-workers and I had been worn down by dysfunctional systems unable to fully support the needs of the students who walked through our doors each morning. My shiny, brand-new teacher spirit had been dulled over three years, rubbed raw as though with sandpaper until headaches and stomach pains of anxiety plagued me weekly. 

Here, my students greeted me enthusiastically when they entered the classroom. They thanked me on the way out for teaching them. I didn’t know what alternate universe I had landed in. When I asked my class to take out a highlighter during my first week, 25 kiddos dutifully produced pencil pouches bursting with brand new supplies and selected the needed item. I still remember the lump in my throat that first time, thinking of the students I had left behind. In my head swirled images of broken pencils, empty backpacks and kids’ burdened scowls at being subjected to sitting in my classroom. 

The students at this school were no different than those at my previous school. They were the same children with the same myriad of personalities, only with drastically different life circumstances.

As we munched on our breakfast feast that first meeting day, the melodic voice of my new principal filled the air with calm. We covered topics at a manageable pace and were not made to feel that we held the survival of humankind in our hands. There were no urgent initiatives. I came to learn a few commonly used phrases: “We’re going to Pine Lake this” and “We’ll do this the Pine Lake way.” The sentiment being: We will do this in a way that works for our school, for our students and in a manner that’s manageable for our staff. The “Pine Lake way” meant allowing common sense to override untenable systems and irrational mandates. 

I will never forget one particular phenomenon of this first staff meeting. After anyone spoke – whether it was a half-hour presentation or a three minute update – the whole staff applauded. It was so fascinating. It was precious. It was, as I would soon learn, quintessentially “Pine Lake.” 

I’m not sure if that applause meant as much to anyone else at my school as it did to me. Because coming here was like being rescued from drowning.

My first year was a rare jewel of how lovely teaching could be under ideal circumstances. I taught only one course subject, I had small classes with almost zero behavioral problems, and I was working for an administration that truly understood leadership. 

They knew how to remove burdens from our plates, rather than constantly piling more on. It was immediately clear that outstanding work was in motion at this school and that our principals held complete faith in our professional competency.

Once my son was born, I began to feel the impact of the long commute. After adding in the daycare drop off, the distance I travelled daily became outright ridiculous – stupid, really. 

My colleague at another school called one afternoon to inform me that there would be an open Spanish position at the high school on the other side of the district, a half hour closer to my house.

Sensing the disinterest in my voice, she said, “You’d be crazy not to at least consider it!”

No, I thought. I’d be crazy to even consider it. 

The year we returned to in-person schooling during the pandemic took a toll on my colleagues and me. You could sense the stress emanating from people’s faces every day. We walked around with our eyes wide and our lips pressed together like ducks, holding in our exasperation. We communicated through raised eyebrows, exhausted shrugs and knowing eye rolls.

In the staff lunch room, we collapsed into our seats with epic sighs each afternoon. The lunch conversations became more and more honest throughout the year. I remember a colleague saying, with her voice slightly lowered, “I finally admitted to my husband last night that I think I’m going through a sort of low-grade depression.”

My response was, “Anyone who’s not going through a low-grade depression right now isn’t paying attention.” I think that many of us were barely holding it together at times. We were working too hard, stretched too thin, and everything felt dull-gray. 

Our staff meetings, in the past so joyful, also felt gray. Our principal never stopped breathing words of life into us, because this is what she does. I vaguely remember a metaphor about tomato vines in the garden that almost made me tear up (as most everything does), and a story about saving starfish on the beach. 

But we were all overwhelmed, all the time. We stopped clapping at the meetings. 

In chatting with another colleague one afternoon, I mentioned that a positive side-effect of such a challenging year was the way we had begun to open up to one another more honestly. 

“We had to,” she responded, emphatically. “We got cracked open.” This was such a vivid, true statement. We got cracked open. It was messy, and even as we tried to hold most of it inside, some of our pain was exposed. 

One day, rushing through the halls on my way to class, I took note of the student work that filled the walls of our beautiful school. Posters about sustainability, LGBTQ+ themed artwork, poetry, messages of anti-racism. My stomach rushed with pride in the work that students and staff were pulling off, despite all the circumstances.

Returning to school this year has felt lighter, more “normal.” I hesitate to say that everything is back to normal, because it’s not. Many students and staff still wear masks, and while many of us have “moved on” from COVID – whatever that means – some still carry fears and traumas. 

As glorious as it feels to be emerging from the dark tunnel of the pandemic, I worry that our educational system is being stretched to a breaking point. The staff that used to directly support teachers at the district have been almost entirely cut. I see teachers spinning their wheels as they try to resolve issues that should have been taken care of at the district level, but have instead fallen on our plates. Our administrators continue to absorb more and more jobs as staff are reduced. It is not sustainable.

Something that I am finally starting to understand is that two opposing truths can coexist at the same time. It’s true that I’m beyond exasperated at the state of our educational system and what is being asked of us as teachers. It is equally true that I love my job and feel grateful every single day to work where I work. Our teachers, support staff and administrators are truly special. And even as our workload continues to increase exponentially, I cannot deny that this school year is one thousand times better than the past two years have been. 

We are laughing again in the staff lounge – real laughter. The other day at lunch, my dear friend and colleague pulled a tupper out of her bag containing a rice cracker topped with salmon and greens. She proceeded to slice a lemon on a small wooden cutting board, squeeze it over the salmon with a fancy metal juicer, add a sprinkle of tabasco sauce and top it all with a sprig of fresh dill. By the time she completed her culinary masterpiece, there were two minutes left of our lunch break. 

This is why I love where I work. Every person is unique, lovely and interesting. And every last one is a top-notch educator who cares deeply for kids. I don’t know that I would have survived last year anywhere else, without the support of our special school community. 

What worries me is that my talented colleagues will be stretched to the breaking point as the system attempts to squeeze every last drop out of us, like my colleague’s lemon juicer. I pray that we can continue to be vulnerable with each other, laugh, set boundaries for ourselves and find joy. I do feel, somehow, lighter this year. I hope my colleagues do, too. Surely, we are all in different places as we emerge from the pandemic. 

The other night I dreamed that one of my colleagues was bragging about having eaten “rat” at an elegant restaurant. When I responded rather quizzically, they further bragged that they had brought leftovers of this delicious rat dish for lunch. I don’t know what this means, exactly, but it seems symbolic. 

I hope educators don’t have to keep eating rats and pretending to be happy about it. 

Despite everything, however, I noticed that we have begun applauding again at our staff meetings. And honestly, the sound brings me tiny, lovely sparks of nostalgic joy.