The Perpetual High Schooler

I’ve heard it said that people become high school teachers for two reasons: one, they had so much fun in high school, they couldn’t resist re-living it over and over; or two, high school was so abhorrent that they thought they might do better if given another chance.  If I had to choose, I would be more like the second ideal.  My father died the summer before I started high school.   My mother had, at times, an extraordinarily difficult time dealing with his death and the occasional “crazy spell” resorted in things like being called a “whore” in the middle of a darkened night when I had yet to even be kissed by a boy.  So, as you might guess, high school was not the best time of my life.

However, I don’t know if I was truly attempting to re-imagine high school when I decided to become a teacher.  I was somewhat of a late bloomer and after marrying a National Park Ranger and finding that I was going to spend my life living in national parks, teaching seemed like a good fit for me. Even when you are out in the middle of nowhere, there are children that need to be taught.

I had always loved literature and young adults, so teaching was a profession I entered into with great enthusiasm.  I am now approaching the twenty year mark, something that seemed impossible the year I did my student teaching.  The first day of that student teaching extravaganza I called my husband in a panic and told him, “I think I made a drastic mistake!”  His advice, “Act like a grown up and get back in there and give ‘em hell!”  I did, and now years later I can’t imagine a profession that would have been more fulfilling, although admittedly, at times it has been challenging.

And here’s what I have come to know after my years in a high school classroom: there is much to be learned in high school, much more than you and I learned the first time around.  Of course, teenagers have much to teach us, as does the structure and ceremony of high school.  The open criticism of public schools as part of the current trend also has some important lessons for us.  And things like football games, Homecoming, choir recitals, band concerts, and detention also have much in the way of lessons. 

If given a choice, most of us would not willingly go back to the days of pimples, lonely Friday nights, and crowded hallways.  However, have you ever really thought about what high school did to prepare you for life?  The lessons it instilled?  The morals and values?  How much you enjoyed the trouble you got into and how much you now miss seeing, every day, those old high school friends?  It doesn’t matter if you were the popular cheerleader or the proverbial band geek, high school should have provided you with all the lessons needed to survive adulthood.  That is if you were paying attention.