Back to school, again and again

Even in places that remain in touch with the rhythms of agriculture, few seasonal markers prove as heady, reliable and poignant as the reopening of school. Every September the crosswalks ripen with kids in their back-to-school clothes; the long yellow buses harvest our lanes and streets. First the brightly colored backpacks and then, as if in imitation, the autumn leaves.

Everyone has a share in the emotions that accompany this time. Everyone who’s been to school, everyone who’s sent a child there, everyone who’s ever taught knows some version of that queasy thrill. Having done all three, I know it on a fairly deep level, but it’s the ex-teacher in me who feels the back-to-school time most acutely.

People ask if I ever miss it, ever wish I was going back. The short answer is no. I don’t miss the gnawing anxiety of late August, the readjustment to the school day’s regimentation (I can go to the bathroom whenever I want now), the interminable staff development days, the briefcase swelling with papers. I don’t miss the return to testing – of my students’ learning and of my own limitations. I don’t miss handing back those first F’s. And I don’t miss getting them.

I do miss the students, though. I miss seeing the growth that even a short summer can effect in the young. I miss the vitality. My approximation to an alcoholic’s need for a drink is a yen to chat with a kid. The average age of those I taught was 16, roughly the age of a sophomore, literally “a wise fool.”

September always found me possessed by the resolution that this year was going to be better than the last, in fact the best year to date. I knew my strengths and how to build on them. I had a set of new approaches I was raring to try. Let the young be frisky; I could rely on something better. I was in shape.

I imagine this is how a boxer must feel when the first bell sounds: invincible, resilient, fast on his feet. For a while, perhaps for the whole September round, that seems to be the case. Then comes the haymaker that dazes him. Then the flurry of punches that puts him on the ropes.

The boxer knows this is a possibility and the teacher knows it too. Entropy and accident, fire drills and flu are always waiting to bedevil the best-laid plans. The difference is that the boxer can hope for a quick knockout, whereas the only quick knockout that can come to a teacher is her own. The best she can hope for is to last a full 15 rounds and have a respectable scorecard at the end.

In the end this may be one of the chief lessons of school, for teachers and students alike, that progress is as provisional as it is possible, that it never comes without reversals, that the first burst of energy is never more important than a well-marshaled second wind.

And yet, to listen to the debate about “the future of public education” is to recognize what slow learners most of us are.

But we keep signing up, keep going to class, and the vision of kids pouring out of a school bus, generation after generation, reminds us why. I know of no other sight that pleads so persuasively for rededication, not only to the democratic project of a free, public and equal education for all, but to the intimately related project of making a just and sustainable world. If Nature hasn’t given up on her best idea, then who are we to quit.

This story was originally published September 3, 2015 at 4:33 AM with the headline "Back to school, again and again."