Student Teacher Dispatch

I stood there, in the empty classroom, fingering a pumpkin. The replica had a top that when lifted, revealed the emptiness inside. What one could store in there, god only knows, but it would become a strong metaphor for my career.

See, every once in awhile I would pick it up, expecting to find something inside. As if all the months of the collective changes in students would yield something inside this pumpkin replica painted with care by someone a few years ago, who really cared about my cooperating teacher, whose room was the setting for these scenes we were to have.

That student, who years ago expected K to look on it for years, but by now most assuredly would have forgotten who it was that gave her this empty pumpkin. And despite knowing this much about the little tchotchki, I nevertheless would open it almost daily, expecting something in it to change. Knowing my students, they’d probably put gum, or spit, or rotten food in it, but I kept looking anyway.

Discussions were hit or miss those days. Some days they’d chomp at the bit, yammering on for hours over a simple writing or discussion prompt. But other days I'd feel the cold chill of their indifference. That is to say, the hollow sound that follows the response of thirty eight students staring back at one with blank faces was what reminded me of the “tabla rossa” teachers used to refer to students as. These blank slates would then be filled with knowledge.

It was at times such as this that I felt like walking into the middle of the room and dying right in front of them. I wanted a great tragedy to fall not on the students, but to have a dynamo of an experience right in the middle of the classroom: a heart attach, a junked telescope, a trashed satellite. I wanted space debris to land in the middle of the classroom and to have it smolder away. I wanted them to have indifferent looks when the proletariat of Mars marched down off of his throne, down the rectangular auburn chute to greet the classroom as ambassador for another world. I wanted him to look into the empty pumpkin and plonk down an amulet without me knowing about it, so the next time I would open it I would find it there and the kids would go on looking indifferent, and I could be whisked away to the ship, exploring the nether regions of the galaxy, while the drool would still be collecting on top of their desks, next to the carving “AC/DC” or some such heavy metal band that is named after a retired airship, electrical currents, or nonsensical nomenclature.

I had faith in my students on most days. I’d make my lesson plans loose and lean, with plenty of “wiggle room.” Sometimes society harps on a certain phrase, and our minds are so in need of a new saying that they’ll pick up on it for a week, or a year. At this point in history, the history of the ongoing 21^st century, “Wiggle Room” was that term. Condoleezza Rice used it at her confirmation hearing, and I thought how fitting. But I was having this thought in the middle of class, and I was kicking my heals against the desk and my cooperating teacher was staring at me, so I stood up suddenly, closing my copy of Fahrenheit 451 with a snap and bolting to the front of the room.

“Who can tell me what the news coverage in 451 reminds them of today?” Empty faces, no wonder we reelected that slack-jawed yokel. Concentrate; if their not getting it, it’s your fault, your not engaging them enough. Focus on the background knowledge, nip all disciplinary discretions in the bud, and don’t forget to utilize those higher-level thinking skills.

“How about America’s Most Wanted or Cops?” I press on. I know why I go to the pumpkin everyday. It’s in the verification that nothing is there that refreshes me as it reassures. It’s letting me know that it’s never been full, of anything. I can tell just by the smell of the hollow recess. It’s been painted with care, but ultimately, it will just sit there until a student has an outburst, and destroys it accidentally.

“Now this book, this book I really enjoyed.” The kid with the Mohawk is pointing at a copy of The Things They Carried. “It was like the only book I’d read in four years when I read it. And these guys, they didn’t just carry the guns, like on the cover, but the thoughts they carried with them, you know.”

It’s in a dream, the way it comes out of him. In recognizing this kindred spirit, maybe he’s finally trusting in me to express how he doesn’t like the current book, about World War I, but he did like this one, maybe in his own way, he’s saying he’s sorry, don’t take it personally, but I just don’t like it. He goes right back to his seat and behaves the same way he always does, speaking profanely and profusely, at chugging intervals, the way one would chug milk on the morning of their 17^th birthday, their tattered flannel pajamas accentuating the newly cut Mohawk.

They sing songs by The Clash. The first time I heard it I jumped in my boots. It feels good, knowing that while they may be losing everything they can educationally-- the knowledge of the day slipping out with every fall and burn of their skateboarding that afternoon or maybe it’s lost in the fog that looms over the school at three pm-- that they still had time for the classics.

There’s something profound in the interaction that occurs sometimes. And that’s when I realize how young I am and how young I can be for a long time, if I just let my belief hang suspended, and keep believing in the empty shell of the pumpkin, because it will always be there, reassurance that things don’t change, that people don’t change, until they are finally destroyed, and put out of their misery.