Every year on Yom Kippur, the Rabbi has us read from Shaarei Teshuva, The Gates of Repentance,
“for transgressions against God, the Day of Atonement atones; but for transgressions
of one human being against another, the Day of Atonement does not atone until
they have made peace with one another.” It was Yom Kippur before my fourth year
of college that I decided I needed, as much as I wanted, to become a teacher.
The real reason I got into teaching, over and above anything
I’ve ever told anyone else, was to pay my penance. I’ve made a lot of
transgressions against other people, I’ve done a lot wrong, and most everything
I’ve done wrong, or poorly, comes from hubris or selfishness. I’m sure that
most of the wrongs I’ve done that I meant to be forgiven for, the times when
the fire under the bridge was an accident of circumstances, I’ve admitted, asked
forgiveness for, and really meant it. But how do you apologize and seek
forgiveness for holding selfishness and hubris and arrogance and condescension and
conceit in your heart for years?
I’ve always been enamored of the sentiment from Annie
Sullivan (how can we be sure that Helen Keller really said anything at all?) that
“the world is moved along, not only by the mighty shoves of its heroes, but
also by the aggregate of tiny pushes of each honest worker.” The idea that I
might, by my own tiny push, be able to help someone, somewhere, become the hero
they deserve to be, was something that had a lot of attachment for me. I picked
that.
I hoped that by working as hard as I could, by trying every
day to make some kid’s life a little bit better, that I could start to pay back
some of the horrible, horrible things that I’ve brought into the world. Obviously,
I was wrong. I was wrong because, obviously, I went into it for the wrong
reasons. I was seduced by the fourth tempter. Obviously, I’ve learned nothing
from T.S. Eliot. It wasn’t that I’ve always liked and been good at working with
children (the joy that filled my heart when I went back to the camp I’ve worked
at for years for a single day today and dozens of kids asked me to play with
them, to be their friend, to work there for the rest of the summer, is a
testament to how much I love that.) that I went into teaching. It wasn’t that I
had no other choices, I did. It certainly wasn’t that I wanted to save the
world, even I don’t have that much hubris. It wasn’t even that I wanted to help
a kid or two, like I said on my TFA application. That factored in, I suppose,
to my thinking, but eventually it just helped prop up the self-centered charade
I’ve been putting on at least two years. Ol’ T.S. was right, Redclay. “The last temptation is the greatest treason:/To
do the right deed for the wrong reason.”
I had someone tell me in a while ago, I think it was Ms.
Ianessa, one of the assistant principals of my high school, but I could be
wrong, that one day my face would be on the front page of a newspaper, and that
she hoped it was for a good reason, but that it was equally possible that I
would have become a terrorist or a serial killer. I’ve tried as hard as I could
to avoid the second fate, mostly because I know that that possibility is one of
the most realistic futures for my life that’s ever been put in front of me by
someone with expectations for my future. [Edit: I've thought more about this. I've dedicated six years now to ensuring that I don't become anything but a hardworking, upstanding, mostly anonymous member of our functioning society. Sometimes I've succeeded, sometimes I've failed, but this ain't no time to put me on a list.] Hearing that, and realizing how true
it could be, I think motivated me to keep my head down, to hopefully never be
noticed in any consequential way. That, too, pushed me toward teaching. I knew
I could try to execute my terrible plan to save myself from some imaginary
damnation while being relatively anonymous. Hopefully it would go well enough
that I could, after long enough, know that I had paid my penance and go off and
do something less consequential.
Of course, we all know exactly how the whole thing turned
out. It has become apparent after two years of mistakes mostly driven by my
hubris (telling them I could teach Spanish, my choice of grad program, thinking
I could help a student ever, thinking I could live in Detroit) and two years of
negative consequences driven mostly by my selfishness, (the whole teaching
thing in the first place, the idea that I could take some time for myself to do
other stuff, some important incidents in my personal life) I’ve failed. Honestly,
I’ve failed in one of the easiest positions a person could be in. I had two
classes to teach (one period of Spanish 2, four of Spanish 1) and I failed. I
had no class larger than 27, and I failed. Most of the kids in my classes wanted
to be there and I failed. It’s not too hard for me to explain why I failed,
either. I know it was because I approached this with hubris and selfishness.
There’s one thing I’ve been saying these last couple weeks
which is actually true, it’s that I need to go become a better person before I
can become a good teacher. I think I’ve learned over these last two years that,
even though I’m really bad at the job, for a variety of obvious reasons, it
turns out that I actually like the whole “teaching” part, or more accurately,
the part where a student or two learns something. In my classes, the students
learned mostly by trying themselves, I was never especially helpful for them,
and I have no idea whether I made things better or worse, but I‘m pretty damn
sure it was the latter. I’m sorry, and I told the students that at the end of
the school year.
So I suppose now I’d actually like to be a teacher, and I’m
just looking for things that will help me be a better person so that I can get
there for real. I’ve considered enlisting in the Coast Guard, cooking at a diner,
and driving a truck. Each of those has its own benefits and drawbacks, and I’m
not sure which I’ll pick eventually.
Right now, though I’m going down to Charleston, South
Carolina to work for a very good man named John Tecklenburg. He’s running for
mayor of Charleston, and even though I’ve done nothing to deserve the
opportunity, he’s given me the chance to work on his campaign. I’ll be in
Charleston through November, and I don’t know what I’m doing after that, but I
hear Coast Guard Officer Candidate School starts in the winter, and I know
Truck Driver schools never close.
I know people have a lot of expectations of me. I’m sorry I
failed y’all, but I guess being such a selfish and arrogant little prick set me
right up on that path. Hopefully I’m getting up and getting better.
