An Open Letter to the World from an American Teacher in the Year 2020

I am a high school Latin teacher in Tennessee. I have been teaching at a Catholic school for the past 4 years and have been a teacher in some form for the better part of 14 years.

I was born in 1984.

This world now feels like the book 1984.

This is my personal story, which is important because the micro often reflects the macro, and my recommendations will follow.

I first began studying Latin in 7^th grade. I went into a public middle school from being home schooled, and my score on a Reading test was high enough that I was automatically enrolled in Latin. From the start, I loved it. Something about the language just clicked with me. I particularly liked gaining insight into where English words came from. When I learned that Arbor Day came from Arbor, the Latin word for tree, for example, I felt as if I understood that word on a deeper level, almost as if I had gotten a glimpse of its soul, to find out that thousands of years ago, that was what someone called a tree, and for some reason it stuck. I felt as if I knew more about the essence of a tree because I had the secret inside scoop of that linguistic link.

I was a bit chubby, nerdy, shy, and awkward, but Latin class was a place where I was comfortable. I both enjoyed it and knew I was good at it. It was also positive for me socially to be around like-minded peers. I do see the social benefits of school. That is part of why I became a teacher.

It was a fluke that the rural public school I attended offered Latin. I went back into home school for 8^th grade, because we moved to the city and my mom didn’t want to put me in the public school with a bad reputation that I was zoned for. I studied Latin on my own some during that year away from it, though in truth I mostly spent 8^th grade listening to Nirvana and eating Skittles and playing Super Mario Brothers 3 on Nintendo, when I wasn’t reading. I was a surprisingly self-motivated home school student who loved to read, would sometimes devour 13 books a day, but I did have a bad habit of diving into trashy young adult vampire novels instead of the science and math textbooks I should have been cracking. Home school taught me how to give something my full attention for an extended period of time, though, really dive in and lose track of the hours, and I think that being able to zone in and notice all the details was part of why I liked Latin.

I kept taking Latin in high school. I went to a large urban public high school. My mom and my stepdad moved us across town to a better school district. (The school I was zoned for, which she did not want me to attend because she didn’t think it was safe, would later be the first school where I taught. She tried to get me into the lottery for a magnet school, but the Board of Education did not accept the report card that she gave them as my teacher. Please don’t get me started on how kids have to literally win the lottery to get a quality education in some places.) Again, it was just by chance that Latin was available as a foreign language. Most high schools have Spanish and French, maybe German or Mandarin if you’re lucky. Mine had Latin, and for that I am grateful.

Oh, high school. Sometimes the Nirvana refrain “You’re in high school again… No recess!” runs through my head. Of all the things I could have decided to do for a job, I willingly chose to go back to high school and stay there for the rest of my life.

But my high school Latin teacher was my idol. She is to this day among the classiest women I have ever encountered. She always treated me with kindness and respect, and she was brilliant. I wanted to know everything she knew. I wished I could just absorb the contents of her brain through osmosis. She also taught my AP English and AP European History classes, ran the student council, coached our Bill of Rights debate team and went with us on a trip to Washington, D.C., coached the Academic Olympics Quizbowl team, and so much more… she seemed superhuman to me, all the things she knew and did. (I would go on to run into her, over a decade later, at a school where I did one of my student teaching placements. She was teaching another subject besides Latin, so she was not my official mentor, but I got to sit in the back of her class again and observe. She gave me a notebook with an inscription wishing me well with my teaching, a treasure that I have kept since, and getting to eat lunch with her in the faculty lounge made me feel like I was in the presence of a rock star. Seeing her again at that pivotal time meant the world to me. It was a poignant reminder of why I was doing everything I was doing.)

         

I took four years of Latin in high school, including two years of Advanced Placement. I made 5s, the highest possible score, on both AP exams. At the time we did a year of Vergil and then a year of Ovid and Catullus. I loved those writers as if they were long-lost friends speaking from across the centuries. Studying rhetorical devices, learning how to analyze literature, deciphering what they might have written in between the lines, it all just set my mind ablaze. I remember learning the word ‘conflagration’ in English through Latin – a Latin word on my vocabulary list was defined as a conflagration, and I had to look it up because I didn’t know what a conflagration was. The way I felt about Latin was a conflagration. My life path might have looked very different if I had not found Latin at an early age and committed myself to keeping it alive. 

I had grown up poor. We relied on food stamps and help from family and friends at times when I was growing up. My mom worked odd jobs and did everything she could to keep a roof over our heads. She was devoted to me and my best interest. There is no other woman in this world like my mother. She put me first, always. We had a big house with an acre of land and were doing well when I was born, but after my parents divorced, my mom and I pretty much fended for ourselves, often under duress. We didn’t have a car or phone for a long stretch. I remember walking to the grocery store, comparing prices to get the best deals, and counting out change to pay. There was much love in our home, though. My mother taught me with enthusiasm, taking me to a local hiking trail to do my times tables as we walked. It is because of my mother that I am however intelligent I might be, because she was my most important teacher.

         

After high school, I went to Vanderbilt University, an expensive top 20 private university, on need-based aid and scholarships. I had a free ride, including room and board. I could have studied a lot of things there. Engineering, science, business. I was smart. I could have looked at things practically and chosen a major that would yield a higher income. But I picked Classical Languages.

I loved studying Latin and Ancient Greek in depth at the college level. I adored my classes, which were small and intimate. I also had a work-study position as an office assistant in the Classical Studies department, and I remember wanting to read as many of the articles I photocopied for my professors as I could, again wishing I could absorb the contents of their brains through osmosis. My professors were like gods and goddesses to me, in that they possessed wisdom far beyond my own. I got to study under a brilliant woman who had been my own beloved Latin teacher’s dissertation adviser. I translated an absurd number of poems and chunks of prose, memorized countless vocabulary words, and pored over complex grammar charts and rules about things like the sequence of tenses in subordinate clauses. I don’t even want to talk about strong aorist verbs. There’s a reason people say, “It’s all Greek to me!” Heavily inflected dead languages are not easy.

I was also interested in Russian literature and history, and I wound up studying Russian and getting a minor in it. I liked the different set of skills involved in learning a heavily inflected language that was spoken; it made me think about language in general differently. I was especially drawn to those voices from the past who had kept speaking up under oppression and censorship, whether that was under the emperor Augustus or Stalin.

After graduating, I got a job as a legal assistant, but I wanted to be a Latin teacher. I was determined. I left my cushy office gig, where I made a comparable salary to sit in a quiet room all by myself and listen to books on tape on my headphones and type, to teach at an inner-city public high school in Tennessee. I taught Latin I and II and World Geography. My Latin classes were fairly small, but my two sections of World Geography had 36 and 37 kids respectively. I was 22 years old. I had never taken any education courses. I had been hired on a temporary alternative license. I just dove in with a bachelor’s degree and a lot of big ideas about how to empower young people by enriching their minds with language, giving them words, giving them critical thinking skills, teaching them about the continuum of time and history and civilization and their context within it. I had no clue what I was doing. But I was sincere.

I struggled in my first teaching job. It is important to me that I make a disclaimer here. It is true that most of the students at this school were Black or Hispanic, as at the second school I will discuss in Brooklyn. Whites were a minority in both schools. This does not mean, though, nor am I in any way trying to suggest, please allow me to make this clear, that Black or Hispanic students are in any way more violent or inherently worse-behaved compared to their white peers. Look at all the devastating school shootings carried out by white males.

         

Socioeconomic status is the single most significant indicator of success with educational and other life outcomes, and this was a marginalized community where there had often been many generations of trauma. As per Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, those who are unable to feel secure in their basic safety and survival are less likely to achieve self-actualization. I saw the consequences of poverty, not characteristics of race, but sadly, in our country, racism has influenced and contributed to poverty. We are so steeped in racism that we are like fish who do not realize they are wet.

I had a student who assaulted me on his first day back from alternative school. He had been on my roster but not in my class, until the day I met him, when he shoved me through a closed door into the hallway and I fell on my tailbone. It hurt. The boys who had been in my class and developed bonds with me rushed to my defense, and I had to keep about 10 of them from beating him up. I broke up fights between teenagers who were bigger than me. I saw blood and hair in the hallways after some of these fights, can still picture the shining smears of hairy blood on the metal lockers.       

It was a rough school. We also had fun. I tried to do creative things, get them to write comic strips in Latin. I brought in magazines and children’s books from thrift stores for them to cut up and make collages with. I taught them about the Latin words for their astrology signs, had them do art projects, tried to make things relatable and engaging. I forgot to clarify what was school appropriate and wound up with the illustrated adventures of Sordidus Leno et Canes – The Dirty Pimp and his Bitches. I couldn’t help but laugh. Sometimes they were naughty, once making me cry by breaking into my locked desk drawer and stealing the candy I would have given them anyway, but mostly they were FUNNY.

Many of my students were openly gang members and had already been in trouble with authorities. Some had spent time in juvenile detention facilities and reported to probation officers. I taught a 15 year old girl who already had 2 children of her own. I taught a girl from Guatemala who spoke very little English and was also hearing impaired. I wore a device with a microphone on it that clipped to my shirt and wirelessly connected to another piece in her ear, so she could at least make out what I was saying. That was the first step. Helping her understand it was the harder part. But we found common ground in Spanish cognates. I taught her English and Latin; she taught me Spanish. When I left that school, she gave me a 3 ring binder she had decorated for me with intricate flowers (she was an excellent artist) and the words ‘God is with you and will always be with you’. I still have that binder today; it is one of my treasures.

One day I had written Crab on the board as the meaning for the Latin word Cancer. A boy jumped up, erased the word Crab from the board, and told me it was a bad word, I shouldn’t use it. I Urban Dictionary’d it when I got home and found that CRAB stood for Crips Respect All Bloods. I guess he was a Crip. But they were sweet, even my toughest, most posturing boys. Deep down, they were just children.

I could see that most if not all of the children I taught were economically disadvantaged, and this was clearly the source of most if not all of their problems. But in spite of the odds being stacked against them, there were so many who really, really tried, who had an undaunted courage and optimism, an astounding work ethic. I remember a girl in World Geography who poured her heart into a project on China, stood up proudly with her lovely, meticulously decorated colorful poster board to give a well-researched presentation, not fazed by her more distracted, disinterested classmates. Trying to motivate those distracted, disinterested kids, I introduced a system of rewards. I was not a fan of the punitive discipline system at the school. It wasn’t working, either. Administration was overwhelmed trying to enter all the referrals into the computer. I sometimes helped the assistant principal with stacks of forms during my off period.

My absolute favorite disciplinary referral that I read: “Student called me an English bastard, tore up the original referral form, and hid under the bleachers.” One day I was in the office and watched this student run by with a big grin, hamming it up, pumping his arms like a cartoon character, sprinting with exaggerated leaps and bounds, running with style, running gleefully. Two staff members were chasing him. They looked winded. The woman at the front desk commented, “Is that Anthony? We been tryin’ to catch him.”

If they behaved well in my class all week, I told them, then we could go outside on Friday, or stay in and have a board games day if the weather were bad. This, the promise of not a punishment, but something they could earn, was unparalleled in effectiveness. Their behavior improved rapidly. When we would go outside, as the boys played basketball and the girls jumped rope, my heart would swell with love for them. We would just talk, get to know one another. I would find out what their favorite shows and movies were, what kind of music they liked. Sometimes they rapped for me, and their word play was CLEVER. I was a big fan of my kids. I had powerful conversations with them over Scrabble. One young Black man who in retrospect reminds me of both Trayvon Martin and Elijah McClain was an old soul, a philosopher type, and our discussions about everything under the sun as we tried to spell words and put them on the Scrabble board became something I looked forward to every week.

I did not want to give up on my students, but because I was not certified, I received letters from the Board of Education stating that I would have to enroll in graduate school immediately to return in the fall. I needed to be in a teacher licensure program in order to keep my job, and I was not in a financial position to do so. Because of personal monetary concerns, struggling to pay my bills, not being able to come up with even the necessary GRE registration and application fees, let alone the hefty deposits for the program I wanted to do at Belmont University, I made the difficult choice to postpone being a teacher.

Feeling like a coward, a loser, and above all else a failure, I returned to my legal assistant position and was promoted to a paralegal within a year. I could have stayed there and made decent money, had government benefits, to do a much easier job. But it wasn’t what I wanted to do with my life. My dream, my singular, only, weird, oddly specific dream, was to be a high school Latin teacher. This was my dream, at least from the time I was about 20 years old, if not from when I was in high school myself. I wanted to become qualified to be a high school Latin teacher. I also considered becoming a professor, looking to teach at the college level, but I kept coming back to wanting to teach high school.

In 2008, I decided to move to New York. I lived with my marvelous aunts, who helped me get on my feet, and worked in an office in Times Square as an actuarial assistant, then got my own place. I was still interested in applying to go back to school to become a teacher. I wanted to do my Master of Arts in Teaching for Latin Grades 7-12 at Hunter College CUNY, and I was trying to save money for that goal. In the fall of 2009, I was accepted to Hunter College CUNY, and I intended to work full-time while going to school part-time.

Just as I was entering the program, the economy tanked, and I was laid off. I was told that it was not my fault, I had done nothing wrong, I had simply been the last one on, so I was the first one off. I received unemployment, and I decided to attend school full-time. I also took out student loans, not even thinking about how they might affect my future credit score. To me, whatever amount of debt I had to assume to get to be a teacher would be worth it, and surely they would do income-based repayment, so maybe I would have lower payments, because I knew I wouldn’t be making much money as a teacher. Maybe I could work in a school that qualified for loan forgiveness. I signed the forms without a second thought, and that was the inception of a debt-to-income ratio that will probably make it so that I am never able to purchase a home and have had to pay predatory interest rates on my car loans.

I loved my masters classes. They were fascinating. I wrote down every word my professors said, wanting to internalize all of their wisdom, soak it in. I felt certain I was on the right path at last. During my second semester at Hunter, I was offered a job teaching Latin at a charter high school in Brooklyn, which I eagerly accepted. I started as a leave replacement, and then I was given my own classroom the next year. If I had found my first teaching job challenging, I had no idea what I was in for. Without badmouthing the school, I will say that I did not feel teachers were adequately supported. For a number of reasons, I ultimately decided that this was not the position for me. Sometimes I regret leaving, wish I had been braver and stronger, but I have forgiven myself for it and made peace with it. I am not a mother, but I can only imagine that teacher guilt must be similar to mom guilt. At the end of the day, all we can do is move on and try to do better.

There were several discouraging and heartbreaking moments. I had been assigned a group of advisees. One of them was a shy, quiet girl whom I adored. This girl was minding her own business, just changing clothes in the gym locker room, when some other girls started bullying her, saying that she had a “fat pussy”. They continued berating her and making fun of her fat pussy in my classroom while I was trying to teach, bringing her to tears, and when I intervened and let it be known that this was not acceptable, the ringleader of the bully girls cornered me behind my desk, threatening to kick my ass. I was intimidated, but I tried to match her hardness and not show it. I finally broke down, grabbed a form from the untouched pile in my top desk drawer, and did my first write-up, feeling that offering rewards for better behavior was not enough, this did warrant action. I felt an imperative urge to protect my advisee.

The bully girl wept hysterically when I said that I was going to call home, screaming that she would be beaten. I actually really liked the bully girl. She was smart, quick, hilarious, and had great taste in music. She was the person who told me to listen to Nicki Minaj for the first time, and I am still a Nicki Minaj fan. I have a soft spot for tough women who are outspoken. When I kept her after class and spoke with her privately, she begged me to please not get her in trouble. I found out from administration that she was living with a grandparent, having been removed from an abusive home. I ripped up the referral form and tried to deal with her behavior one-on-one, work it out between the two of us, and not draw negative attention to her in class if possible, but she still acted out.

I began to feel that I did not have the tools and resources to give these kids what they needed, and I did not feel that the school was equipped to deal with everything our students brought to the table, either. Teachers were expected to work 12-14 hour days, give, give, give, and when a teacher who had gone to Harvard was fired for falling asleep out of pure exhaustion while proctoring a standardized test, I was done. I did not feel teachers were respected at the school. I also felt that the school was in over its head. They were in danger of losing their charter. There was talk of Latin being replaced with remedial math.

I did my best to reach the kids. I brought in toys, made games, laminated snakes and ladders boards, bought candy, had class parties, found songs we could sing together, experimented with stations activities, groups, projects… I was desperate to make our classroom environment a positive one. One of my favorite days was a lesson on animals, where I encouraged them to make animal sounds, and we all giggled our way through what felt like real, playful learning. They turned their arms into elephant trucks, I did the same, and we cracked up. I saw boys who had been rude to me smiling genuinely, laughing until their sparkling eyes were full of tears. I would ask, “Ego sum Leo. Quid dico? (I am a lion. What do I say?)” and they would roar back at me with exhilarating force. Had I known then that a call-and-response communication style is often used in Black culture, such as at church, I might have done more lessons like this to begin with.

The moments it worked, it was like magic.

I made plenty of mistakes. I wince to remember some of them. I was finally taking some psychology and sociological foundations of education classes at Hunter, but I was still early in my program, and I had not yet confronted my white privilege or learned enough about missteps in communication between different cultural groups. I took what I perceived as aggression to heart, not realizing that perhaps I was misperceiving their attempts to stand up for themselves and taking everything entirely too personally. I did not realize my own micro-aggressions, how out of touch I was. I thought that because I ‘didn’t see color,’ I viewed them all the same and considered them equal to one another and to me, didn’t think I was better than them, that was enough. It wasn’t. Surely a hip young Brooklyn white woman like myself who liked rap couldn’t be racist. I was not consciously. But I was in my behavior and choice of words at times. I was also not fully cognizant of the scope and extent of institutionalized racism and my role in that.

The worst thing I ever did as a teacher was this: I was making something, I honestly forget what, I think maybe a box for an exploratory lesson I’d planned on Pandora, and whatever I had come up with as my final product was not great. Not thinking, just talking on my feet while moving about the room showing off my creation, trying to be self-deprecating, I made the comment, “Well, it’s a little ghetto, but it’ll work.” As soon as I said it, I realized I had misspoken and sounded like a racist asshole. I wanted to face-palm when I recognized my error. A girl in the front row asked, loudly, not missing a beat, “What do you MEAN it’s a little GHETTO?” I stopped, backed up, and apologized, fumbling to explain that I hadn’t meant it like that, I just meant it wasn’t very well put together, and in that moment, I could see that I had become a clueless, offensive white lady teacher. I could see that my words mattered, and I had used words in a way that caused harm. For these kids, living in the ghetto was their day-to-day reality. I turned it into a tone deaf joke. I’m sorry, kiddos. I let you down by being lame.

Another terrible day involved an altercation between two boys who were always fighting. They’d gotten in each other’s faces and were yelling and doing everything short of punching each other, and it was escalating. I got administration to come in, feeling out of my element as I flatly said to them, “Two boys in my room, I think they’re … going to be fighting.” After a student discipline person came in and dealt with it, a whole fiasco, once things were calmer, I tried to talk to the kids about how I was there for them, I wanted to be there for them, but they needed to work with me, meet me halfway. I attempted to open up to them about myself, saying, “You know, before I worked here, I was a paralegal, and I could have made a lot more money doing that kind of work, but I WANT to be here with you, I’m choosing to be your teacher because I care. I’m on your side.”

What did I want, a pat on the back? A certificate? A trophy? I didn’t even realize how insensitive and condescending it must have sounded. What was their other option, but to be there? Why did I not see that it was tactless and wrong to brag about my earning potential as an educated white person?

The boy who had just been fighting piped up from the back of the room. He had been born addicted to hard drugs and often sucked his thumb, seemed especially young for his age. Apparently what I said hit a nerve, because their previous teacher, who had left them, had said something similar. He in essence told me I was just another bitch like her.

“Why are these white people always telling us how much money they could make doing something else? Go do it, then!”

He was right, in his direct, no bullshit way. 10 years later, in the thick of the Black Lives Matter movement, I feel his outrage. I wish I could go back and do better. White teachers have failed Black students so many times in so many ways. I am ashamed to have been one of them.

I was also going through some stuff in my personal life. I had been violently raped and was not doing well with it mentally. While I have been committed to being anti-racist since I was a child, it had unfortunately been a Black man who had most recently raped me, and I was having some reactions that I couldn’t control around trauma and panic. I had dreams that my students were insects crawling all over me, into my ears, mouth, and nose, woke up in cold sweats, felt that I could never stop thinking about teaching, couldn’t shut it off, and felt in danger all the time. The boys I taught were not the man who raped me, but when they were violent, I was extra afraid. I have also been raped by white men in my life, the ratio is actually 7:1 white to Black, and again, I do not in any way mean to imply that Black men are more violent than white – I think if anything we are seeing the exact opposite in our society right now – but that was where I was at the time. I would get triggered by angry Black boys in spite of myself. They had done nothing to me. They were just angry. They had valid reasons to be angry.

I tried to hang in there. Things would get better temporarily, I’d have a breakthrough with one class period, and then everything would go to pieces as soon as the bell rang and the next class came in. If I had a good day with all classes, the next day would be a shitshow. We were given opportunities for professional development, trainings on spoken Latin, different methods, and I kept going back to the drawing board and coming in to try something new. I rearranged my desks so many times to fit different learning configurations. The kids teased me about how many times I’d moved their desks. Movie talks? You want me to step-by-step narrate a video that they’re watching in English in Latin? Comprehensible input? Sure, I’ll try it!

I would sit cross-legged on the floor of my small studio apartment in Brooklyn to grade and organize papers, spread them out around me in piles until I was in a sea of them, until late at night. I was also trying to take classes at Hunter still. I would get up at 5:30 am, ride my bike a couple miles to the high school, teach, stay after, then take the train into the city, then the train back to Brooklyn, not getting home until 10 pm most nights. I was burning out fast. I couldn’t sleep.

Eventually I decided to withdraw from my grad classes and take a leave of absence that semester, focus on my job. I felt torn – I was doing the program to become a licensed teacher, but I already was a teacher, or at least pretending to be one at my day job, and I would need more than 24 hours in a day to do everything my days had been asking of me. I remember trying to complete some extremely difficult Bradley’s Arnold Latin Composition homework on the subway. I’d left myself that hour commute to do it, thinking that would be enough, then labored over the sentences, realizing that they were much harder than I’d expected and I wouldn’t be able to go quickly and accurately. The professor was going to grade for accuracy. When my stop came and I had to get up with my book and my notebook, I realized that I was not even one quarter of the way through the assignment, and I still had to go in and prepare to teach the next day. I felt exhausted and sad. I just wanted to be able to do my damn homework, but I knew there was no way I would be able to finish it in time. I chose teaching over my graduate program.

Then, one day, I was simply done. Constant anxiety nightmares. I would wake up in a staticky fog of ears-ringing terror. I decided to leave my job. I decided that no job was worth losing my sanity.

I also left New York. I traveled for a couple months, drove to the west coast with my two cats Artemis and Athena along for the ride in my van, and visited family and friends along the way. I did some soul-searching and writing, trying to clear my head and figure out next steps. Then I returned to my home town and transferred to Belmont University, where I’d originally wanted to get my masters. I took the GRE, which Hunter had not required but they did, and scored in the 97^th percentile on verbal. (Let’s not talk about the math section.) I decided that maybe I hadn’t done well at that school in Brooklyn, but I still wanted to teach, and perhaps I could find an environment where I could feel safe and also be successful. Where maybe kids and teachers would be supported a little more.

I spent the next 5 years working my way through graduate school. I also took on more debt. Belmont’s tuition was not cheap, but they were the only school in the area that offered licensure for Latin, so I didn’t bat an eye. The money didn’t matter to me. I don’t think it does to most teachers. It should be obvious that money is far from our motivator. We have a calling. It is a vocation (from the Latin verb Vocare, to call – sorry, I can’t help myself) and a passion and a mission for us, I believe I am fair in saying.

I started advertising my services as a tutor. It all began with one little post on Craigslist that I thought nothing would come of. My first student was a middle-schooler who was training for spelling bees. She was also a Latin student. I would work with her about four hours a week on Latin and spelling. She eventually went to the National Spelling Bee, and I couldn’t have been more proud of her. Getting to work one-on-one with her was such a gift. It allowed for the development of a bond that I couldn’t have imagined. I cared about her as a person – her mind, yes, her intellect, but also her feelings, her interests, her life experiences. She was both student and almost like a little sister. We worked together for about 3 or 4 years. I also tutored her brother in English and her mother for the GRE. They treated me like family and offered me yummy authentic Korean foods I might never have gotten to taste otherwise. 

I was consistently stunned by how generous and welcoming the families of my tutoring and home school students were. I am including the following anecdotes not to say that I should be spoiled or have offerings made to me as a teacher, but to show examples of feeling respected as an educator. I also believe that most families would love to do these kinds of things for their children’s teachers if they had the financial ability, which so many do not in this economy.

Another favorite tutoring student’s mother made me this delicious tea from India and brought me a little dish of cookies or a package of mini-muffins every time I worked with her daughter, thanked me profusely, insisted on paying me very well…. this student’s parents sent me a large check in a congratulations card when I got married, I suspect because they were grateful to me that I had edited their daughter’s college essay and she got into an awesome school. That young woman was way ahead of her age in terms of maturity, discipline, and focus, and I know that she will be a force in this world. She was smarter than me, and I hope she knows that.

Another favorite tutoring student’s family would invite me to stay for dinner most nights, and if I had time, we would relax on their patio and talk like friends over yummy food. If I couldn’t stay, they would give me food to eat while we worked. I always wanted to stay longer, but I usually had another student to get to right after, so I’d have to hurry because I only had travel time between my appointments. Her grandmother fixed me a natural remedy cough medicine one day when I was sick, and I started making her mixture of turmeric, lemon juice, and honey as a staple of my response to any cold. Her recipe kept me going when I was losing my voice. This family was also Indian, and the cultural difference in terms of valuing people was readily apparent.

Another favorite tutoring student’s parents, who were both doctors from Argentina, would make a point of fixing me a fancy latte with some kind of homemade pastry I’d never had before on the side every time I came to work with their daughter. I wound up taking that family’s cat when I moved because the mother was allergic and they felt bad about leaving him alone in his own gigantic sun room. She asked if I knew anyone who would be willing to take him. I said that I was. I changed his name from Hoosier to Hodor to Hephaestus back to Hodor, and to this day, their former cat is one of the biggest blessings in my life, literally, because he’s a huge cat, and also because he embodies pure love. The mom accidentally backed into my car one evening in her driveway and felt so bad that she paid more than the cost to fix it. They were good to me.

I had so many favorite students.

I got to work with a tiny class of 3 home school girls who were like my Mini-Mes, smart, sweet young ladies who were avid Harry Potter fans and were crazy advanced in their reading and writing skills for 6^th and 7^th graders. They loved me, and I loved them. I could feel it. I knew it. Their moms and I arranged an end-of-the-year reward day where we got to go to a trendy coffee shop and do our lesson there, instead of working at the dining room table like usual, and noticing how cool they seemed to feel as they ordered their drinks made my heart grow 3 sizes. Their mother was a licensed teacher who had gone into homeschooling her daughters and other people’s children. They wrote me the most touching cards. We used Lingua Latina, a text I’d never taught from before, with a reading-based approach. Their acquisition of reading comprehension in Latin was impressive, and all we did was read good stories, as my mother read to me when I was a child. As a side note, when I was in the 4th grade, my Reading score on the Tennessee standardized competency test was that of a 12th grader. My mother read to me constantly. Just doing this basic thing, reading to your children, will do wonders for their brains.

I had one tutoring student with Asperger’s who was a self-described metalhead and would show me the most impressive musical instruments he had constructed from scratch, give me concerts. I worked with him at least 3 hours a week for 3 years, and he taught me how to pronounce Latin more accurately because he had an ear for long vowels and it bothered him when I messed them up. His mom, a busy, important doctor, always left frozen pizzas for him to make for us while we worked. She gave me a lot of bonuses. It could be tricky to get him to stay on track, as all he wanted to talk to me about was music, and I would say that that young man singlehandedly taught me how to be firm but polite. There was a digital thermometer on the window, and he would keep an eye on it. Whenever it read 66.6 degrees, which was often, he would say, “I caught it being a Satanist again!” He would make me laugh so hard. You never knew what would come out of that child’s mouth.

I kept adding students, more quickly than I’d expected, and soon I was so busy I could barely schedule my days. It was a like jigsaw puzzle every morning, how to make the pieces fit. If I were to pull out a sample page from my planner during that time, the day might

- begin at 7 a.m. across town teaching AP Latin to a boy who’d had to leave his private school over drug charges at his dining room table

- go to leading small classes of my own with students at a home school support company, for which I designed the course of study

– go to tutoring a 3^rd grader in Reading, hoping I’d remembered my bag of books I got him at the library

– go to my own class on Educational Psychology, had to get there early to find parking

– go to more tutoring Latin, maybe Latin II this time, lots of grammar, so I’d grab a strong Starbucks coffee to keep my mind going

– finish around 9:30 p.m. usually at my metalhead’s dining room table. I would finally have time to stop and eat with him, and it was such a relief. 

I had done some tutoring during college, and I loved it. I have always adored tutoring. I started developing relationships with all the public and private schools in my county, and a couple neighboring counties, who offered Latin. I would tutor one student from one Latin teacher, and then more of that teacher’s students would suddenly come out of the woodworks wanting help. And I started getting more into home school support. I worked with some umbrella programs and academies and also for myself as an independent contractor, just through word of mouth. Overall, I tutored Latin and other subjects, taught home school students (either one-on-one or in small groups of 2-6), and did a lot with standardized test preparation. I also worked at the front desk in a yoga studio and at Barnes and Noble for a while. At one point it occurred to me that I had like 4 or 5 jobs and still could barely afford my rent and necessities like food and hygiene items. 

I also worked as a substitute teacher in metro public schools. I substitute taught everything from kindergarten to 12^th grade. It was enlightening to see how much things could vary within a city, in terms of how nice the schools were. Some classrooms had brand new pilates balls for the kids to sit on instead of desks, to help them get out their nervous energy. Others didn’t even have enough desks for all the kids, had them sitting in broken ones or bunched together at tables.

I will never forget the two days I spent shoved into a former closet with elementary school children who had all just arrived in the country and had English vocabularies of less than 30 words. They were amazing, those children. I can still recall their big, open, searching, vaguely frightened eyes boring into me, trying so hard to understand what I was saying, and how ardently I tried to get my meaning across using gestures and pictures. My heart hurt for them. It still does. My country has broken my heart with how it has let so many innocent, perfect beings fall through the cracks and into dehumanizing conditions under ICE. My heart hurts for immigrant children, especially those currently in cages because of my government.

In addition to my paid work, I had multiple unpaid practicum placements in schools as part of my teaching program. First I would go in to observe a class, just be a fly on the wall, and then I would be given tasks to do to assist the teacher, usually tutoring kids who were struggling so she could work with the rest. Every single teacher I saw should have had an aid at all times.

I helped a fantastic, dedicated 3^rd grade teacher in a portable for one semester. More than 70% of his students were learning English as a second language, and most were living in poverty. I hadn’t done as much with elementary school kids until then, since they don’t typically learn Latin, but I got the worst flu I’d ever had that semester, and I could only think it was because I was surrounded by all of those younger kids’ germs in a poorly ventilated space. They don’t have the same boundaries as students even a few years older. They don’t think to cover their mouths or wash their hands, and even if they do, they’re in an overcrowded trailer. I have wondered how that teacher and his kids will fare during COVID-19, if he is still teaching. The theme for his classroom was Minions from Despicable Me, with him as their Gru, and he did so much with so little to make each student feel loved and important.

I became more interested in issues of social justice and equity in education. My classes at Belmont started blowing my mind open. Had I been viewing myself as a white savior instead of seeing the inherent value in all of my students? They did not have a cultural deficit. We dissected the scholarship of Ruby Payne, and her negative stereotypes of those in poverty disgusted. I was the one who had been small-minded and blind to the bigger picture. I began to confront my privilege – which is an ongoing process.

I had a life-changing experience during my practicum at a school for students with severe disabilities. Many of these students were medically fragile and had significant special needs. I will never forget taking in the facial reactions of a child in a wheelchair who had a feeding tube and was non-verbal as he watched The Lion King on TV. He was smiling, laughing, delighted, vocalizing gleefully. The sounds he made might not have been words, but they were communication, they were emotion, they were music to my ears. I began to see that I must recognize the dignity of all students, do everything in my power to nurture their unique talents, and believe that all children are capable of learning AND deserve equal access to quality education. I wrote a poem about it that I read in front of the Diverse Learners class that the practicum was affiliated with. I also arranged for a yoga teacher to come in and give a private class to those future teachers and our professor to help them relax. That professor had us read a book called Expecting Adam that made me look at the unique gifts that individuals with Downs’ Syndrome possess. She encouraged us to use person-first learning. Not a disabled person. A person with a disability. Respect the intrinsic humanity of someone before you mention a condition they might have.

I happened to be assigned to the high school where I taught as a 22 year old, as an almost 32 year old, for a project on contextual factors. I was to research the demographics and statistics of the school, do classroom observations, and answer a lengthy list of questions, then present them to the class with my group. During that placement, I observed a teacher who told me, at the end of the day after students had left, that he was a veteran, and that teaching at that school was worse than being in war. He told me about how he and his wife brought in clothes and food for the kids as much as they could, were always trying to get people to donate, had wept with their arms around students’ families after drive-bys in nearby public housing. He cried as he spoke of students who had been shot and killed. Returning to the first school where I taught and getting a sense of context was part of why I was able to forgive myself for not being Superwoman when I was young and ignorant. If an older man who had been in war found it difficult, wouldn’t it make sense that a 22 year old would, too?

I took an elective class on teaching English as a Second Language and another on the History of the English Language that were both eye-opening, two of my favorite classes at Belmont. As I read about how Black English had formed, as a way for slaves brought to America from different places with different languages to talk to one another, I made a vow to never correct or look down on a kid ever again for using ‘improper’ grammar. This example from my textbook has stuck with me all these years: If you say something like “You be trippin’!” – this early use among slaves of ‘be’ for all forms of the verb ‘to be,’ taking out the complications of ‘are’ and ‘were’ and ‘have been’ and ‘had been’ and ‘will have been,’ was a way to facilitate communication among slaves learning English together and not sharing another common language, and it was actually much more efficient and to the point, when I thought about it.

As I read about how to shelter and scaffold for English language learners, tried to empathize and imagine how I would feel if I were thrust into a learning environment where I couldn’t understand what was being said around me, I knew I was going to look at the world differently going forward. As I read about the poor educational opportunities and outcomes for Native Americans, I was shocked. How could things be so uneven? Can anyone legitimately say that all men are created equal if children’s experiences of life can vary so drastically based only on where and to whom they happen to be born?

If I try to remember all my hundreds of students, if I close my eyes and think of them, I see a mental slideshow of their smiling faces. I remember all the joy and inside jokes. I had such a blast with my home school kids, one of whom was 8 years old and a Latin genius, just a prodigy at Latin. We would play with toys and talk about them in Latin. Years later, I randomly happened to see him win numerous awards at a state Junior Classical League convention, and I was so happy to think that I might have helped lay a solid foundation for his future studies. I met students at their homes, at libraries, at coffee shops, in empty Sunday school classrooms in churches, in my tiny classroom at a home school support and tutoring company, and at a home school academy that met once a week to provide home schoolers with a ‘normal’ school day of classes and socialization.

I did my best to learn from my mistakes in the past, to be kind, above all else, and to be more responsive to my students as individuals. What did they care about? What did they like? A major shift happened when it struck me like a bolt of lightning that I didn’t teach Latin, I taught children, and I had to connect with them as people before I could teach them anything. Why should they want to learn from me if I didn’t care about them? I also got to design and deliver my own curriculum for the first time with my home school kids, learn the ropes of planning out a year in advance and pacing on my own, not following a department’s map.

My poor students must have felt like guinea pigs as I tried out new methods and strategies I was learning about in graduate school on them in real time, but I wanted to use best practices. I was studying the relationship between physical movement and learning, and as part of this, I developed a yoga routine that went with the forms of Hic Haec Hoc. I wanted to be good at what I did.

An interesting thing happened. I started getting way better at Latin, probably because I was working with so many different levels concurrently. In a single day, I might do Latin I, II, III, and IV, have to sight-read a passage from an author I’d never read before, revisit concepts such as dependent subjunctive clauses that I might not have understood that well the first time around, memorize that Qui Quae Quod chart YET AGAIN with a kid, and then go back to the first declension… Repetition is the mother of learning.

I didn’t just tutor Latin. I branched out. I taught English, reading, writing, even basic math, ACT, SAT, GRE… other things I’m forgetting, I’m sure. I helped run a teachers’ in-service on how to prepare kids for the ACT. I helped a single mother trying to get into college edit her admissions essay. I developed a beautiful friendship with a grandmother who wanted to improve her writing and English grammar. Her mother was from the Philippines, and she had learned English as a second language as a child. She moved around a lot, attended different schools, and was self-conscious about very minor errors she made. She fixed me tea and treats, cooked lunch for me every time we met, took me to dinner sometimes, went for walks with me, and took some of my favorite pictures of myself for practice with her photography business. I loved her dearly. It was because she was a face of kindness and love to me, and she was Catholic, that I was willing to consider working for the Catholic Church.

I worked with all ages, ranging from 5 to 50s, adults and young people from a variety of cultural backgrounds. It was teaching them that taught me, as the cliché goes. My takeaway from this was to find ways for students to teach each other whenever possible, for it is in teaching it to someone else that we truly come to understand what we have been trying to learn.

I actually made way more money working as an educational consultant and private tutor than as a classroom teacher, but I still wanted to be a teacher. I finally finished my Master of Arts in Teaching, with licensure for grades 7-12 Latin, in December of 2015, after starting in August 2009. It took me a long time and two different graduate schools to finish, in large part because of the cost. Belmont did not honor the majority of my transfer credits, because they wanted students to take their full education core there under their philosophy. I took the classes Adolescent Development, Sociological Foundations of Education, Secondary Methods, Literacy across the Secondary Curriculum, Advanced Educational Psychology, and others twice, once in the north and once in the south. I also went to therapy and worked on some of my trauma stuff, to heal so that I would have more to give.

I still accrued a great deal of student loan debt even while working full-time. It cost almost $20,000 to do my student teaching semester, just to pay for my credits. I worked for free during that semester in two schools, a well-funded suburban high school and an academic magnet school without as many material resources, and paid dearly for the privilege of doing so. While student teaching, I would work after school every weekday and most weekends. I had to work full-time, but I had to pay them to do it, so I had to work full-time on top of it, and the tuition was just so high.

I did learn much from both of my mentor teachers and the students in those schools, and both placements were remarkable opportunities. From one mentor teacher, I learned to be unabashedly yourself. If you like Grumpy Cat and tie-dye, then own it, like Grumpy Cat and tie-dye. She gave me an orchid and gel pens when I left, because she knew I would love both. From the other, I learned true diligence and skill in perfecting the craft. There are mind-blowing things you can do to improve your teaching life by color-coding, and I got them from her. She gave me Latin pencils and a stellar book to read. I performed a research study in my second student teaching placement as part of my masters thesis, and it was helpful to be able to work in a school while doing research. However, how many fields demand that you do this, pay exorbitant tuition to do an internship of this sort?

Teachers and cops are often mentioned in the same breath as public servants, and while cops may do more dangerous tasks on a daily basis, they do not have to jump through all the hoops, pay for all the training, and receive all the education that I did. I also had to pay for my Praxis exams, which were costly. I was stunned when I made a perfect 200/200 score on my Praxis exam for Latin. I graduated with a 4.0. I had to prove my intellectual capability to be entrusted with a delicate position where one might damage others.

I was thrilled to attend my masters hooding and graduation. I was selected to do our invocation prayer at the hooding ceremony for the education department. It had felt like I would never be done with school. When I graduated, I had well over $100,000 in student loan debt. I could have left Vanderbilt in 2006 with no debt and gone to work in an office, kept working my way up as a paralegal or actuarial assistant (types of jobs that would have lent themselves well to remote work during this pandemic), but I willingly took on that debt to make my dream of being a high school Latin teacher come true. I didn’t want to work in an office. It bored me. I wanted to work with young people, who energized me. I figured I might have to put a little more of my income toward my loans than some, but that was fine with me, because I would get to do what I was passionate about: Help young people discover a love for the Classics. Help young people grow their vocabularies and worldviews. Help young people become better speakers, readers, writers, and thinkers. I am also a big believer that if we do not learn from the mistakes of the past, we are doomed to repeat them. Studying the Classics can help you recognize crises like the one our country is currently in as a pattern from history, one that should be stopped.

As I was graduating, I was also going through a break-up. I had decided not to marry my fiancé. He wanted to move out of state to take a high-paying job selling helicopter parts to Israel at his former military dad’s company, and I had moral qualms. He had offered to get us a house, said that I could stay home and have kids if I wanted, but I didn’t want to be a kept woman and didn’t want to follow him. I was going to have to leave our home. As I started looking for a place to live, I realized that the cost of living had drastically increased where I was. My home town was becoming an it city, and rents were going through the roof. I realized that with my low credit score, I would have a tough time finding an apartment I could even be approved for, let alone realistically afford on my own. I had become interested in the tiny house movement, and I decided to try it out. I had too many pets, and I knew I would be over the limit at most apartment complexes. A tiny house seemed like it might be my best bet.

I applied for teaching jobs, interviewed for one that I really wanted but didn’t get because they went with someone who had a PhD, and in the meantime, I intended to keep working as an educational consultant. I still had multiple jobs working with students. Then I got an email about a position I hadn’t even applied for. I don’t know how the person got my contact information, probably through a Latin teachers email list I was on. There was a full-time job teaching Latin on the other side of the state, and would I like to do a phone interview? I said I would. The phone interview went well, and I was invited to come do an in-person interview. I drove the 4 hours to the school, interviewed with the dean and the school president, and went home. Some time went by, and I didn’t hear anything. I figured they’d gone with another candidate.

I started to move on with my life. I bought a little plot of land, learned how to use a chainsaw, and with the help of friends, my tree-climbing cousin, and a guy I paid to bring his stump grinder, I cleared space for the lofted cabin I was having built. The tiny house arrived on my 32^nd birthday, and I was ecstatic. I took my dog out to the country and camped in it, had some friends over for a celebration with a bonfire. The cabin had no running water, electricity, or even insulation yet, but it was mine. I was scared of all it would take to make the place livable, but I was in love with my little home. I was pondering digging a well, how to make a staircase with drawers in it, and what kind of toilet to get. Then, less than two weeks after my new house was delivered, I got a phone call. The school president told me that they had narrowed it down to a couple candidates, but I was their top choice, and did I want the job? Before I answered, he said they needed to know now.

My gut reaction was to say that I was sorry, but I had just bought a house, and I couldn’t uproot my life. I pondered just continuing to work as a consultant and staying right where I was, knew I could probably make a decent life. But the dream. And here was my dream position: I would get to teach all levels of Latin, from I to IV AP. I would be the only Latin teacher at the school, which seemed like a good one, highly ranked. I would get to run the Latin club, the school’s National Junior Classical League chapter. I wanted it. The only problem was that it wasn’t where I was. But I could get there. So I didn’t even mention my tiny house. I just said yes. Then I switched gears and started looking for apartments 200 miles away.

In less than two months, I packed up all my belongings, sold the house back to its Mennonite builders (feeling like a jerk for having to do so after they had made it with such loving care), loaded up all my cats and my dog, found an apartment that would let me have my animals, and moved to a place where I knew no one. I knew literally not a single person who wasn’t associated with the school.

In my interview, I said two things that have stayed with me and taken on new poignancy for me in light of recent events.

1.) When the school president asked me about God, I said that my relationship with God was the most important thing in my life. (While I am not a Christian, more spiritual than religious, I see Christ as an important spiritual teacher, and I thought I would see what it was like to work for a Christian school, keep an open mind. But I am guided by my own moral compass.)

2.) When the school president asked what I was looking for in a school, I said that I was looking for ‘my school home,’ a community that I could become a part of and stay in until I retired, where it felt like my family. They seemed to like that answer. It was sufficient to get me the job, at least.

Ultimately, the school’s actions would go against both of these, making it so that I could not feel I would be able to face my maker in good conscience, and also, instead of treating me as family, as a valuable member of the community, trying to make me sacrifice my very life.

I did have deep reservations about teaching in a Catholic school. I myself am a liberal feminist. I have strong personal convictions about women deserving the right to choose what happens to their bodies and GLBTQ+ individuals deserving equal rights in all facets of life. I did not tell them this, which I regret, as it might have ended the conversation there and saved me a great deal of pain. But when the school president asked me how I felt about Catholicism, what were my preconceived ideas about the Church as a non-Catholic, I mentioned that I did have some concerns, mostly based on my grandmother having been a devout Catholic who was ostracized for getting divorced.

I said that I admired the Church’s charitable works, though, and I was willing to keep an open mind and be respectful. I did keep an open mind and was respectful, even though my own personal beliefs differed. I figured that I would probably need to keep my political beliefs to myself even at a public school, keep a low profile, not be a rabble-rouser, and just focus on teaching, not agitating for social change there with the kids. Also, I wanted a job teaching Latin, and the Catholic Church does teach Latin. This was the first compromise I made with my own conscience. If there is one thing I have learned the hard way in this life, it is that I will always regret going against my conscience, my gut. I probably should have been advocating for social change there with the kids.

Getting to be a high school Latin teacher was pretty wonderful. My classes were small, I had only honors students, and I felt safe. My school was predominately white, and this bothered me, but I told myself that all kids need good teachers. I went out of my way to be welcoming and warm to and inclusive of those who were not white. I told myself that just because you’re rich, that doesn’t mean you don’t have problems, and I would do my best to be there for those kids with whatever their particular trials were. They might live in big houses, but maybe they had emotionally detached parents. I could still be a trustworthy, supportive grown-up in their lives. Occasionally I felt like a sell-out, though, like a whore. I felt I should be teaching where there was greater need. I would often be tormented with guilt for abandoning the kids in Brooklyn and wonder if I were a bad person for leaving the frontlines.

At this expensive private school, I did not have the same problems I faced at the inner-city charter school in Brooklyn. One day during my first year at the Catholic school, a boy dropped his pencil box. His pencils, pens, highlighters, and markers went flying everywhere. I almost flashed back to the days of chaos, when I would spend my own money to bring in markers and the students would turn them into projectiles. I remembered that horrible feeling of losing control of the class, when I was outnumbered and they wanted to let off steam by throwing things, so they were going to. They didn’t throw them at me – not on purpose, at least, though I did sometimes get hit in the crossfire – but at each other, at the walls, the windows, an outburst of anarchy on art day. None of this happened that day. The boy apologized, and the students sitting near him quietly helped him pick up his writing utensils with friendly smiles. I can definitely do this, I thought. I can teach here. It felt like a walk in the park compared to where I’d come from. The photocopier worked very well. I could make as many handouts as I wanted. There were boxes of tissues in a cabinet in the front office that I could go and grab for free. My classroom technology was up to date and actually worked. It was a whole new world.

Please allow to make another disclaimer. I did not have a better time teaching at the Catholic private school than I did at the public high schools because I taught Black and Hispanic kids in one and white kids in the other. White kids are not better than Black and Hispanic kids. The factor in the quality of those schools and the problems those kids faced is not the color of their skin. It is money. I feel I could scream this at school boards until I was blue in the face and they would still never admit the simple fact that inequitable distribution of wealth is behind all of it.

There are no words in this language or any other I have studied to describe how much I loved my students. They made me laugh, they made me think, and without question they made me a better person. I adored going in to do my job every day. Of course, some days it was still stressful. Much is demanded of teachers even in the best schools. The late nights of sitting down in a sea of papers to grade were still a thing. But I got better at it. I learned how to be more efficient, work smarter, not harder.

By the end of my first year, I felt I had gotten my sea legs. There were some students who had been super attached, devoted, and loyal to their previous Latin teacher and might not have liked me as much as her, but we got along for the most part, and with my freshmen students, the first group to have only me as their Latin teacher, I was in heaven. They seemed like such babies to me, so young, so obviously children, and they were simultaneously so kind and so responsible. The idea that I would get to be their teacher for potentially the next four years was sublime.

My second year, I focused on building positive relationships, really getting to know my kids and showing that I cared about them. It was such a treat to get to teach the same kids year after year, see them develop. Seeing that the timid 9^th grade girl was coming out of her shell as a 10^th grader, and the 9^th grade boy was starting to mature just a little bit as a 10^th grader. I began to stop following my predecessor’s lesson plans and put in some of my own personality. I started Mythology Mondays, which the kids raved about, where we would learn about myths, starting with Percy Jackson’s Greek Gods and going through Ovid’s Metamorphoses as they matured. I switched the textbook we used from the Cambridge Latin Course to Latin Is Fun, a comic-like book that teaches the same concepts in a more appealing way, in my opinion.

My third year, I focused on making it more engaging, expanding on activities like going outside for rides in our chariot, having a Roman games day in the gym, more mythology and culture lessons (because the kids liked those, and they also needed to know about mythology and culture for their National Latin Exams and for life), doing a Classics-themed cake baking competition for Rome’s birthday and selling pieces as a fundraiser for convention trips. One of my favorite days as a teacher took place at a state JCL convention. We sat in a circle in the lobby of the convention center and made costumes for the skit they’d written, to be performed later in the evening. Some of the girls dressed my dog up as a bee, we talked and laughed in a more natural state, more ourselves away from school, and we crafted to our hearts’ content in the presence of hundreds of other Latinists milling around and letting their nerd flags fly. I was finding my own self and voice and rhythm as a teacher, and the kids responded well. It was the first time I let them know that I had tattoos. They told me that they all already knew and that they didn’t care. (I covered them at school, cardigans every day, but I guess someone had seen me out somewhere.) We had adventures on that trip and others that will stay with me forever.

I will also remember our holiday trees, a tradition that took on more and more meaning to me, and probably to them as well, over time. Early into my time at the school, one February, I had forgotten/been too busy/neglected to take down my 3 Christmas trees, and someone joked that we could just redecorate them for Valentine’s Day. So we did. For the rest of the time I was at the school, we decorated our trees with handmade ornaments that had Latin phrases on them for most major holidays. I bought construction paper, neon printer paper, stickers, crayons, Sharpies, glitter glue, Styrofoam shamrocks, etc., etc.

When we did a Halloween tree, the kids asked if we could have it upside down to be like Stranger Things. I figured, why not? My teacher classes taught me to say yes to the kids whenever possible. I wedged the base of the tree into the metal frame that held the ceiling tile, secured it with orange duct tape, put purple lights on it, and it was spectacular. So we didn’t just have Christmas trees. We had Valentine’s trees, St. Patrick’s Day trees, Halloween trees, Thanksgiving trees… and just as the Romans loved festivals, so did my kids. They would bring in food – if everyone brought something, then there’d be plenty for all –  and we would feast while we learned about the holiday from a Roman perspective. We also observed Saturnalia and threw black beans all around the room (which I spent hours sweeping up on my own) as part of a Lemuria celebration – I pagan’d it up as much as I felt like I could get away with.

At the end of the school year, we would do one last tree before summer break, and our summer trees were always my favorite. I would tell the kids to use whatever Latin phrase they wanted, give them a link to an A-Z list of thousands of phrases, and marvel at the existentialist crisis ornaments that resulted. A seemingly cheerful bright yellow paper sun would have a phrase that meant something like “The fear of death confounds me.” The pre-summer trees tended to show our frazzled mental states; they were priceless.

I had a few boys who occasionally challenged me, didn’t want to stop talking to their buddies when I asked them to. Sophomore boys may or may not exist to try the patience of teachers everywhere, and that may be the case across the board, even looking at socioeconomic factors. But not once did I feel as if a student would verbally assault or physically harm me. I have never had a student curse at me once in the Catholic school, while I was cussed out almost daily in New York. I began to thrive as an educator, at least from my own perception, and the administration praised me. Most importantly, my students seemed to be happy and learning. I also never once had to write a disciplinary referral. Not a single one. I handled matters in my room, and I found a way to make us feel like a family, to get along, even with many contrasting personalities. I used humor as my most frequent way of diffusing tension. It generally worked. I wished I’d had more of a sense of humor about things when I was younger, been more easygoing with the kids in Brooklyn; I wonder if that could have gotten me through.

I did not like the religiosity of the Catholic school, though. I found it oppressive. When I decided to take the job, I joked privately with friends that if it got too bad, if it started to feel too much like the Inquisition, I could always just get a can of pea soup and fuck myself with a crucifix, and then they’d have to fire me. (Please note that I would never actually do this, because that would be a sex crime involving minors, and unlike the Catholic Church, I do not condone sex crimes involving minors.) I had to go to mass regularly, both smaller masses in the chapel with teachers only and larger ones in the church as a whole school. I was told that teachers were expected to kneel and go through the motions even if they were not Catholic. I did this. I could do a mass in my sleep. But I don’t like mass. As I beat my chest and repeated, “Through my fault, through my fault, through my most grievous fault,” I couldn’t help but think there was something morbid about the whole thing. As Vergil said of Aeneas, I pressed deep pain in my heart and feigned hope in my face.

During an assembly in the gym, I watched as priests break-danced and beat-boxed about chastity, shaming students for premarital sex. I was once served bread and soup at a required faculty retreat lunch while a nun read a horrifying account of a priest giving up his life for others during the Holocaust as we ate, clearly glorifying his martyrdom and suggesting we should all strive for the same, to give up our lives for another. Surely it is good to encourage thinking of others. But I began to feel as if the Catholic Church worshipped death and guilt, neither of which I am a fan of.

Teachers are no strangers to self-sacrifice. If Christ love, at best, is a giving, unconditional love in which it is understood that what you do to another, you do to yourself, and also to God… then I witnessed some Christians falling short of this mark and instead focusing on dogma, fear, and judgment. There was a priest who made my students cry by telling them dogs could not go to heaven, they didn’t have the right kind of soul. Even Pope Francis has said more compassionate things on the subject. That same priest singled out and humiliated a girl who identified openly as non-Christian, picking on her in class, shutting her down, and ultimately refusing to call on her when she raised her hand to ask a question, acting as if she didn’t exist, until a day when they were going to read a passage about the Antichrist and he made her read it aloud while he glared at her, implying to the class, from her perception, which she shared with me in confidence, that she was the Antichrist.

I loved my kids, but I was growing to hate the grown-ups. I felt lonely and repressed as one of the few non-Catholic teachers. I almost left after my third year. My mother was sick, I wanted to move across the country to be with her, and I nearly didn’t come back from summer break. But I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t abandon my kids. At the very least, I told myself, I would come back and finish out the fourth year with the kids I’d started with when they were freshmen and I was a new hire, my original Latin Is, who meant the world to me. I came back, and I was glad I did. Getting to be with them that last year was incredibly meaningful. It was a full circle moment, when it occurred to me that I would have gone through high school again, guided that group of young people through it, and graduated them, sent them off into the world. I would have stood by them till the end, not like the kids in Brooklyn.

But during my fourth year, all hell broke loose in the world. Whatever that unraveling has looked like for you, whether you are a teacher or not, my heart goes out to you.

On March 12^th, it was a typical school day. I had been reading about COVID-19 some in the news, but it didn’t yet seem to be as serious of a threat as it has since proven to be. It was D block, with my seniors. The kids had come to class, been there for a little while, then left to go to the church for mass, and then come back after mass to the same class. It was a longer than usual period, and we’d already finished the lesson, so I let them get up and draw on the white board, which they loved to do and which I always let them when there was downtime. I’ve had some of the best Sponge Bob and Madagascar dry erase murals ever on my board. We were all obsessed with Moto-Moto.

They were listening to music, and two kids were competing to see who could do the better portrait of Post Malone (we had a lot of Post Malone inside jokes in that class, going back to when they were freshmen) at the front of the room as the rest of us watched and gave feedback and laughed.

We had just done a cultural unit about Julius Caesar and “Beware the Ides of March,” so the Ides of March had been on my mind a bit as the 15^th approached. The next day was also Friday the 13^th. Had I been a Roman augur reading the omens, I might have gotten some inkling of what was about to happen, but I was oblivious. The next week was spring break, and I had been focused on that, just getting us through until vacation. I knew they were brain-fried from some hard tests in their other classes, which was part of why I’d let them have art therapy that day. I tried to be aware of and attuned to what was going on with them and give them some mercy whenever I could.

An announcement came over the loudspeaker. The school president told us that school would be canceled for students the next day, but teachers were to report for in-service training on remote learning, which we would be switching to after spring break. That was all the notice we were given. It was most likely thrust on the administration as well, and I am certainly glad that they did close, but it was jarring.

I didn’t know that would be our last D block together. Distance learning commenced. We were waiting and seeing, not sure if it would be weeks or months until we were together again, but hoping we would be soon. In terms of the change to my work life, I was tossed into the deep end of the swimming pool with a boulder around my ankle out of nowhere, now responsible for delivering all content and doing all interaction and grading online. I’m sure the students felt the same. I did my best. I’m sure the students did, too. I used Outlook, Moodle, OneNote, Teams, Quizlet, Kahoot!, RenWeb, and other tools to keep them learning.

I did everything I could to maintain our connections. We did video calls to stay in touch, and I had them submit assignments such as drawings of myths to a forum where they could see and comment on each other’s work. I tried to provide as much normalcy as I could, keep things the same in terms of my expectations and the kinds of assignments I gave, but also remain flexible and adapt. I’m a fairly technologically savvy millennial, but this abrupt and total conversion to teaching from a computer might have been grueling for some older teachers who didn’t rely as much on technology. The kids rolled with it surprisingly well. Some disappeared, went radio silent, but with enough contacting them compassionately, I found I could bring them back around.

I was voted the Teacher of the Month by students during that quarantine quarter. This meant a lot to me, especially because I teach a small percentage of the student body. Not that many kids take Latin, less than 100 out of 600+, but they banded together and got me that award.

When it became evident that we would not be returning in-person that school year, there was great grief. I had imagined a celebratory send-off for my seniors. I did frequent food days with all my classes, but the seniors never got to have that huge farewell party to put all the other parties that came before to shame, the one that they should have had. I had them do the Rome’s birthday cake competition virtually, and it just wasn’t the same when we couldn’t taste all their gorgeous baked goods. I missed my kids. It was a hard pill to swallow – that to love them, I had to stay away from them.

The culminating assignment for all levels of Latin was to reflect on what Latin class had meant to them. I told them it could be a letter, a video, an art project, whatever they wanted to do to express themselves. As their projects poured in, I cried a lot, because they were phenomenal. I hadn’t realized how much my class meant to them. They talked about my class being the only place in school where they felt they could be themselves, how fun it was, the friendships they’d formed, gaining confidence, being a family, how I was ‘the mom to all the crazy Latin kids,’ the depth it brought to their lives, the academic benefits, all the laughter and inside jokes, the holiday trees, the days outside with the chariot, the cake contest, how I never made them cry (unlike other classes) and they always knew I cared about them, my patience, how they never felt judged… From kid after kid, I heard and read and saw that my class had been their favorite. They may have been telling all the teachers that, puffing up our egos, but I believed them. I believed them because they were definitely my favorite people.

Graduation was postponed. Then the school scheduled an in-person baccalaureate mass and graduation ceremony for the end of June. I was nervous, because COVID-19 was no less of a threat and seemed to be spreading like wildfire, but we were assured that the graduation would be socially distanced, masks would be required, lots of safety measures would be in place… so I went. It was a chance to see my babies. Of course I was going to go. But I was feeling it out.

In the grand, multi-million dollar cathedral, they had made an effort to socially distance. Every other pew was blocked off with ropes. People were in masks. Then again, they kept taking them off, or at the very least pulling them to the side, leaning in to whisper to each other without their masks in place. Masks hung from ears and chins. The adults did as poorly as the kids. But I was so relieved to be back in what was my school home, my community, for better or worse, that I went along with the graduation the next day. 

Just before graduation, teachers were crowded into a narrow hallway to process out to the football field. I felt extremely uncomfortable shoved in there with so many people. The other teachers did have masks on at that point, but they still felt way too close to me. I saw a picture of myself taken in that hallway after the fact, and I looked tense and terrified, clutching my hands together so I wouldn’t touch anything. A teacher who’d gone on a trip and wanted to tell me about it kept getting in my personal space bubble, and I didn’t want to be rude, but I wanted her and all the others to back away and give me room to breathe. Just before we were ushered out of the building, we were told to “Stay apart out there, make it look for the parents”. These words – Make it look good for the parents – troubled me.

Two of my senior Latin students had been chosen as the graduation speakers, the school’s highest honor. I wore heart-shaped sunglasses and a hand-sewn cat mask that I’d made, and I was glad most of my face was covered, because I cried silently but openly as they spoke. They were so eloquent, so moral, so wise, so strong, so brave. A boy and a girl. Earlier in the semester, before COVID-19, they had competed against each other at school for a mock presidential candidacy in association with their AP Government class. Two of my kids were up for the presidency, so I had to go watch the debates, and they were both on fire. The boy had won, but they were both such incredible public speakers, even if different people. To see them standing on a stage again, this time as the honored Sedes Sapientiae (Seat of Wisdom) scholars that they were… The girl joked that at least this time she would get the last word. It was a rollercoaster of emotions. It was frightening to be around so many people, but it was fabulous to be around so many people I cared about.

The students were seated in folding chairs that they’d put distance between. It didn’t look like 6 feet, maybe 3. Once in their chairs, all students removed their masks. They went up on the stage to get their diplomas without masks. I was making note of these things but not yet freaking out. The school decided to go through with a tradition where a spirit leader comes up on stage and leads the graduating class in singing and doing choreographed moves to “Don’t Stop Believin’” before throwing their caps in the air. As the caps flew, I saw germs. Would they get their own caps back? Would they grab someone else’s? Then, as soon as the official ceremony was over, the kids, mostly unmasked, all jumped from their seats and ran to one another, forming a big hugging mass.

I held back, stayed by the stage, and avoided that mob of people like… well, the plague. A favorite student came running to find me. She was masked, but she hugged me. I hugged her back, because I was so glad to see her. Then two more favorite students came running up, both of them unmasked, also wanting a hug. I gave elbow bumps, because they were not masked, but felt mean. The 4 of us got together to take a selfie. None of this is wrong or bad, that they wanted to see me and I wanted to see them. We had missed each other! It had been months. But as I looked out over the sea of healthy, promising young people, I couldn’t help but think… am I being complicit in something I feel is foolish? This is not a time for public gatherings, not of this size, and these teenagers are going to go with their feelings, their desire to be close to their friends and families and teachers, I thought. Sure enough, as I continued to observe the kids and adults milling around in a giant throng on the football field, I couldn’t believe that they were just all crammed together like it was just a normal football game. Where were the precautions?

I snuck out around the edge of the crowd and went home unsettled.

The school had laid out 3 plans for reopening.

Plan A would be a normal school day.

Plan B would be blended learning, with half of the student body coming one day alphabetically and half of them coming the next day. Teachers would be responsible for teaching both in-person and online. Sanitizing, masks, and social distancing were to be in place. But could that even work in my former storage closet classroom? I didn’t think I had enough square feet to put the desks 6 feet apart even with only half of my kids there on a given day. And other teachers did not have such small classes.

Plan C would be remote learning.

As July went on and COVID-19 cases in Tennessee surged, my city becoming a national hotspot, I thought surely the school would listen to reason and science and not reopen in-person. They had kept everyone home when it was much less dangerous. Why bring everyone back together now? Did they really think kids would wear their masks perfectly? I read an article about 4 teachers in Arizona who shared a classroom to teach summer school online. They were masked, they sanitized, they followed social distancing procedures… and 3 of the 4 got COVID-19, with one of them dying. If adults couldn’t do it right, with that few, what made them think kids could? When the word came, that they were going with Plan B, I had a sinking feeling in my chest. I instinctively knew that teachers and kids would get sick and possibly die if they did this.

I reached out to my school and requested to be allowed to teach online. They refused. Then I found out through local news (not the school) that a student on the football team had tested positive for COVID-19 and might have exposed the other players. I asked the school why teachers hadn’t been informed and requested again that I and any teachers who wanted it be given the option of teaching remotely. I even humbled myself and revealed to them, with enormous embarrassment, that I have been a cigarette smoker for 10+ years and am concerned that I am high risk because of lung damage. (Yes, I need to quit smoking. Kids, don’t smoke, it is awful and you become a slave to it.) They didn’t care. They told me I didn’t have a disability, so they could not accommodate me. I still do not know what is happening with my job. I had a Zoom call with my dean and school president, who told me, somehow with straight faces, that it was not about money, it was about what was best for the kids. That they needed to get back to normal.

This idea, get back to normal, is ridiculous. This is not normal. This is a global pandemic. I have studied many different periods of history, but I was always most spooked by the Black Death. All the lives lost, the basic vulnerability of people to diseases, the ignorance that led people to kill cats because they thought they were witches’ familiars when in fact the cats might have helped to kill the rats actually spreading the Bubonic Plague… I am extra creeped out by the Black Death. Coronavirus, reminiscent of my favorite beer, might not sound as menacing as the Black Death, but neither does the Spanish Flu, and that killed millions. Our government has clearly failed to act. It is blatant, what needs to be done. American families need to be given financial support to stay home and keep themselves and others safe. I am not saying close the schools and don’t help people. Sadly, schools provide so many needed things, such as meals and counseling. I am saying don’t be cheap about this. Pay the people, not the corporations, and keep us alive! Other countries are doing this. America, arrogant, bragging, cocky America, “We’re #1!” America… America is failing.

I am going to move across the country to be with my sick mom, to a blue state that is handling the virus better than the south, and I am grateful I have the chance to hopefully escape with my life. I will find remote work. I don’t love this, don’t want to leave my kids, but also hold my own precious life in high regard. I will not be returning to my job. They basically told me that they do not care if I live or die, if the other teachers live or die, if the children live or die, and I cannot abide that kind of callousness. Maybe they’re just assuming that all the dead children will become glorious saints. I was told that, on my first day of in-service at the school. That their goal is to make all the students saints in heaven. My goal is to keep them in this world because I know it’s real. I’m also pretty sick of the men in the Church deciding what happens in general, while women are powerless and forced to sit on the sidelines. My review of the Catholic Church, after 4 years? HATED IT. A man accused of impropriety with a student was brought back to the school after a year away, while I was ostracized, just like my poor grandmother, for divorcing an abusive man. I do not wish to paint with a broad brush and say all Catholics are bad. I have known some great Catholic people. I enjoyed opportunities for silent reflection and did grow spiritually during my time at the school. But this is nonsense.

When I left that job in Brooklyn 10 years ago, it was because I felt on a fundamental level the lack of respect, support, and protection for teachers. My guilt over leaving has kept me awake many a night. I wonder about those former students, hope they are okay, wish I could find them and apologize for letting them down. But I will not let down another group of kids. I will not sacrifice them to save the economy. We have the money to save the economy, but it is trapped in the pockets of billionaires (yes, I like Bernie Sanders, and Elizabeth Warren, too, and AOC, and the Notorious RBG – there are my heroes) and not being shared with the essential workers who are dropping like flies. Those essential workers are the reason those CEOs are rich. They should thank the people who made them rich by saving their lives.

It is appalling that human life and labor is valued so low. Do you know any person whose life is only worth $7 an hour? When all the people have died and the machines take over, who will they sell things to? Themselves? I personally want to live in a world where as much human life as possible is preserved. One morning you wake up and realize you are way more pro-life than Catholics. And regret compromising your values. And see that it’s time to get the hell out of dodge.

For teachers who are going back and risking their lives to be with their students… I would say that I admire you, and trust me, I do, but I must also say that I am concerned that you will regret your part in this charade. Sports teams can’t even keep professional athletes they’ve invested millions in healthy. Do you really think that, when cold season hits, when the sneezes and sniffles come, a little mask that is not being worn properly and some hand sanitizer will save you and your kids? I hope it does. I hope I’m wrong. I hope that all of this works out fine, disappears like a miracle. But it is reckless and evil to pretend the facts are not what they are. I do not care to be on the side of evil. If you agree to go in and do this, act like it is alright to jeopardize the lives of children, prepare yourself for them to start falling ill. Like me, you probably have a mental slideshow of beloved laughing faces you have taught. They matter. They have a right to live.

I am calling for every single parent, student, and teacher in America to have the option of teaching and learning remotely if that is what they want. I was home schooled and worked with home schoolers, and I and they turned out fine. Kids don’t have computers or internet? Fix it. Kids need specialized services like a speech pathologist? Do it safely on an individual basis, remotely whenever possible. Do not force teachers to do this, to go ahead with reopening schools prematurely. You are already jeopardizing the lives of grocery workers like my stepfather, shipping warehouse employees like my love, the convenience store clerks I want to apologize to every time I hand them my debit card, and so many other essential workers. Taking away unemployment is not the answer. Refusing to send more stimulus checks is not the answer. Corporate bailouts while you ignore the little guy are not the answer. Is everyone who is working at Kroger because they don’t have other options now a soldier, whether they signed up for it or not?

My soul aches for the doctors and nurses who have died battling this virus. And not to diminish their deaths in any way, but trained medical professionals are aware of the risks when they consciously choose to work with sick patients and risk exposure, knowing more about how to stay safe than I or a kindergartener does. I am grateful for their sacrifices, but we do not need any more. We also do not need to shit on our doctors and nurses by sending them more patients than they can handle. Don’t make people go throw away their lives for the bottom line. Be patient, hold back, listen to scientists, keep us home, and help us. Help us survive. Follow the example of other countries that are light-years ahead of us in terms of health care and education, and EVOLVE.

We have a fascist dictator as our president. He has been impeached, yet he is still getting away with human rights violations against peaceful protestors and so many others. Get mad at Trump, the man who threatened to defund schools if they didn’t reopen. Make businesses provide childcare if parents need it so they can work, not teachers. Do not continue exploiting teachers. We do not even make a basic babysitting wage. If I were given $7.15 an hour times ~20 kids in each class per diem, you would see what teachers are actually doing for your economy, because the value of my work would be over a grand a day instead of less than a grand a week. We prop the economy up when it isn’t sustainable. Give workers enough money to live and pay their bills during normal times, raise the minimum wage, for one thing, and also recognize that THIS IS NOT NORMAL. Sticking your fingers in your ears and going “La-la-la” does not make a problem go away. We have to face reality. How many children are you willing to kill? Picture, if you will, a pile of children’s corpses. Our president is okay with that. It has been said that some kids will get sick, that is just part of it. Some of those who get sick will die. A 13 year old boy was just taken off the ventilator after contracting COVID-19 at a birthday party.

Public schools are going to be completely overwhelmed. I might actually have a decent chance of making it if I stayed at a private school like mine, where they have the means to at least attempt to clean thoroughly and enforce distancing and mask measures (although teachers will be the ones there fighting those mask battles with kids who cannot comprehend the danger because their frontal lobes, governing good judgment, have not finished developing, and also kids whose parents are pissing on floors in stores in defiance). In the public school meetings about reopening, especially in the south, people are protesting that school districts shouldn’t be allowed to even make the kids wear masks because it interferes with freedoms.

Masks, the bare minimum that might possibly do something, for teachers to not even have that? But I do not think my school’s slightly better plan would be sufficient, either, and I 100% think it will be a disaster in poorly funded public schools where teachers are already expected to do too much with too little. I have been in so many schools, either at the front of the room trying to keep some kind of order or sitting in the back of the room observing another individual, usually an overworked, underappreciated woman making miracles happen. Teachers are about to be swept under, like a volcano erupting, or a tidal wave, and kids are, too.

Death Eaters have infiltrated the Ministry of Magic. Are you on the side of Dolores Umbridge, or are you on the side of Harry Potter? I myself will not tell lies. Every word in this letter/essay/rant is true, and I am committed to speaking truth. Truth is, COVID-19 is killing a lot of people.

Harry Potter is a Gryffindor. I myself am kind of mad at J.K. Rowling right now for her tacky comments about transgender women, but I do love the world of Harry Potter and have consistently been sorted into Gryffindor on online tests I’ve taken, for whatever that’s worth. Gryffindors are known for bravery. At best, I think schools, teachers, and parents are trying to be brave. But is it brave to be a lemming and go off the cliff because everyone else is? No. That is, pardon my frankness, stupid. As a teacher, I was entrusted with the sacred (as I see it) task of helping young people become really, really smart. This is not brave. It is just foolish and mean-spirited. Don’t be a Slytherin.

But not everyone is dumb and malicious. I think there are so many parents right now who don’t want to send their kids back, are scared, know it’s not the right move, but feel they have no other option because they have to pay their mortgages. They’re afraid of shaking the boat. Wait, if I don’t go to work and put my kid in school, how will I live? That is the doing of the Dark Lord who must be named, Donald J. Voldemort Trump. He is manipulating us, and he thinks he has us by the balls, we have to bow to him. We do not have to bow to anyone. This is not a monarchy. Our country is declining into the decadence and collapse of Rome, and if we don’t want to follow the same trajectory, we must reject the unfeeling, oppressive legacy of Rome.

A ton of people all over the world like Star Wars. Let me put this in simple Star Wars terms. Trump’s America is the Empire, and it is striking back. We must be the Resistance. Do you see yourself as a Luke Skywalker or a General Organa or a Rey or a Finn, a rebel? You are not acting like one if you slaughter all the Padawans. Or pretend they aren’t preparing to slaughter Padawans. Admit that you are choosing the dark side, that you would rather be Palpatine, or do the right thing. I’m fed up. I’m broke, I’m tired, I’m also very sick of misogyny and sexism (which play into this because more than 70% of teachers are women and we’re seen as expendable), and I’m not willing to jump off a cliff holding hands with children I love more than my own life. Am I leaving because I want to live? Maybe. Is that bad? Am I leaving because I don’t want to kill kids? Definitely. Is that bad?

My recommendations are simple: Federal and state governments, pay people to stay home. Give everyone a basic $2k a month or so so they can pay their rent and electric bills. Maybe then they’ll be able to think because they aren’t scared of homelessness or death. Whatever work they choose to do on top of that is extra income for them, and make provisions for them to work safely if they choose (such as mandatory masks immediately), but don’t put them in a position where their only options are die from COVID-19 or starve to death. Don’t take us back to the Dark Ages. Make the companies redistribute their wealth if need be. They’ll still have plenty once they give their workers a fair share. FUND. SCHOOLS. Teach online as the default for now. Also, don’t make the schools do everything. Feed kids. Give kids health professionals, psychologists, and social workers if they need them. Don’t make teachers be the ones who provide all of that. Every kid who needs a tutor or a home school teacher or extra support should have it, not just the kids whose parents can afford it. Oh, and if you took down the budget for your BRUTAL police and military forces just a bit, you could do all of this easily and have enough left over to start working on some other problems, like the prison industrial complex, maybe. Just saying. Also, college should be free. Also, universal healthcare. Also, student loan forgiveness. We’re making this all up, this society thing. So make up a better one! 

At some point this “Christian” nation is going to see that when we don’t follow the golden rule and treat others as we would like to be treated, we all suffer. We are all interconnected. We all breathe the same air. And we must take care of one another. Also, we should probably do something about school shootings and toxic masculinity.

Teachers and essential workers have given so much of themselves for this country. On the Zoom call where I requested accommodations, when the school president asked me to clarify what I was asking for, in a moment of weakness and frustration, I said that I felt like Oliver Twist, except I was asking, “Please, sir, may I not die?”

Please, sir, may I not die? May the children and teachers not die?

Is this how good people in Nazi Germany felt when they started taking people away on trains? We are not sending children to gas chambers (yet), but we are sending them to enclosed spaces that may make it so that they are not able to breathe. Also, there is a racial element, as poorly funded schools, many of which are in impoverished minority neighborhoods, will be affected more adversely. Please tell me the difference between this and mass extermination.