Today the lazy days of summer have officially surrendered to the 5am alarm clock that will chirp in my ear for the next 10 months. My teacher brain will quickly adjust back to the bustling pace of the day. One quick moment after the next-bearing witness to all of the joy and pain, laughter and loneliness, milestones and moments that define the lives of hundreds of teenagers. And not long after I’m out the door, my own teenagers will wake to the blare of their alarms that will mark their senior and sophomore years.
We send our kids to school trusting others to take care of them
They will walk through the doors of another unwritten year in which other adults will bear witness to their dreams and decisions up close. And I will be watching through a tiny picture window.
I don’t take lightly the fact that we send our kids to school day after day, trusting others with the care of our most precious people. Hoping that when they stumble, someone will help them find the strength to rise. That when they succeed, someone will be there to celebrate with them. That they are able to do the same for others.
I think this year especially, as my own child enters his final year of high school, I’m reflecting on the great honor and responsibility that it is to be a teacher and show up day after day for these moments. Realizing that as a parent I don’t get all the same opportunities to see my kids in the day to day the way that other adults do.
At home I only hear what my kids choose to tell me
At home, I hear only what they want to tell me-fragments of what they remember after sifting through hours of a day that I know is taxing on their brains, bodies and hearts. I know what I get is a tiny constellation in the million moments of the universe that is their day. There are so many things, big and small, that I will never know about or see play out. I only know that the people who return home to me each night are in large part the sum of the experiences they have faced from the moment they enter the double doors of school each day.
The version of them that I see is not the version of them that other adults get. Their day is a pointillist painting of speckled dots, but I only see the tiny flecks that they choose to zoom in on in the fleeting conversations over dinner, or as I try to soak up those precious moments in the car on the way home from sports practices.
I am grateful to the adults who are there to share their days
And while it breaks me sometimes that I’m not there getting all the little bits that make up the big picture, I am grateful to know that my kids have adults at school who are able to relish in those moments with them.
Because I know I get that whole version of other peoples’ children, and it is a gift. The opening of their hearts in their most vulnerable moments. The tea that they spill about changing friendships. Changing home situations. Changing hormones. The weight of the big and small things that they carry around all day. And, if I’m lucky, they choose to trust me enough to unpack across our year together.
All children deserve to find adults at their schools to whom they feel connected enough to peel back all of the layers of themselves and truly live authentically in the place they spend more time than anywhere else each day.
I realize that as my son’s grows I will fade into the background even more
I’m thinking about this more than ever as I get closer by the second to sending my oldest out into the wider world. Watching him turn into an adult before my eyes. With only one final school year at home for me to enjoy even seeing any day to day version of his life at all. Knowing full well that as he continues to forge his own path, I will fade even more into the background than I already feel I am.
So as this year begins, I am holding gratitude for all of the adults along the way who have allowed my kids the space to share their voices. Their hearts. And their whole selves. The ones that have walked them down the path day in and day out, to be at the point in life where they have the confidence to head forward on their own.
And hopefully someday be those adults for someone else.
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