An odd title for a back to school post, but this is the world our kids are living in. Coming back to school on an 80 degree day reminded me of our school dress code, which in my opinion is unnecessarily restrictive to girls. The part of the dress code that gets the most push-back is the rule on shorts. They are supposed to be no more than three inches above the knee. Everyone get out your ruler and see if what you’re wearing right now passes. Nope? Well, be glad you’re not in middle school.

“What’s wrong with legs?” one of my male students asked as we were reading over the dress code portion of our school reg. book. “Why not arms?” It’s a valid point. What is so offensive about our legs? What I didn’t say, because I’d like to keep my job, is that your legs are closer to your penis/vagina than your arms are. And apparently there is something very WRONG and INAPPROPRIATE (you really can’t be in any public school setting without hearing that word thrown around every 2 minutes) about the fact that humans use their penises and vaginas to feel good -sometimes alone, sometimes with each other.

I have a lot of teacher friends, and I try not to judge what other people do in their classrooms. But it came to my attention that a teacher was reading the Hunger Games with her 5th grade classroom. “It’s what they wanted,” she told me. That may be so. But this is a book – a very entertaining book which I enjoyed -in which children fight each other to the death. Violence and death are in so many children’s books from middle grade to YA and sometimes younger.  And somehow this is acceptable to us. It’s true, death is a part of life -but not necessarily fighting to the death in an arena.

A couple years ago I was rebuked for lending my copy of Looking for Alaska to a student because it contained teenage drinking and… wait for it….oral sex! So basically, it’s filthy and disgusting for our children to learn about how people use their bodies to make each other feel good, but it’s perfectly okay for them to read about using their bodies to torture and kill each other. (I now lend my “pg-13” books out with parental consent required.)

Sometimes being a teacher is an exhausting job before you even get to teach anything. I tell my students all the time that I don’t make the rules, nor do I agree with all of them. But this one is starting to make me very sad. I find the veiling or hiding of women’s bodies to be shaming for both women and men.  I think we can and should do better, for our middle schoolers, and ourselves.

It’s really easy to get negative at the end of a teaching year. All the things you thought you were going to fix or conquer over the course of nine months? You’re luck if you cleared 50%. Those people, students or staff, who got on your nerves all year with their super loud nose blowing or myriad excuses for late work, missing forms, uncharged laptops? It all seems to reach its zenith about two weeks before school ends. At which point the energy around school makes it a borderline unstable place to be every day for 8 hours. I could probably write a whole post about coping strategies for the end of the school year but most of it boils down to letting go. This is the time of year when I like to contemplate my successes, reflect on challenges or setbacks, but most of all let go.

A couple of months ago I had a student after school for a required forty-five minutes of work. This student never did any work at home and was required to stay after in order to participate in sports. After about thirty five minutes he finished the task I had given him and got up to leave for lacrosse practice. When I informed him that he had ten more minutes during which time he could sit and read, he got pissy with me and threw his book down before sulking in the corner and pointedly watching the clock for ten minutes. At 3:00 he got up and left without a word.

The next morning he came in the room, came straight up to my desk and said, “I’m sorry about how I acted yesterday.” I thanked him, told him how much it meant to me that he apologized and promptly welled up with tears.

When I worked at the Ferry Beach Ecology School teaching environmental education I always told our staff that at the end of the day if the kids walked away from FBES thinking that being outdoors was cool or fun, then we had done a good job. That was enough. At the end of the year I may not have finished the unit on the Respiratory system or covered every structural possibility for a compare/contrast essay but if I have shown up and been a consistent and positive adult presence in the lives of my students then I believe that is enough.

Do I strive to do more? Absolutely. Every day I work hard to make English and science  interesting and engaging, the skills clear and attainable.  But for many students learning is a challenge because they are lacking a consistent adult who tells them it is important, and valuable, and worthwhile.  Some of them are lacking an adult they can trust. To be that person, as a teacher and not a replacement parent, on any day  is damn good enough. I think it is the greatest part of what so many teachers do.

“What’s the Holocaust?” a student asked me the day before we were scheduled to hear a Holocaust survivor guest speaker.  After I gave him my best Holocaust 101 spiel he looked at me with disbelief. “But why?” he asked, certain that I was leaving something out. Certain that this couldn’t be true in the world he knows. “What was their motivation?”

“Hate,” I said. “Hate and ignorance.”

I love that he asked why. I am glad that to him this seemed an impossible nightmarish tale.  And I am happier still that he had the opportunity to hear the whole story from someone who lived it.

For those people who think the power of a story is nil, or who believe adolescents have the attention spans of the average gnat, I would challenge you with what I saw today. I saw 3oo 8th graders sit in rapt attention while one tiny 87 year old German lady spoke to them for 55 minutes. She stood there and she spoke. At times she was hard to hear, occasionally hard to understand. But they sat and they listened and they learned. Her story was one of impossible hardship and unbelievable miracles. The day that she and her mother finally stood in the gas chamber, after three years of starvation and forced labor, on that day it malfunctioned and she walked out.

When she told of the lemon her father carried in his pocket the day they were transported to the camps, I believe every student in that room could taste its tartness. When she held up the striped shirt her mother wore in the camps I think we all shivered at the thought of wearing so little through three harsh winters. We were transported by her story.

After she spoke I debriefed with my students in English class. I remembered when I was their age and had been lucky enough to hear another survivor speak. It will not be this way for their children. By the time any children of theirs are thirteen; old enough to learn about horror, the survivors will be gone.

I told them that what they heard today makes them witnesses. They heard it firsthand and with the hearing comes the responsibility to pass on and share the story. After today I think they will.

I  have a good friend who likes me to update her on what the middle schoolers are wearing -mostly so she can update her closet with the latest choice items from Forever 21. But I do feel a certain general responsibility to update all of you who live in 24-7 adult world on the latest happenings in teen and pre-teen nation. Otherwise most of my friends get their ideas about young people from Mean Girls or Scared Straight.

Speaking of straight I was recently told by a student that our middle school was a pretty homophobic place. What I was most surprised by was my own reaction. Aren’t they all? Was what I thought to myself. After a certain amount of reflection I realized how sad it was that I would accept this as the status quo. Me. Liberal banner waver, daughter of guitar playing kumbaya singing parents, former Oberlin women’s rugby playing drag ball attendee. If I accept homophobia where I work than everyone will. I realized it’s not enough to be the teacher who barks at the kids when they say something is “so gay!”  I need to do something pro-active so that all my students have a safe, comfortable place to go to school.

Alas, I don’t think I can wave my rainbow wand and make my school the beacon of tolerance I would like it to be, but there are things I can do if I care to.  And I do care to.  Generally speaking  middle schools are more conservative places than high schools. I long for the day when talking openly about sexuality will be as accepted as discussing different religions. Until then I proceed cautiously.  When I mentioned my frustrations to another good friend she gave me the idea of putting a little sign up; a rainbow or pink triangle as a kind of a friendly flag to students. She said that, though she would not have been comfortable approaching a teacher to talk at that age, it would have been reassuring to know there was an ally nearby.

So my first step has been to place a few small signs around the room. I downloaded these safe space stickers here.  And I’m working with our school guidance counselor to create a Tolerance Team, kind of a middle school version of a GSA. We’ll see how that goes.

In the midst of all this I found myself up at our high school for an assembly.  I ran into a former student who gave her girlfriend a big ole smooch right there in the halls as I stood by talking to another teacher. I’ve never been more pleased to see someone break the high school rules on PDA. I was happy that she felt so happy to be openly and proudly herself. So happy that I ran out and took a picture of myself with the nearest poncho-wearing lesbian I could find. Not really -this is from Portland Pride a few years ago but I’ve always wanted an excuse to use it in a blog post. Dream realized.