Teaching Memories

I am proud today. Staring a pile of multicolored scrapbooks, filled with pages of stories about childhood, dance classes, dads climbing on roofs, teens who think they are too old to play in the snow, adventures in random countries, I am greeted by tidbits of the lives of my students.  The pages are peppered with the assignments I gave with optimism, and the rewards are greater than I ever imagined.

There is joy seeping through these pages, and tears, and that basic human need to share and be accepted.  The journal entries... I don't know why I remember, there was laughter, I need to remember this... all starting points for memories that had once easily slipped away, and are now forever recorded on looseleaf and typing paper, decorated with glitter and magazine cut outs.

I'm flipping through, and my own head is filling with the crushing need to write my own stories.   I don't know why I remember the sun setting over my cousin's head, while REM crooned on his cassette player, his head bobbing up and down in rhythm with Michael Stipe. 

I am reminded of my high school friends singing "Comfortably Numb" in a circle, watching Empire Strikes Back, Robin Hood, and ALL the Evil Dead movies, closets and glowing watches, silly accents and zombies, taking a rickety boat to an island, late nights in the summer thick with heat, humidity, and possibility.  There was laughter...

I'm so proud of my students.  Some of them have dealt with too much in their young lives, stories of fragility that I know took a lot to trust an adult with.  Some of them permeate their writing, even the hardest parts, with ardent senses of humor.  Some I have known for several years through classes or soccer or their friends, and I admire them fiercely, and envy the journeys that are just beginning.  I think of the teachers I had growing up, especially my writing teacher, and what it was like to sit day after day, scribbling my heart onto paper, watching my classmates do the same, and I'm encouraged to go digging around to find that flimsy, blue, three-ring binder that I know still has my notes from when I was 18.

There is no standardized test for writing creatively about your life.  There are no SAT words required, no bubbles to fill out.  Just the human mind and the infinite possibilities of skewed (and skewered) memory.  As we get older, we tend to selectively give ourselves amnesia, both to the good and the bad, of high school.  I'm heartened that the moments my students have written about won't fall victim to that trap, and I'm somewhat disappointed at myself for not keeping a better filing system in my head of my own stories (realizing now that I wish I was a more dedicated journal-writing adolescent).

The beauty is in the beholders, the friends, teachers, and family that were there for the memories and can finish the stories.  The ones who remember the moments that shaped you and made you who you are as an adult, for better or worse.  I'm proud that for my students, I'll be one of those people.

I need to remember this.  The stacks of black, red, and purple scrapbooks strewn across my desk, and the moment I realized why I became a teacher...