Safety

I’ve always wanted to feel safe.  My mother, a single parent and an artist, struggled to sell enough wall-hangings during the art fair season of each summer to create that stable sense of safety and well-being I craved as an anxious, only child.   Looking back now, I’m sure it was this desire to feel a sense of safety that may have led me to my life as a teacher.  My young eyes saw my elementary teacher’s stable, measured way of being in the world along with her pretty dresses and shiny shoes as markers of a safe, more comfortable life.  A life in which I could finally relax.

On Thursday, March 12th at 11:00 p.m. the governor of our state closed all schools until April 6th.  In a state of shock, we all still reported to school for a final time on the Friday before the closure, which started the following Monday.  It was surreal as we scurried around, checking with one another asking, “What are you going to send home with the kids?”  We rushed our students in and out of the library to check out at least one chapter book for the closure.  As the kids left that afternoon, they shouted their good-byes as if we were leaving for a holiday.  In the aftermath of the day, my teaching partner and I stood in disbelief in our now quiet, empty classrooms.

It was one of the weirdest days in our teaching careers, and we’ve been educators for quite a long time, over 25 years each.  At a loss for what to do next, we stood there and started listing all the strangenesses we’ve seen in our years as teachers.  We’ve witnessed a teacher having a breakdown right in the middle of a team meeting.  We’ve had to evacuate our building after a student dispelled pepper spray in the hallway and after maintenance sprayed pesticide around the perimeter of our school building one warm morning while our windows were all open. In addition, we’ve had terrible tragedies strike our sleepy small town, including a house fire that took the lives of a student and her siblings and a train accident that ended the life of yet another young boy.   Most recently, we had a much loved principal who was taken away by authorities in the middle of the night and later served prison time.  My teaching partner and I stood there adding up all the disasters we’ve lived through when the announcement interrupted our talk, “Teachers, please report to the library for a short meeting.”

That’s what we do when these things happen–we all meet in the library.  We come together and hear the news as a group. Afterward, we hug or huddle in small groups to process the news.  Sometimes there are social workers or grief counselors present to help, but most often we just need each other.  As the days of closure have ticked on, we check in with each other.  One teacher set up a “Flip-grid” so we can videotape messages to share how we’re managing through the closure.  Others send email messages that read simply, “How’s everyone holding up?” Texts come throughout the day as my teacher friends check-in or send funny memes.

So as it turns out, the world of teaching may not be as safe as I thought it might be all those years ago. Through all these years of noticing, I think I may have uncovered an important truth for me and it is this.   Life wasn’t meant to be “safe.”  Life, instead, is an adventure with lots of laughing, wonder, and love as well as dangers, risks and times we feel scared.

And when this is the case, the only truly safe place to be might be somewhere together.