Nine years ago I stared out the tinted window of a charter bus on my way to Cape May, NJ. I, a sixth grade teacher on a middle school team called the Dolphins, was taking a hundred city kids to go dolphin watching, some of whom had never seen the ocean before. Cool, right?
As our bus rolled north on that well-traversed ribbon of highway that makes up the mid-Atlantic stretch of I-95, the students buzzed with excitement. Seated next to me in the garish plaid upholstered seat was the last person I wanted to spend 7 hours round trip with, my best teacher friend, Leila.
At this point in my teaching career, I had nearly seven years of experience-- enough to feel like I knew what I was doing, but which in retrospect, was also enough to be dangerous. I don't think I'll ever forget the first time I met Leila. It was the summer after my first year of teaching, and I was attending an in-service for summer school teachers that just happened to be held in my building. My attention was distracted from the meeting when my eye caught our principal ambling past the interior windows. A few minutes later, on his return trip, he poked his head into the library, catching my eye and waving me into the hallway.
"Tracey, this is Leila, the new science teacher on your team." Even as I reached out my hand to shake hers, I felt my eye brows knit-- what happened to the old science teacher, I wondered. This was my introduction to one of the few absolutely true things I know about teaching: no matter how similar you think the next year will be when you leave in June, it will be completely different in ways you can't even imagine-- starting when you come back in August and continuing on through the year, until all those discrepancies become the norm, only to surprise you with their own transformation the following year.
to be continued
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