On Authenticity and Relationships

My parents at their 50th wedding anniversary May 2012

My father died last Wednesday, February 20 in his home in Sun City, AZ. He had been battling a condition called neuropathy for the last five years and in the last year, it basically rendered him incapable of caring for himself. My mother has been amazing as both his caregiver and his wife of 50 years. I should have been there. I wasn't. He died at 7:30 PST. Not surprisingly, I was teaching that night, doing the one thing in my life that I do best. Teaching has always been more than a job for me. It has been my passion, my safe haven, my calling. There are so many times that I question every aspect of my life: am I a good father, husband, son, friend, coworker? But not teacher. This part of me feels so natural and I don't have to fake any aspect of who I am when I am in the classroom. I'm not saying that it always goes well. Anyone who was in class last Thursday knows that isn't true. I debated whether or not to teach that night, but I wasn't leaving for Arizona until Friday, so I foolishly thought it would do me good to do something to take my mind off my father's passing. As I was struggling to deal with Internet failure, Storify crashing, and students who appeared to me as if they would rather be ANYWHERE else than sitting in MHR 127 at that point in time, I found myself grasping to try and connect what I was discussing with the lives of the the people sitting in the room. And I couldn't. At one point, I honestly felt like running out of the room. In my twenty years of education, things have gone south countless times, but I could usually count on the relationships that existed in most of my classes to carry me through. Not this time.

Last Thursday, I didn't have the proper relationship with the students in my class, which means I didn't have the trust I needed in that moment to allow me to push a group to do something that I believe will not only benefit them, but their future students. But as I mentioned, teaching is more than a job to me and I would never give up. I believe that it is my responsibility as an educator to establish these relationships and when the student/teacher relationship is solid, we can move mountains, both educationally and in life. We can overcome math anxiety, illiteracy, fear, low self-esteem, unsupportive parents, boredom and whatever else stands in the way of a student and her success. When I asked the class to reflect on who has been your favorite teacher on last week's blog post, all of the answers spoke more about a caring relationship than they did about teaching. I hope that you all aspire to be that teacher. But, to do this you may have to give more of yourself than you can imagine. You don't teach a class, you teach 25 individual students, with 25 individual needs, and you need to see them as individuals worthy of your time and effort. Not every one of them will necessarily want a relationship with you, and that's okay too, but knowing what everyone needs is part of what makes a good teacher great. Be great.

As I bury my father on Tuesday, I can only hope that he knew how much I loved him and appreciated everything that he did for me my entire life. I'm not sure that he did.