It has also been a time of parenting. Our adult children have been working in the mountains just to the west of us, cooking and cleaning toilets, making mischief in the wilderness. We spent time with them abroad, and connected with them intentionally each time they passed through on the wind like seeds. They have emerged from the season muscular and ruddy, effervescent, ready for another year of growing into their adult skins.

The little children have also had an incredible summer. They are visibly taller, darker, and thinner from three months of near constant movement in the sun. I packed their weeks with day camps and overnight camps, not wanting to be a full time babysitter or tour guide. They have learned to play drums and electric guitar, gone sea kayaking and ziplining, been to beaches and lakes and rivers and farms, slept in tents, learned to swim. My touch has been light, as I have encouraged them to stretch to the end of our fragile tether. Go. Explore and grow. I got you. I’m here. But please, go.

And now, I am returning to the classroom. To teach.

In June I allowed myself one final interview before I gave up on returning to public education. There was a vacant STEAM teacher position at an elementary school that I have always admired for its strong culture, democratic leadership structure, and proximity to my favorite coffee shop. I had applied to the exact same position the previous summer, when I was still reeling and just beginning my journey of recovery and transformation. That interview had been at 5:00 on a Friday, and after droning to a table of exhausted, glassy eyed educators, I vowed to never accept a 5 pm interview again. This year, the only interview slot left was at 5:00 on a Friday. I signed up anyway.

I entered the conference room and checked their eyes. Not as glassy as last year, but there was a sheen of urgency to get on with their weekends. I sat down in front of a list of interview questions that had been taped to the table. One of the lead teachers pointed to the first question and said, “Welcome back! Let’s start with this one.”

“Look,” I said, leaning forward. “I don’t think you are going to hire me for this job.”

Two of the four chins dropped. One person looked as if I had slapped him. So I quickly qualified, “I interviewed for this same job last year at the same time in the week, and I vowed to never interview on a Friday night again, and I am still the same person, and I have already interviewed for seven other positions in the past month, with the same interview questions, and no job so far. So, if you don’t mind, I’d like to lead you in an activity instead. If that’s okay.”

Silence. Then they looked at one another, and one woman nodded her head and cracked a smile. Sure, they said. Why not? It was five o’clock on a Friday, after all.

I then pulled out a roll of aluminum foil from my bag and taught a quick boat making challenge. We spent 30 minutes making vessels out of tinfoil and testing our designs in a bin of water. While we folded and molded the satisfying material, and splashed about in a bin of water, I told them why I wanted to work at this school, and how I would manage teaching 450 students with only one prep period per week, and what I would do if a student refused to do any work. We had fun. When I left the room, the mood was light.

Two weeks went by, while they presumably offered the job to other people, and those people decided that teaching 450 students with only one prep period each week did NOT sound like a manageable job, and then they called me. I would rise from the ashes of my sabbatical and teach again, this time as a STEAM teacher.

Science. Technology. Engineering. Art. Math. I will have 450 students, 16 - 24 human beings at a time, for 45 minutes each week. 450 bodies who will each experience 36 sessions with me over the course of a school year. I will have many resources to draw from, and standards to build upon, but no curriculum to follow. I will be able to test my theories about how children learn best. I will have the license to teach like an artist. When I fantasize about being a happy teacher, this is my dream job.

Last week I went in to see my new classroom and to meet with the former STEAM teacher. She had taught for 43 years before taking this job last year, and she has a PhD in educational psychology and technology. She told me, “I designed everything so it would be successful, so it was successful. You can just take my units and teach them. And then teach them next year, and just keep repeating and refining like that. Yeah. You’ll be fine.”

I didn’t have the heart to break it to her that while I am very grateful for the resources, I will not be repeating or refining her lessons. I know myself too well. For me, the joy is in the making.

Yesterday I went to the grand opening of Ruth’s Reusable Resources. 33 years ago Ruth was appalled that her teacher son was expected to purchase materials for his classroom with his own money, so she started gathering donations for teachers. Today, with an army of volunteers, she manages a shoestring nonprofit with a massive warehouse of materials ranging from pen caps and milk jug lids to paint and every kind of paper. There are aisles of books from discontinued curricula and previous decades, floor to ceiling bins of ribbons, paper clips, erasers, and sticky notes from pharmaceutical conventions. Gently used office furniture, white boards, mismatched bins, folding chairs. I arrived at 8 am to find a line of 79 people (Upon arrival I was handed a sticker with the number 80) who had been camped out since dawn in search of free materials. Five hours later I checked out with a carload of flotsam and a rising tide of panic. I have no idea (yet) what I am going to do with all this stuff. I have never taught in this way, all grades, each for only one lesson a week. How will I remember 450 names? How will I manage all the materials, six preps for six different developmental levels. So many transitions. Will this work completely overwhelm me? Will I be trashed in the surf, swept out to sea in the riptide?

I am a first year teacher again.

To calm my nerves when I got home I went straight to the garden. I am a messy farmer. In the spring, when there is so little time, I scatter seeds like magic beans, tossing fistfulls and raking them into the dirt to see what takes. I throw in many more starters than I have room for, just in case some fail, never believing that these tiny plants could expand to half my height and double my width. I forget, or just neglect to thin, allowing the lettuces to bolt into mature forests. By August, the raised cedar boxes are an explosion of color, and so thick with weeds that harvesting feels like an Easter egg hunt. The other day when I was poking around I stumbled upon a fully grown 20 pound pumpkin! As I picked my way through the paths, I could feel cherry tomatoes pop under my feet. So much delicious productivity. So much fecund chaos.

And yet,

I know that if my tomato plants had more space around them, I would be able to find them more easily and fewer would rot on the vines. If I devoted more time to planning my beds, and to weeding regularly throughout the season, I could grow enough produce to make salsas and sauces, pies and pickles. We would feast. But I throw my aspirations into the soil, briefly envisioning the bounty of the fall, and then forget about them, too easily distracted by puppets and parenting. Until I step into the thick foliage months later to encounter treasures like quarter pound cucumbers and jalapeños as long as my thumb. I know it is botany, but it feels like magic.

My husband swears that the success of the garden depends primarily on the quality of the soil.

Today I reported for my first day of preservice training. I unloaded by haul from Ruth’s into the empty cabinets. I covered the bulletin boards with faded green butcher paper, and scavenged plastic bins to hold all of the pencils, and glue sticks, and foam pieces that do not yet have a purpose. I met two dozen new colleagues, whose names I will forget by tomorrow, picked their brains for insights into learning 450 names, and confessed to the kindergarten teachers that I am terrified of their students, having never taught five year olds before. I batted about some lesson ideas and wheeled a 3D printer down from the ESOL teacher’s office. I sweat through my shirt, not sure if my unairconditioned room was really that steamy, or if I was having a stress induced hot flash. Here we go.

I have spent the past year composting. This week I begin to press the seeds into fertile soil. I will give them space, and try not to forget about them. I will remember to reserve time each week for thinning and weeding. And if I am lucky, maybe once in a while I will stumble upon some pumpkins.

When I left my position over a year ago, it was for a temporary leave of absence. Now, after 12 months of retraining my central nervous system, I feel ready to teach again. Last May, I was humptydumptying. Today, I am kitsugi. Still a fragile vessel, put back together again, with precious metal gleaming between my cracks.

As per my contract, my school district preserved my previous position teaching third grade, to which I am entitled to return. However, I want a fresh start, so I have been applying to any other job in the district for which I am qualified. So far I have submitted seven applications, had five interviews, and received zero job offers. Apparently, after teaching for over two decades, I am unemployable.

It could be that I have a scarlet letter where my teacher’s lapel pin should be. I work in a small district, and elementary school teachers are gossipmongers, so it is likely that word got out that Jes is “low key” crazy. It is also true that I have not exactly prioritized professional development. I prefer to spend my spare time writing essays about how I have failed as a teacher rather than learning how to not fail as a teacher, so I have no additional credentials. I cannot compete against the 26 year olds with masters degrees and ESOL certifications. Or maybe it was because at some point during each of the interviews I mentioned menopause casually, as if everyone at the conference table also follows Miranda July on Instagram. Who knows. In any case, it’s been demoralizing.

Then last week a friend gave me a free life coaching session (since I can no longer afford therapy, I must rely on the pity and generosity of my therapist friends), and I stumbled on a realization:

I think I do not want to be a classroom teacher anymore.

The statement stings. It makes me dizzy. It’s like gazing into the vast abyss of tartarus. I always thought I would teach until retirement. I have never had a Plan B. An entire lifeplan swiped clean by a swift series of rhetorical questions (“So, I think I hear you saying … is that right?”). Back to the drawing board.

AI generates a definition of teaching as “the deliberate process of imparting knowledge, skills or experiences to someone else.” What the internet does not know is that teaching in elementary school today is so much more. It is getting to work before 7:15 am, joyfully greeting students who are hungry and tired and angry at someone other than you, serving breakfast, taking attendance, listening like a therapist, encouraging like a coach, negotiating disputes like a referee (or, when it’s bad, like a judge), delivering a dozen lessons a day, facilitating a hundred transitions a day, adapting every single lesson for the unique learning styles of 20 people who are being raised predominantly by youtube and tiktok, applying bandaids, stopping nosebleeds, serving snack, tying shoes, drying tears, fixing furniture and computers and projectors, meeting standards, following curricula “with fidelity,” proctoring testing (and more testing), communicating every day with students and colleagues and parents, and imparting knowledge and skills when we can get to it. Teaching children to read. Teaching children to calculate. Teaching children to analyze literature, and write essays, and support arguments, and engage in discourse. Teaching children to sit, and listen, and empathize, and apologize. Teaching human beings how to be reasonable members of a society.

Which is to say, that teaching is difficult. It is exhausting. And if I cannot persuade any interview committee of my peers to let me do it again, then maybe it’s okay to say I am done.

Maybe I am only interested in the final, and most fundamental objective: teaching human beings to be reasonable, and compassionate, members of society.

Yesterday I returned to my school for the first time since leaving last May. I was nervous, but when I drove into the parking lot, it felt like coming home. Our school administrative assistant (who essentially runs the school, and who has often doubled as my guru/cheerleader/influencer) greeted me with an Amma-esque hug. As I passed the fifth graders in the hallway on their way to a tree planting ceremony, shouts of “Ms. Ellis!” exploded like firecrackers.

When I joined the fourth graders in the cafeteria for lunch, they did not hold back with their questions.

“What happened to you, Ms. Ellis?”
“Did you quit, or were you fired?”

“Are you coming back?”

“Where do you teach now?”

“Do you remember that time when you crashed out, Ms. Ellis? And threw your name thing on the floor. That was crazy.”

“Ms. Ellis, do you still have cancer?”

After assuring them that I do not have cancer, I tried to explain in simple terms how I needed to take care of my health, but now I feel better, and also I have two new children, so I am not sure if I will be back. Then it was time to transition to class. We exchanged some hugs and smiles, and they disappeared through the heavy metal doors without looking back.

Teachers come, and teachers go.

The question is, am I coming, or going?

Last week my husband and I went on vacation to Ecuador with our grown children, ages 18 and nearly 21. Despite our finances being tight, we are committed to taking them on one all-expenses-paid vacation each year which we call “Forced Family Fun.” As their peregrinations expand, it is an opportunity for us to grant one another our full attention and reconnect each year. For me it was a much needed respite from the tedium of assembling lunches and nightly battles over bathtime. Parenting is an endurance sport; I was able to rehydrate and catch my breath. We laughed, feasted on patacones and trout, hiked volcanoes to 12,000 feet, soaked in hot springs, explored the cloud forest after dark. And we luxuriated in the magnificence of the humans we have already raised. They are so confident and, at this moment in their lives, happy. Well on their way to building their independence. It was good to be reminded that this is the goal: to arrive, after the chaos of adolescence, at adulthood.

I was reminded that, We can do this.

The Little Children, who will themselves be big one day, spent the week with other families, distracted by novel experiences and enveloped in love. They spent time with best friends, a former foster family, their sisters, and our African daughter and her husband. When I picked them up they were relaxed and satisfied, not too eager to return to the routine of school and chores. But they chatted continuously in the backseat, telling me about their week and bickering about nothing as siblings do. After unloading their bags, they explored the garden, jaws dropping at the sight of seedlings where they had pushed peas into the dirt just two weeks ago, and rode their bikes around the neighborhood. It is not a bad childhood, all considering.

We had a late dinner of hotdogs and green salad on the back deck, to celebrate the start of summer. I taught them how to make a toast, by tapping your glass with a knife and clearing your throat. “To the wonderful summer to come!” I said. “To summer,” we rejoiced.

Girl, always one to go first, was the first to try. She tapped her glass. We listened. “I am happy,” she said, “that we are back here.”

To being here, we echoed. To here.

I first met Alicia Reeves-Mooney in 2014 at Thomas Stone Elementary in Mount Rainier, Maryland. At just over 5 feet tall, she is often the shortest person in the selfie, but her spirit fills every frame. She is the first to greet a new colleague, and the most likely to coordinate the retirement party. She befriends everyone, communicating enthusiasm and appreciation for your existence, no matter how miserable or useless you may feel that day. Through curriculum mandates, funding cuts, mold outbreaks, chronic illnesses, pandemics – she does not complain.

So when I had the idea of interviewing veteran teachers, I thought first of Ms. Reeves. Teaching in an underfunded school in one of the largest public school districts in the country beat me up. After four fast years, I left licking my wounds. I wanted to know how this woman manages to persevere in public education with dignity, grace, and joy.

The short answer? God.

Alicia grew up on Long Island with three brothers in a devout Catholic home. Her grandfather, from whom she got her maiden name of Mooney, immigrated from Dublin to New York to participate in show business, where he met and married Etta Mooney, a vaudeville blues singer. “It was happily ever after – and my father’s family, his brother, sisters, siblings, were beautiful looking people… Oh God really blessed them.”

As she was growing up, Alicia’s connection with God was her primary influence. “We had a Christian home. My mom and dad loved God, they took us to church, and they prayed with us. I had a God fearing family. I think even with teaching, before we were even born God put this in our heart to do. Nobody just wakes up and says, ‘I think I wanna be a teacher.’ No. God definitely puts that in your heart.”

I also grew up in a Christian home, attending church every Sunday, even serving as an acolyte through my teenage years. But we were Episcopalians. Our religion was more intellectual than spiritual, and the service routinely put me to sleep, so by the time I left for college I was functionally agnostic. When I was 20, I spent a “gap year” working in an Episcopal orphanage in Honduras, where I attended Bible study every Thursday and finally found Jesus. I felt the power and relief that one gains from deep faith. But I lost him again when I returned to college and rekindles my strong aversion to dogma. I gave up church for the Sunday NY Times and brunch. My relationship with God is intimate and vague. I feel confident there is more than we perceive with our five senses, a deeper consciousness, a creative force, but I have not typically felt like my higher power required my attention. When Alicia talks about the Lord’s influence in her life, I get it, because I have been there. But it’s like I am speaking with the Swiss about the Alps. I feel like a tourist when it comes to Christianity.

God continued to guide Alicia into adulthood. She graduated from high school in 1980. After a brief stint in California, she came back east and went to school at Virginia Union University, an HBCU with a theological seminary, where she met her future husband. When her father became ill, she returned to New York where she finished her degree in 1987. Alicia told me she said, “Okay, God, please bless me with a job, a place to live, and a church. And you know? God did those three things in that order.” She graduated on a Sunday, interviewed in Washington, DC at the Department of Education daycare center on Tuesday, and started her first job the next day.

A few years later she married and began working at JO Wilson Elementary in Washington, DC, where she taught kindergarten for 13 years. For one year, in order to have more time for her son, she worked for a family in Northwest DC whose children attended Mrch Elementary, a public school in a wealthy neighborhood. She told me, “Compared to where I was working and where that school was, it was night and day. So I said… I need to get my kids in here! So one year, I stood online at four o’clock in the morning so I could get my son, the first son in that particular school. He got in. And then after he got in, they let my second son come in. And then the third son came. And that school helped prepare them for life. Merch.…It was a local, you know, a public school. But, yeah, it was a good school. It was also just in this wealthy neighborhood. You know, they got all the nicest of everything… The PTOs would swoop in and pay for whole salaries of people!”

I grew up in Northwest DC and attended John Eaton Elementary, not far from Merch. My neighborhood had treelined streets and spacious lots for single family homes, many of which were just steps from Rock Creek Park. I had plenty of teachers and support and enrichment activities, mostly paid for by a robust PTO. I also had lots of friends who did not live in the neighborhood, whose parents stood in line at four o’clock in the morning to get into a school with the “nicest of everything,” like extra staff to support after school programs, assemblies, and a full renovation every couple of decades. As a child, growing in the DC public schools, I had no conception of the inequity and segregation in my city.

Alicia also attributes her sons’ education to a higher power. “So I was just blessed to be able to do that. But that school — God blessed my sons to finish school and go to college and be where they are, because of Murch Merch just expanded their minds and you know, the stuff that they do... They are just amazing.” It is true that I benefitted from many remarkable career educators at John Eaton. Men and women who had the resources and freedom to let us play with water tables and build log cabins out of popsicle sticks, and who held poetry competitions and published school newspapers as their entire literacy curricula.

Eventually Ms. Reeves left DCPS to go to Prince George’s County Public Schools. Her principal at JO Wilson had moved her to second grade, which was not her wheelhouse, and PG salaries were higher at the time. She interviewed at Thomas Stone Elementary in June and was hired on the spot, where she remained for the next 25 years of her career, teaching kindergarten, preK, and headstart. I estimate that she has guided nearly 1,000 students in early childhood over the course of her career, and her influence has radiated outward to so many more.

I asked her how she has been able to teach for all of these years. What is the source of success? Her answer alluded to karma.

“Well, when I started having my own children, I said, you know what? I have to make sure that I treat these kids right, so that down the road, somebody treats my child right. And you know what? That has paid off a whole lot, because the way I treat them, that is how the teachers have treated my children. And they have had some wonderful [teachers], not too many problems. Because when I first started, I said I have to make sure that I am strict, but kind, and caring, and thoughtful, empathetic... And then you know, it paid off ‘cause elementary school through college [my children] have had the best opportunities ever. That is part of my success. Taking care with the kids, and being kind to them, and just caring. And they know that you care.”

But how can a person be so caring and kind even as children are cursing you out, refusing to follow directions, calling out for help, or just being kids, in a system that continuously puts teachers down?

“Everybody can’t do this,” she told me. “They said, how do you do it? I said, God. He helps me. The strength. I can’t take credit for anything. He gives me the strength. All these years. And so it’s definitely God. And prayer.”

Public schools are by law secular. While children and students may pray privately, our schools cannot be aligned with any religion or coerce any form of prayer. We are careful to use “mindfulness” rather than “meditation” to avoid alignment with Buddhism. I have long worked alongside deeply religious women and men, and while I have at times envied their faith, I did not fully understand how central it was to their teaching.

Because teaching is a spiritual practice.

Jesus is not my personal savior, or even my saint of choice. But when I was embraced by a saint this past February, and Amma told me to “mother mother mother mother mother,” I woke up to the reality that to teach we must work to understand our own divinity (call this awareness, humanity, etc.), and then work to help each child understand their own. That’s it. Such a complex practice reduced to a single word: Love.

Alicia Reeves-Mooney is retiring at the end of June after serving as an educator for nearly 40 years. But she’s going to make sure her teaching certificate remains active. Because you never know when the Lord will call again. And what a blessing it is – to teach.

By the time I left the Biennale, things were not going so well at home.

Our new foster daughter was having trouble adjusting, throwing temper tantrums multiple times a day, and my husband was exhausted. “It’s okay,” he told me on a phone call after a difficult evening. “You need a Soul Quest. Don’t come home yet. I’ll be okay.” But it didn’t sound okay.

So when I arrived at Amma’s ashram at Amritapuri, about four hours south of Kochi by train, I knew I would not stay for long.

I wanted to have an immersive spiritual experience in India, for all the obvious menopausabbatical reasons. I needed something to shake me awake (or calm me the fuck down). I considered several ashrams in the south, but I am wary of gurus, so I googled “scandal” after each ashram name, and came up with too many examples of tantric yoga gone awry. I had no interest in creepy swammis. A friend’s son is a devotee of a woman named Amma in southern India. I liked that she is female, and I liked her brand: compassion, love, and selfless service. So for the final leg of my “Soul Quest,” I decided to head to Amritapuri.

Amma (which means “mother” in malayalam) is often referred to as “the hugging saint.” She tours the world giving darshan, filling stadiums of people who wish to receive a loving embrace from god herself. She was born in a small fishing village on the coast of Kerala to a poor and conservative Hindu family. When she began manifesting Shiva as a young girl, her parents were skeptical of her gifts and abusive towards her. Nevertheless, she continued to minister and developed a large following. Today she has hundreds of thousands of devotees around the world, and leads India’s largest humanitarian organization, donating millions to international causes annually.

When I arrived at Amma’s ashram after a 30 minute taxi from the train station, I was surprised to find a bustling metropolis, complete with high rise dormitories, a school, a hospital, a temple, a printing press, shops, cafes and juice bars, an ayurvedic spa, a swimming pool, a cow barn, and a kitchen that makes three meals a day for the 3,000 (give or take a few hundred) people who are there each day to worship. People were everywhere – cueing up at the reception desk to check in and out, walking in pairs and triads, eating and talking, lounging on the steps of the temple, lolligagging in group tours. It costs approximately US$6 for a simple, private room and three Indian meals, and even less if you don’t mind sharing a room. There were small children playing throughout the compound, many older people with attendants, both men and women, many dressed in white or orange, mostly Indian and white European or North American, but also people from Asia and Africa and Latin America, speaking Hindi, English, Spanish, French, Italian, Portuguese, Korean, Mandarin, and languages I could not recognize. I arrived after the 10:30 orientation, so once I turned over my passport and received my room key, it was up to me to figure out where I was — and what the fuck I was doing here.

What business did I have meditating at an ashram in India while my family was struggling at home?

So when I went up to my room on the 13th floor, after dropping my bag (and dropping my jaw at the view of the Indian Ocean), the first thing I did was turn on my data plan and purchase a ticket to fly home in three days. This would just be a cultural experience; enlightenment would have to wait.

After a brief rest, I spent the next hour wandering like a tourist. I do not like being a tourist. I felt agitated. Annoyed with the incessant chanting that seemed to come from every direction, the lack of clarity, all the glassy eyed “westerners” in saris and mundus, the pictures of Amma everywhere. If this place was so great, why were none of the adults smiling? And I began regretting my rash decision to go home early. The cost of the ticket was more than double my original non-exhangeable flight. Was I just a coward? Why was I here in the first place?

I decided to just sit in the main hall, a vast open-air auditorium with a grand stage, several giant screens for projecting videos and simultaneous translation of the services, and seating for over 3,000. Lunch had recently been served, so I got up the nerve to ask a woman how to be served a meal. With a British accent, Nístula graciously explained how to stand in the foreigners line and sit on the women’s side of the hall to eat, and then became my personal guide for the remainder of my time, showing me where to sit to have the best view of Amma, explaining how to receive darshan when the time came, and answering all of my questions with the patience of a person who has spent many months of their life in silent meditation.

Sometime after 3 pm, Amma entered the great hall. Nístula grabbed me by the arm and pushed me to stand next to the aisle so I could be as close to the saint as possible. Soon, a short (Amma is less than five feet tall), barefoot Indian woman dressed in a white sari entered through a side gate buttressed by several attendants. For her devotees, Amma is the embodiment of divine love and light. She is god. To me, she appeared to be a grumpy granny. She was talking with an assistant and scowling as she walked, as if she were discussing the drought, or the dry cleaning.

Amma assumed her place on a throne at the front of the hall. First she led a silent meditation, next one of her devotees gave a talk in English, then Amma responded to that talk in malayalam, and finally it was time for darshan.

I considered waiting until the following evening to be embraced by Amma. You can only receive darshan once every five days. Maybe it would be better to get a boost from god right before I departed. But Nístula encouraged me to go right away, so when it was time, I stood in a line of about 30 foreigners (Indians cue up on the other side of the hall and are received first). When Amma gives darshan on tour, people stand in line for hours to have a few seconds with the Holy Mother. I was handed a token, instructed to remove my shoes, and began shuffling through a series of chairs, eventually onto the stage, and finally, less than an hour later, up to Amma.

As I approached the Holy Mother, an attendant took off my glasses and asked my language. (Nístula had explained, “Amma knows everything that is, that ever was, and everything that will ever be. She knows everything about you.” But apparently she does not know your language, so I said I spoke English.) Another person then guided me towards her. I stood behind a couple as they were embraced, and then suddenly they were gone, I was being pushed by yet another person, and my head was on Amma’s right shoulder, her arms pulling me in.

Nístula had warned me, “Sometimes Amma will whisper something to you that you need to hear. Not always. But usually. So listen carefully.”

Amma held me close, tightly, almost passionately, with a hand around my back and another on my shoulder, like an eccentric aunt who loves passionately and unconditionally, and said, “Mudder mudder mudder mudder mudder mudder mudder mudder mudder mudder mudder mudder mudder mudder mudder.” Then she let me go.

More arms ushered me off the stage. I did not have the chance to ask what “mudder” meant. Was it Sanskrit? Malayalam? I walked back to find my shoes, disoriented.

Then I realized: Mudder.

Mother.

God had said, Mother mother mother mother mother mother mother mother mother mother mother mother.

Amma means “mother.” Was she just telling me her name? Feeling disappointed to receive such a generic word, I sat back in the great hall to watch the beautiful spectacle of others receiving darshan. Many were weeping openly. The love and energy surrounding Amma was palpable even from my perch so far from the stage. I thought, this is what the disciples of Jesus must have experienced: the awe and ecstasy from being so close to their god. Once darshan was over, I listened as Amma sang spiritual songs. Nístula had told me that she could sing for several hours, well past midnight. It was still fairly early, but I was soon overcome with fatigue, so I returned to my room to sleep, and dream:

Our new girl child was screaming and fighting on the stairwell in our home. I crawled up to hold her. Then she relaxed, stopped crying, looked up at me, and smiled.

My dreams are usually vague, banal, and stress related. This dream was uncannily vivid. I could feel her body in my arms, each detail of our home was clearly defined. I was there.

Then I woke up to find my entire body vibrating, my skin humming. I touched my stomach, my arms, my face, all of it, like a bell that had just been rung. Just outside my window I could hear the surf of the Indian Ocean, and in the Temple far below they were chanting the 108 Names of the Divine Mother.

I fell back asleep, this time heavy and dreamless. When I awoke, I knew I had to return home to mother this child and her brother.

In fact, this is the only thing I need to do: to mother. To understand that I am merely a vessel of God’s love. My simple purpose is to understand my own divinity, and to help children understand their own light and power, to know that they too are containers and agents of love. (And, sure, to teach some spelling and problem solving and civics along the way.)

My students often call me mother. Usually mom, or mama, or mommy. It is always a mistake, uttered carelessly while asking me to check a math page or to use the bathroom, quickly corrected with an embarrassed smile. “Don’t worry,” I tell them. “Happens all the time.” But beneath the confusion, there is a greater truth. My role as teacher is no different than it is for any child in my home. Teaching, when done well, is a deeply spiritual act.

I spent one more day chanting, and meditating, and waiting in lines for food, and chai, and ayurvedic treatments. And then I returned by cab to Kochi, in time for a midnight flight to Abu Dhabi, back to Boston, to winter, to a home with children. To mother.

After four days at the Kochi Biennale (of paintings, photography, sculptures, collages, murals, sound installations, dance, puppetry, classical music, electronic music, performances, talks, discussions, seminars, workshops… every corner of the old port and every minute of the day packed with artistic responses to the environmental crisis and class disparity… Depth/ Breadth/ Uncompromising quality.), I emerged with this:

Teaching is performance art.

Before I was a teacher, I wanted to be a puppeteer. When I abandoned that destined-for-poverty-path, I began joking that I chose education because I could have a whole classroom of puppets to play with and, simultaneously, a captive audience. I spent the first 20 years of my career trying, and failing, to manipulate and entertain my students. The concept of my classroom as a theater was a farce.

Four years ago, as I started dancing again, I became more invested in the idea that teachers are artists; the students: our medium. I would speak and write about this tentatively, still not sure if I was serious. All of my professional training has insisted that teaching and learning are a science. Brains acquire knowledge in ways that can be tested and replicated. Curricula are designed to be followed with fidelity in order to achieve specific outcomes. I was assured my students would reach milestones on predictable timelines if I just had the right routines and procedures. I was made to believe that if I kept to the schedule and followed the script, I would be a good teacher.

I cannot follow scripts. I struggle with schedules, timelines, and routines. I am a shitty scientist, having no patience for data collection, little faith in my analysis. By many metrics (test scores, as just one example), I have never been a good teacher.

On my third day at the biennale, I attended a workshop entitled Water is a Political Word led by the Panjeri Artist Student Union (@panjeriartistsunion) of Kolkata. A group of about 20 people, mostly Indians with a few apparent Europeans and me, gathered in a crowded gallery, thick with premonitory heat. Performance artist, Taufik Riaz, had us form a circle, presented us with a collection of water tools (urn, glass, jug, block of ice, pitcher of water...), and directed us to “see what we can do, see what we make of this.” Over the course of the hour we formed a bucket brigade to gather water from a tap across the courtyard, melted ice, drew estuaries on the clay floors, followed a walking pattern with varied tempos, arranged action figures, sang, played. With very little direction, only exploration. There was no hierarchy of artist over audience. We existed inside the art. Together, as a single organism, we discovered the political nature of water. Our experience of the concept was immersive, physical, spiritual, emergent, and somehow complete.

The best teaching connects students directly with concepts, community, the greater world, and themselves. The knowledge does not flow through the teacher; the disciple does not learn from listening alone. The teacher creates an environment and facilitates experiences that enable the child to truly understand. To exist inside the topic or skill. Many great teachers do this through discussion, by posing questions to encourage curiosity and ignite dialogue. The best teachers understand that they can leverage lighting, timing, music, color, storytelling, movement, memorization, poetry, physicality, ritual, repetition, set design, all of it, to lead the student into a state that aims to build consciousness, that endeavors to connect them directly with truth.

On my final evening before leaving for Amritapuri, I attended a lecture by Marina Abramović. More than two thousand people filled a warehouse to hear the guru of performance art speak about her experiences with “long durational work.” For two hours she walked us through images and video clips by artists who devoted their careers to abolishing fear, becoming fully present, and connecting with a greater consciousness in service of truth, suffering, and beauty. Knowledge. Divinity. Absolute awareness. “I don’t give a shit about the past,” she told us. “All I care about is now.”

When I teach again, if I am able to teach as a performance artist, I will concentrate my pedagogy in the now. My students will be neither my medium, nor my audience. They will be the art itself, process and product, inside the learning. And I will be right there with them, no hierarchy between teacher and student.

And never again will I forget to give them a standing ovation.

I was raised by a woman from India.

I was also fortunate to live with my biological mother and father who are loving parents and exceptional role models. But they needed help to take care of their house and children while they worked tirelessly to make the world a safer place in their respective fields of health care and senior housing. When I was just a few weeks old, Precy came to live with our family and be my ayah. Ever since I could hold a conversation she would tell me, “Jessica, when you come to India...,” and “When we go to Goa...” with stories of coconuts and fish on the beach, and rickshaws in Bombay. I grew up on dal bat, and chicken curry, and aloo gobi, and tandoori, and chapati. I wore a shalwar kameez for my graduation out of adoration for this woman, and always assumed I would go to India someday. But the stars and the monsoons never aligned.

My whole life I have been on a budget, or busy, or on a school schedule (and could only travel during summer heat and rain). When I decided to take a sabbatical, I realized that this was my first (and possibly only) chance to finally travel to India. I booked my tickets last fall, long before we had two foster children. When the kids joined our family this winter, it was on the condition that I would continue with my trip. My husband agreed to take a leave of absence from work and be a single parent for three weeks while I went on what he coined my “Soul Quest.” I left on January 26th, right before a collapsed polar vortex packed most of the east coast on ice.

I flew into Mumbai and joined Precy (who changed her name to Punam when she was married, and still goes by both names) in her one bedroom apartment on the first floor of a highrise condominium complex in a neighborhood known as IC Colony (named for Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception Church which holds mass for more than 3,000 people daily). I rode in my first rickshaw, shopped at the Borivali market, got a head massage, went on a wild goose chase for a SIM card. I also ventured downtown to see some sights with the mother of my son’s girlfriend as my guide. I drank chai, ate sev puri, and haggled for everything. I ogled the traffic, the families of four on single scooters, the neighborhoods perched on landfills, the way buildings were simultaneously growing and deteriorating everywhere, the remarkable ease with which everyone moved through an apparently chaotic world. I surprised myself by feeling completely at home.

Then we were joined by my godsister, Kamini, Punam’s daughter, and we flew to Goa, where Precy was born. There we lived out Punam’s promise of eating fish on the beach, drinking coconut water and beer, walking through the surf in shorts and t-shirts. I went parasailing and witness (without attending) a Bollywood style Indian wedding. We sampled Goan sweets and roasted cashews with Punam’s cousins. We went to the resting place of St. Francis of Assisi, and left candles and requests next to his body, which, many say, still bleeds when brought down for veneration every ten years. We were on vacation together in Goa, as promised to a toddler Jessica nearly fifty years ago.

For over a week I was in India living out a lifelong dream. I was most taken by the visceral spirituality in every encounter. I could see how God (or, rather, a team of gods and saints and prophets working constant miracles) is at work. I got a sense of how Christianity and Hinduism and Islam intersect in the most populous country on the planet. I dipped my toe into the pond.

Then I left Precy and Kamini. They returned to Mumbai for more errands and eating and mother-daughter time together, and I flew to Kochi (or Cochin) to attend the Kochi-Muziris Biennale and be on my own for the next ten days. Those are the days that taught me the most about teaching, and the ones I will share with you here in the next two posts.

But that is for the next time I have a chance to sit down and write. For now, there is a house to be tidied before the children come home, summer camp applications to complete, a vet visit to be schedule, grocery shopping, cooking… It turns out that even when one is on sabbatical, days still flow like a river after a heavy rain. Full, fast, and blessedly destined for the sea.

She is already, surely, changing our lives.

Over the holiday we had both of our children home. Our son, who is studying on the far side of the continent, and whose radiant, gobsmacking beauty makes me stare, is so gentle and kind that sometimes I wonder if he himself is a bodhisattva or prophet-in-waiting. He is a god to me. Our daughter, age 18 and in her first year of college, giddily strong (she can lift my overplump middle aged body, making me squeal like a toddler at bathtime), so confident and articulate, both directed and adventurous, is in many ways my opposite, causing me to regard her with awe. If only I could approximate her precision, her power, her excellence. She is my divinity. Where did they come from? I will always be their mother, but this winter it hit my bones that my time with them on their path, along their journeys, has changed. My role has transformed from conductor to correspondent. (Or perhaps consultant, if I am so fortunate to be contracted.)

And now here is this unexpected gift: another child, open to all our influence. She peppers us with questions, as nine year olds do, no new fact left unexamined. She sees every novel experience as a challenge to be mastered. She learned to crochet in a day. Her first hour on skates, she was swiveling backwards. Two days ago she could not float on her back or paddle from my arms to the pool’s edge; yesterday she swam from the deep end on her own. She rarely stops to eat, but she moves through the world with hunger, devouring everything, inviting us to feast with her.

It makes sense to me, suddenly, that Jesus was a baby. When the magi arrived (presumably, but certainly not, on January 6th), and took in his divinity, I now feel the intensity of their revelation. Of course, God appears most clearly in an infant. But it is unfortunate that our mythology does not include Jesus’ childhood. What wisdom he must have possessed at the age of nine.

Today I woke up to a text on my phone: “Good morning, all Public Schools will be closed today, Wednesday, January 7th, due to inclement weather.” I am not teaching, and my third grader has not yet been enrolled in school, so the alert is irrelevant to me. But I am nostalgic for the flip that occurs somewhere between my stomach and my heart at the gift of a snowday. From my perch by the fire in the darkest part of the year, I am surprised to find myself missing the intense, delicious relief from the chaos of a room filled with the hunger of nine year olds. I am missing the lessons they teach me.

“For unto us a child is born.”

And I am ready again to be the disciple.

My husband and I are considering fostering two children, ages 9 and 11. They are the younger siblings of the foster children of friends. The family was split up two years ago, and these kids have experienced a particularly itinerant year in a lifetime of itinerant years. Our biological children are nearly adults and off on their own adventures in college. I have no shortage of pastimes and hobbies, and we were just getting used to our “empty” nest, but we have the space in both our home and our hearts for two children who need parenting. This week the younger girl, whom I will call Asha, is staying with us because she did not have another place to go (her brother is doing okay in his situation). We are considering this a trial for a more permanent placement after the churning whirl of the holidays.

All of a sudden we are back in the rhythm of math games and reading and chores, ice skating and crafts and playdates. It feels natural to parent, like breathing, although more exhausting and labored than before (also like my breathing… Is that really drool on my pillow? Did I really just have to remind myself to inhale?), because now we are 50, not 40, and the tug of gravity is real.

The important part is that I now have a third grader in my house, and I am a third grade teacher on sabbatical. I have a feeling this child is going to teach me a lot about teaching.

It was the end of our second day together. We were on a lovely honeymoon. The day had been filled with new adventures and learning – the rules and routines of our home, and how to crochet, and how to skate, and the names of the other nine year old girls in the neighborhood. Asha had been going hard all day, so when we informed her that when she is done with dinner and would like to get up and play, she simply needs to ask to be excused and then take her plate to the sink.

I watched the switch flip.

The smiling, energetic, polite child who had used many pleases and thank yous throughout the day turtled into her hoodie. She had been playing with the cat at the dining room table, so the prompt felt like a reprimand. She had done something wrong, and she was not going to admit it. It would be two hours before she would fall asleep on the floor of her bedroom after refusing to ask to be excused, take her plate to the sink, go upstairs, take a shower, brush her teeth, pee, put on her pjs, or get into bed.

I am drawn to teaching in schools that serve children who have experienced dislocation and trauma in their early lives. I have always taught students who have recently immigrated, who are in the foster system, who do not have permanent housing, whose parents have separated or even died. Throughout each day I watch as their switches flip after small corrections (Put your shoes on… Where is your pencil?... Number four is incorrect, try again…), and they shift into Oppositional Defiance gear. Sometimes they explode, tossing papers or markers or chairs, in inexplicable rage. One year I had a student who, when corrected, would scream and flick the lights on and off, forcing me to escort my entire class out of the room and conduct my lesson in the hallway until the social worker could persuade him to go to the office. More often the child retreats, curling into a fetal position in the classroom library, or wedging his body between the filing cabinet and the wall, refusing to attempt any work for the rest of the day.

In a classroom of 20, depending on the school, I may have four or five students who experience similar levels of anxiety and reactivity to redirection. They set one another off and provide entertainment for the rest of the class, causing some students to feel scared, others to feel frustrated that they can’t learn, and at least one to mimic their behavior because it feels more fun than working. Some days, weeks, years, I have compared my teaching to a game of Whack-a-Mole. I just don’t know when another behavior is going to pop up. And I have reacted similarly, whacking away, sending kids to the “calming corner,” keeping them in for recess, calling the office for back up. Whack. Whack. Whack.

This was the first time I had the opportunity to watch a child slip into defiance all on her own, and I could observe clearly that her refusal was not a choice. My benign prompt caused her to panic (Oh no! I have done something wrong!), and her reptilian brain would not allow her to compromise (You cannot be wrong! Do not back down!); it bound her to the sinking ship, tightening with each lost privilege (no dessert, no movie, no book before bed… You are not wrong! You are not wrong! You are not wrong!). With no other children demanding my attention, and with no pressure to complete the math lesson or get to recess on time, I could approach her mood with patience, give her space to just be, and wait for the storm to pass.

Eventually my husband carried Asha up to bed, where she went boneless and slipped stubbornly but quietly onto the floor. We whispered our “love you”s, made sure she was safe, and gave up our battles, resigning ourselves to washing the sheets if she wet the bed. By the time she woke up, her amygdala had relaxed and she was back to her smiling, enthusiastic, polite self for another day of fun in yet another new home with weird rules about what must be said at the dinner table.

Some of the best teachers have raised their own children with special needs – Autism Spectrum Disorder, ADHD, Emotional Disabilities, and other neurodivergences. These teachers had the challenge and opportunity to finetune their strategies for helping children manage intense emotions and tricky brain chemistry. My son and daughter were relatively easy to parent, so I missed that opportunity to become a better teacher. I have a feeling that Asha, and her brother when he joins us, will have many essential lessons in store for me.

It is only day four of our trial week. We may come to realize that we are simply too old for this, or that my own menopausal emotional dysregulation is not suited for parenting, or that we would just rather not. Unlike raising our own children, in the foster system, we get to decide if and how long to parent. But last night the bedtime standoff ended with tooth brushing and a chapter of James and the Giant Peach before bed, so I see progress.

And I cannot imagine a better form of professional development for my sabbatical. This third grader is going to homeschool me for sure.

Last week I checked my work email (which I rarely do since I am unemployed, and usually it’s just spam alerts) and found an email from Sahar:

Hi Ms. Ellis!! just reaching out, how are you? I visited school a few times this year and I haven’t seen you! Hopefully we will reunite soon haha! I’ve missed you <33. You were a really good teacher and I was really lucky to have you as my 3rd grade teacher for you have shaped me to become who I am today!!

I taught Sahar several years ago, and she is now a middle schooler with an email account. I wasn’t necessarily a “really good teacher,” she was just a typical third grader. Most children love their third grade teacher simply because they are nine years old and hard-wired to love adults. Their endocrine systems have not yet released the hormones that make them averse to grown ups. But the love is real, and I cherish every visit and note from former students. Sahar’s email was particularly poignant, because as I get deeper into this sabbatical, some days I wonder how (or even if) I ever did that impossible job.

I do not remember all of my students. (Some teachers do – they have a gift for names and faces – whereas I am known to forget students’ names in the middle of the school year… or a school day… or a sentence). But I remember Sahar, and always will. A devout Muslim, she wore a hijab from a young age, which framed a beautiful face with bright eyes and a radiant smile that lit up rooms. She was consistently kind to everyone, and showed deep empathy for her peers, even those who were thoughtless or cruel. She worked hard to meet the high expectations of her family. She was playful and curious, and genuinely loved to learn. She was a delightful artist. At home, she was the oldest girl, helping to care for her younger siblings without complaint. If only I could clone her and teach a classroom of Sahars, what a fantastic teacher I would be.

Sahar is Somali - American. Her parents immigrated to the United States for safety and economic opportunity before she was born. Since the early 2000s our state has been a destination for many Somalis seeking stability. For as long as I have been teaching in this city, at least 20% of my class has been Somali. I have worked closely with Somali colleagues and parents to meet the needs of their children. The girls especially, as the rising pillars of their families, are generally strong willed, hard working, and intellectually brisk. The boys tend to be more playful, distractable, and immature, often coddled by their older sisters, but no more than most boys their age. (I’ll expand on gender generalizations in another post.) When I have difficulty with a Somali student, all I need to do is speak with his mother and the behavior usually resolves instantly. My Somali students often talk about becoming doctors or lawyers. They are particularly attuned to social justice and caring for others. Even at the age of eight, they know that they tread a holy path in a complex society.

This past Tuesday, the illiterate (and, if you ask me, illegitimate) President of the United States went on a rambling tirade against Somalians [sic], saying, “They contribute nothing. I don’t want them in our country,” and later, “We can go one way or the other, and we’re going to go the wrong way if we keep taking in garbage into our country.”

I do not know what I would say to my Somali students today if I had students to speak to. I wrote back to Sahar and reminded her how smart, and powerful, and kind, and beautiful she is. I told her that she lights up rooms with her energy, and inspires me with her curiosity and compassion. Then I told her that this president is an idiot, and that he doesn’t define what it means to be an American. If I had students today, I would tell them that they are loved, and wanted, and appreciated, and just as welcome in our classroom, school, community, city, country as any one else. I would pull a book from The Welcoming Library of I’m Your Neighbor Books, an organization that strives to provide every child in the state with access to high quality children’s literature centering immigrant experiences, and read a story of resilience, hope, and acceptance.

Then we would listen to Waivin’ Flag by Somali-Canadian artist, K’naan. Because…

when you get older, you will be stronger.

Love is the answer.

Love is the (only) way

out

of this shameful state

of hate.

It is snowing today in our little city and all across our small state. Last night hundreds of children and teachers put their pjs on inside out and backwards, and checked their snowday predictor app a dozen times before going to bed, because there is nothing sweeter than a snow day. Which is exactly what they got. All praise the patron saints of snow.

This one seems legit. It is actually snowing. But I have lived through many snow days with no snow, when the prediction of a “major snow event” manifested in an impotent, slushy precipitation. I have never (ever, ever, ever) dreamed of becoming a superintendent, and the first reason is because I would not want to be the person to make the call. You can never win. Unless it’s a blizzard that has buried the district by sunrise, if school is canceled there will be people who complain that we have become lazy and should just fucking shovel, plow, and drive in our climate, goddamnit. Parents who are stranded without childcare even when they have to show up to their jobs because the grocery stores and coffee shops and dentist offices didn’t close (so what’s so special about schools?) will be pissed. However, if you put your faith in the plow guys and bus drivers and keep schools open, there will be people who complain that you are putting lives at risk. (And, god, why do you have to be such a killjoy?)

For teachers, snow days are gifts of time. Weekends are whirlwinds of errands and social activities, holidays are filled with commitments, and vacations are planned up months in advance. But snow days are blank slates. Teachers know we will make up the day in June, so these are guilt free hours to be spent in our homes, with our children and pets, with recipes and projects and shows to binge. For many of us, they are the extra hours we need to grade papers, or to prepare more thoughtfully for that tricky lesson (in our pajamas with a cup of hot tea that is spiked with whatever we want thankyouverymuch). For most of us, it is a much needed day to do absolutely nothing and reset our central nervous system for the dark, challenging days and hours of indoor recess to come.

After the Great Social Experiment of Covid-19 forced us to deliver instruction virtually, I worried the Snow Day might become a holiday of the past, like Arbor Day, or the Jump-a-thon. We could now post lessons online. Why not send home kids with their tablets and laptops, or a stack of worksheets, and call it a school day? Especially in northern regions where school often lingers well into June after a particularly stormy winter, wouldn’t it be best to just keep the work train rolling through inclement weather?

In 2021, our district experimented with this, even proposing that we offer synchronous instruction from our homes. Luckily, someone in Central Office predicted the even bigger shitstorm of inequity that such an endeavor would create, as only the children with parents to support them at home logged on, and teachers attempted to parent small children while managing Google Meet links. Instead they asked us all to make packets of worksheets, and said we would take the first three weather events as “traditional snow days,” and any day after that would become a “remote learning day” (“remote” meaning, “not really”) with independent activities and online assignments. I am not a believer in busy work, but I suppose it’s as good a compromise as any. I do hate teaching in July.

Not every student loves a snow day, however. While it is nice to sleep in, I always have students who eat most of their calories at school, and those who do not have a loving, stable parent to care for them, and those whose bedrooms are drafty. I have students who are bullied or bored at home. I teach children who are abused by their family members, for whom home is not a secure haven. And I have students who prefer to come to school simply because it is more entertaining than playing on a phone all day.

A snow day can be a mixed bag for teachers, too. We will need to scrap and revamp lesson and unit plans. Field trips and guest speakers must now be rescheduled. That unit assessment won’t be graded in time for the end of term. When we return to school, the children will inevitably return more feral. Getting ready for recess will take at least fifteen minutes with all the boots and coats and mittens to be tucked into sleeves. The play structure on the playground will be off limits indefinitely. Be sure, we will suffer the snow.

Or rather they will suffer. Because this winter, I am not a teacher, and the pleasure I feel while sitting in my office chair and watching the crystals build up on the driveway is a mere fraction of the snow day ecstasy experienced by teachers. To be honest, I’m kind of jealous. To a teacher, there is nothing sweeter than a bonafide, goddamn, well earned, blissful snow day.

I spent the month of May just regulating my central nervous system. June, July and August were pure indulgence, a feast of visiting family and playing outside, fueling my soul for winter. September and October were dedicated to organizing my house and learning how to manage my time, as well as starting a battery of collaborative projects that make me excited to get out of bed in the morning. Now, as our hemisphere tilts steadily away from the sun, I finally feel ready to focus on the real work of my sabbatical: figuring out what it takes to teach.

After whiteknuckling my way through two decades as an educator, I want to really understand why this work is so difficult for me. Over the past six months, the central pillars of this profession have begun to come into focus. I think they may be, not necessarily in any order (but maybe there is a hierarchy):

1. Emotional regulation

2. Executive functioning

3. Self awareness / boundaries

4. Curiosity

5. Genuine enjoyment and love of children, and

6. Courage (to transgress, to take risks, to fail and try again)

I am not sure if this list is complete, or too long, but I believe that if I take this time to really reflect on each of these areas, I will return to the classroom a better teacher.

Then early this week a principal reached out to let me know that a position would be opening up at her school. It is a teaching assistant position, so I would not have all the planning responsibilities of a classroom teacher, and it is in a school where I have always wanted to work. She encouraged me to look out for the job listing and apply. It is an opportunity that I should probably not pass up.

The question is, am I ready to get back into the water?

The sharks are still there, you know. The temperature of the water has not changed. I still do not know which way the current is pulling. I do not yet have a wetsuit that fits me. More literally, I have more work to do on my own ability to regulate my emotions using meditation. I am still cultivating a practice of lists, finding places for all the sundries in my life, developing routines and habits that support my aging body and my hunger for creativity. I am just getting to know myself as a woman whose biological children are grown and whose role in society is transforming.

But what if, while sitting up here wrapped in a blanket and sipping my hot cocoa, instead of becoming stronger, I am becoming weak. What if I forget how to swim altogether? Maybe it’s time to jump back in, with a PFD and a GoPro, and see what I can learn from doing this impossible thing known as teaching.

I was able to join the crowd with my King Trumpuppet, a marionette I made from newspaper, an old foam mattress topper, toddler sized clothes, duct tape, a stupid amount of glue, orange paint, and those tiny hands sold in novelty shops. Recently I added a Pam Bondi puppet (made by my niece from an old Barbie doll) and a marionette of plastic ICE cubes.

The question of the bit is, who holds the strings? I wear a white jumpsuit with a question mark on the back and invite people I meet in the crowd to suggest names for the puppeteer. Elon Musk? (Ha! So summer 2025.) Vladimir Putin? (Depends on the day of the week.) The Alt-Right. The 1%. Stephen Miller. No one knows who is running this shit show. Children are offered the chance to take control of the puppet (instead of beating the crap out of him, which is their first impulse) and make him say kind words, do nice things, or just bow down. Next time I am going to add puppet strings to the puppeteer costume, so the spectators can control me. It’s very meta. And deeply therapeutic.

If I were teaching I would not have time or energy for protests, not to mention puppets. I know there were many teachers out on the streets last Saturday, with punny signs and perfect penmanship (teachers are excellent poster-makers). I ran into one colleague, dressed as Captain America, who had used her own money to buy supplies so people could make last minute signs at the rally. But while I have always been a member of my teaching union, and have occasionally joined a picket line or written to the editor of my local paper, I have rarely engaged in the ways that many people do, stepping up to be building or district representatives, showing up at school board meetings, or attending rallies at the state house. I have great respect and awe for the values-driven men and women who tack time onto their workdays to protect and improve the lives of adults and children in schools. I am not one of them.

For one, I don’t typically engage in politics, because when I am teaching, I am the executive branch of our own democracy. I spend my days motivating my workforce, regulating the economy, negotiating treaties, managing resources, responding to trends, nurturing vulnerable constituents, cultivating leadership among the masses, and running counterinsurgency operations. When I leave work, I have little steam left for activism.

But more importantly, when I am teaching I do not feel the need to take to the streets because teaching, itself, is a political act. Governments treat teachers like pawns in their ideological games (gun control, DEI, censorship, etc.). We are regarded as servants and compensated accordingly. However, we are extraordinarily powerful. Our days are devoted entirely to the exercise of raising engaged citizens.

Citizenship implies freedom – to work, to eat, to dress, to wear shoes, to sleep in a house, to support oneself and one’s family, to love, to be angry, to cry, to protest, to support, to move, to participate in this or that religion, this or that party, to educate oneself and one’s family, to swim regardless in what ocean of one’s country. Citizenship is not obtained by chance: it is a construction that, never finished, demands we fight for it.” - Paolo Freire, from Teachers as Cultural Workers, Letters to Those Who Dare Teach

To teach is to empower students to think, question the rules, and engage in democracy in every arena of their lives. Teachers, therefore, must do the same. We cannot be puppeteers. And we must never allow ourselves to become puppets.

(Unless, of course, we are celebrating No Kings Day.)

When I am teaching, the stories come easily, flushed out like pheasants, each day an episode in a dramatic, comedic miniseries. Once I step out of the classroom, it is remarkable how quickly I forget how hard (and funny, and important, and tragic) it is to teach. It’s like childbirth. I can talk about the difficulty with a wistful nostalgia, but I don’t really remember the pain.

Here, in October, I have already forgotten what it feels like to greet my students at the door each morning, some running in as if from a fire, desperate for safety, others slow and reluctant like luggage on a conveyor belt, wishing they could reverse its direction and hide back in the womb of their bedrooms far away from humiliation and over stimulation. Some come with fists clenched and flying, tears overflowing, from some disagreement on the bus route.

Yet regardless of how they arrive, I must receive each one of the unsuspecting disciples with equal attention and honor. I catch them like fast balls, pop flies, grounders, guiding each child from its velocity to a state of equilibrium. I forget how overwhelming those first few minutes can be, to feed and entertain and tend to the individual needs of two dozen baby humans. Shoes to be tied, cuts to be covered, milk cartons to be opened, noses to be wiped. And then chairs unstacked, desks wiped, pencils sharpened, attendance taken, schedules posted, homework collected, coats hung (on hooks, not chairs), announcements and pledges made… All before we even begin. I hardly remember the defiance, the children who come ready to fight, and play, and resist, and disrupt, wresting my attention with violence if necessary because attention is as fundamental as oxygen and inside the school walls is the only place they can find it.

How swiftly I have forgotten it all.

This week I will take time to organize my office and settle back into a routine that supports me sitting still for several hours a day (something neither necessary nor possible when teaching, and something I am not even sure I am capable of). I will finally pin up all of my school pictures from the past two decades, and open up the subscription to Education Week that I purchased, and attend the school district listening session, and look for stories to share.

Where schools are concerned, the stories are there. I just need to keep tromping through this forest, or maybe prop myself up in a blind, eyes wide and ears fine tuned, and wait for them to fly.

An elementary school classroom is hardly a democracy. We do our best to make our students feel seen and to respect their opinions and values, but at the beginning and end of each day they are children, and teachers are adults, and “because I said so” might just be the only answer. However, I do try to maintain a semblance of democracy in our microcosm. As in most elementary classrooms, we co-construct our “Class Constitution” each fall, and sign it with Crayola markers, binding us to an aspirational code of decency. Essentially, we agree to be reasonable people, and do our best to be safe, respectful, responsible, cooperative, truthful, and kind. The constitution is posted on the wall, and pulled down to revisit several times a year when my students are starting to act like the celebrities (and politicians) they see on TV.

While I guide my students in many conversations about their responsibilities in school, I spend far too little time discussing their rights. If I did, it might come down to this:

• You have a right to an education that is equitable and free from bias.

• You have a right to feel safe and welcome in this space.

• You have a right to never be hurt in school, by teachers or peers.

• You have a right to my attention (but you will often have to wait for it).

• You have a right to eat when you are hungry (but not when you are bored), and to use the bathroom when you need to pee (but not when you are bored).

• You have a right to the pursuit of your own happiness (but not if it involves distracting others or disassembling furniture).

But do my students have a right to free speech?

Several times a week I hear, “Ms. Ellis! She said the F word!” Or the B word. Or the C word. Or the D word. Or the R word. Or the S word (which could be shit or, more scandalously, stupid). Or the LMNOP word. “Bad words” flow freely on the internet and out of the mouths of most adults, so it is not surprising that children experiment with them in school. I do not deny the utility of curse words, and I appreciate a well placed F-bomb as much as anyone. But they are distracting to 8-year-olds, so I do my best to maintain a G-rated classroom.

When I was in kindergarten and a classmate said a bad word, my teacher would take him (always the same child) into the cubby closet and presumably wash his mouth out with soap. (I suspect this did not actually happen because he always emerged smiling; but still, the rest of us were terrified.) This is not an option in today’s classroom, so instead I respond with lectures, the aforementioned inappropriate (and ineffective) yelling, or extra writing during recess about the importance of words. Once in a while, when the word is really, really bad, and when emotions are especially high, I may ditch my lesson to have a Community Circle conversation about the power of language.

The word that most often necessitates a longer conversation is “the N word.”

I am a white teacher. I teach in urban schools with children of many nationalities and races, most of whom do not identify as white. I believe that while race is a social construct, it is a ferocious force in our society that must be addressed. I cannot deny that race and racism impact my teaching and their learning.

One year, I had a Black child on the Autism spectrum in my class who perseverated on “the N word.” He loved to say it - to his peers, to himself, out loud, in whispers. He loved to write it - on his papers, on walls, in the air. There was no malicious intent, just curiosity and a desire to garner attention. He could sense the word’s power. His mother and I were in agreement that this behavior was unacceptable in school, and I was to let her know each time he used the word so she could follow up at home. Meanwhile, I had a responsibility to teach my students, especially the white ones, why this word was off limits.

“Ms. Ellis, he said the N word! Is it a bad word? Why can’t I say it?”

My students are 8 and 9 years old. “The N word” does not appear in any of their curriculum materials. But “because I said so” did not feel like enough of an answer in this case. So instead I said something to this effect:

You have learned about slavery and how white people enslaved Black people in this country for hundreds of years. And you have learned about the racist laws that discriminated against Black people, and the Civil Rights movement, and the work of people like Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King Jr. [Thankfully, these are things we are still allowed to teach about in my state.] Well, that word, “the N word,” was used by white people for all those hundreds of years to hurt Black people. That word was so ugly, and violent, and painful, and cruel, that we don’t use it anymore. Especially white people. We can’t use it. I can’t use it. Because it still can hurt, and we don’t want to hurt people. [This rationale still makes sense to 8-year-olds.] So we agree not to use it. We know that words are powerful and can be used as weapons, even when you don’t mean to. [“So why is it okay for him to say it?” a white child asked.] Well, Black people have taken the word so they can try to heal all those centuries of harm. They can use it however they want, with their friends or in songs, because their ancestors were the ones who were hurt so very badly. They own it now. But still, in school, because we are all here together and we don’t want anyone to hurt, we keep that word out of our mouths. Got it?

Because they were children and I was an adult, or because they were tired of me talking so much, and they were hungry, and it was time for recess, they nodded their heads, eyes wide and knowing, and the discussion ended there.

Jimmy Kimmel is back on the air, but freedom of speech in this country is under assault. Yes, even in third grade we have the right to free speech. But free is an action, not an adjective. As the nursery of democracy, teachers must guide students in exercises of questioning language and social norms, even as they are learning to follow them. This is our work as teachers, to foster a society in which we all live, and to pursue and protect our rights, together.

Why?... Because I said so.

Curious or hungry for more? Check out:

- NCAC (National Coalition Against Censorship)

- Facing History and Ourselves lesson plan on dehumanizing language

- Elizabeth Stordeur Pryor on how to navigate points of encounter with “the N Word” in classrooms

In the months leading up to the election it was difficult for me to disguise my political leanings. As this hideous buffoon of a candidate spewed hateful rhetoric against “illegals,” calling the hardworking parents of my students “dangerous criminals,” and promising a massive wall and unprecedented deportations, I worked to keep my classroom a sort of home base from the insane game of tag going on in the world outside our school walls. I joked that if anyone said Trump’s name out loud, they would lose a minute of recess. (Thankfully this never happened; I would not have been able to follow-through with my threat.) Instead, we referred to him as the Other Guy.

In the weeks before the election, when students expressed their concerns that Other Guy might win, we would occasionally look at the electoral map or analyze the latest polls. We discussed my students’ fears and concerns about what might happen if Other Guy were elected, or talked about what outrageous thing he had said yesterday and why no decent person should ever, ever be that rude. I went so far as to assure them that Other Guy could never actually become President in a democracy built on the talent and grit of immigrants. It just wouldn't happen.

Until it did.

On the morning after the election, I dragged myself out of bed and went to school at a complete loss of what to tell the children. I suspected my undocumented students would be absent, but that day I had 100% attendance. We spent more time in the morning circle than usual, singing, playing games, and allowing space for feelings. One child wanted to know, “Ms. Ellis, If they force my parents to go back to our country, will I be adopted?” The question was not hyperbole or ironic. He was as sincere as an eight year old can be (which is to say, entirely). I attempted to address his fear with the tenderness of a cancer diagnosis.

“Everyone agrees that children should always be with their parents,” I assured him. “No one would ever force you to separate.” I thought I was speaking truthfully.

Now we are nearly a year into the second Other Guy administration. The primary difference now is that he and the White Nationalists who control him have apparent control of all three branches of government, and he has doubled down on his promise to punish “illegals” to the full extent, far beyond the law. I am in a new state and school district, in a city that has long been a harbor for immigrants seeking asylum.

One morning last week, just after dropping off their child, a parent was abducted by ICE from the access road of the school where I have taught for the past six years. That day, because of our federal government, a child was forcibly separated from a loving, hardworking parent.

Apparently, we no longer all agree that children should always be with their parents.

The children at the schools where I teach are being told by the media and our government that they do not belong. They hear this on the media and from politicians. They feel the presence of ICE in their lives. We, the teachers, must counteract the offensive messaging.

Teachers do this every day. We work to greet each of our students with equal respect (some of us often failing - but that is for another post). We fill our bookshelves and cover our walls with diverse images and narratives. We directly and intentionally teach empathy with SEL (Social Emotional Learning) lessons, and in a thousand impromptu micro-corrections as children test out their developing biases on one another. The best of us know how to celebrate the cultures of our students throughout each school year, even though culture is not embedded in our curricula. Because this country has always been, and will always be, a nation of, by, and for immigrants, we do everything in our ability to convey: You are welcome here. You belong.

(Note: Two years ago I had the privilege of participating in a year long professional development with I’m Your Neighbor Books. The mission of IYNB is to develop empathy and promote diversity, equity, and inclusion (yes, I said it! Capital D! Capital E! Capital I!) by putting children’s literature that centers immigrant experiences into the homes, libraries and classrooms of children and adults. IYNB is eager to partner with schools and teachers to bolster their libraries. They provide free or affordable books through programs like Welcoming Libraries, and Rapid Response Book Boxes. The stories we tell and share make all the difference in the world.)

On September 11, 2001 I was not yet a teacher. I had just started my master’s degree program and was a teaching assistant in fourth grade at the college’s lab school. When the first tower collapsed, I was most likely serving snack.

I did not have a cell phone - this was long before we all carried all the world’s information in our pockets - so it was not until my lunch break that I heard the news. I did not see the buildings fall, or the bodies falling from them. The incomprehensible horror was a blurry abstraction, disconnected to my reality in rural Massachusetts. But it was really happening. I thought for sure we, the teachers, should respond.

“What do I tell the children?” I wanted to know.

“Nothing,” the principal told us. They had notified families that we were keeping their children safe. “We’ll let their parents talk to them when they get home.”

That night my boyfriend and I listened to public radio in our kitchen and wondered if we were now at war, and when we would be invaded, and if a nuclear attack was next, and how our lives were about to change. And the next day we went back to work. I do not remember how we responded when the children brought up what they had heard at home.

How can you explain something you do not understand?

Less than a week into my teaching career, I was faced with the need to contextualize a tragedy. Throughout my career, this has happened again and again. Through school shootings, suicides, sudden deaths, hurricanes, fires, and floods - we teach.

Just yesterday, within four minutes of one another, there was another school shooting, and the widely publicized assasination of Charlie Kirk. Once again, I am not sure if we are on the brink of war (this time a civil one). I am not sure how our lives are about to change. And if I had greeted 20 eight-year-olds whom I was just getting to know, I have no idea what I would have told them this morning.

Thankfully, there are other professionals who are more experienced and knowledgeable about how to help young children navigate the emotional landscape of a world filled with inexplicable violence. They advise us to assure the children that they are safe, and that adults are here to protect them (whether or not we believe it to be true). They tell us to allow space for listening and processing, and to be truthful without providing graphic details. It is okay to have and share our emotions, but it is important that teachers, like parents, do so with emotional regulation. They are looking to us for reassurance, even when we are frighteningly uncertain.

At the time of the killings I was in my garden harvesting the last of the tomatoes and listening to Meditations: Reflections of His Holiness the Dalai Lama. With an entrancing soundtrack by Amjad Ali Khan, His Holiness told me that the central solution to suffering is compassion. It is our innate ability to love that will save us. We must understand every human being to be equally worthy of our compassion, even our enemies, even those who foment hatred, even Charlie Kirk, even Donald Trump. Indeed, compassion is fundamental to the art and science of raising human beings.

I have long known that it is beneficial to teach “mindfulness” in my classroom. However, I always assumed that it was to help my students survive in a difficult, increasingly digital world. I thought I taught awareness and empathy so that children could make friends, be happy in school, focus their attention, and manage their emotions so they can learn. Now I know that I must center these skills in my teaching not because they help the individuals in my care for a brief time, but because compassion is essential to the survival of our species.

If nothing else, moving forward I work to cultivate compassion, even and especially on September 11th.

For the past three years I have been experiencing mood swings, chronic insomnia, and joint aches, as well as the occasional hot flash and a ridiculous level of forgetfulness. I was treading water in the chum of perimenopause, when one day, at the age of 50.5, menopause rose out of the murky deep to swallow me whole.

I had not been feeling confident or connected to my colleagues for months. My delightful class of 15 generally benevolent and obedient children had devolved into a dysfunctional family of sociopaths. Our morning meetings had the mood of the last will and testament reading in Knives Out. I was going through the motions of classroom management (behavior charts, points, rewards, stern looks, seconds off of recess, etc.), with no success, and we were all miserable.

Then, on a Thursday right before dismissal, one of my students refused to do something-I-forget-what, in a typical unhappy nine-year-old way, and I lost my shit. I managed to keep from yelling or crying until I escorted the class out to dismissal. Then I slunk into my principal’s office and sobbed with rage and shame.

He listened patiently. He has been in the business for over three decades, is nearing retirement, and has seen it all. As a principal, he must tend to the satisfaction and well-being of students, parents and teachers. It is an impossible job, so he has learned to approach each interaction with ease and grace. He let me cry, and then he said, “Do you think you might need to take a leave of absence?”

A leave of absence? No way. I was just having a moment. The weather was finally warming up and most of the substitute teachers had stopped picking up jobs. We were understaffed almost every day. Sure, I was no Teacher of the Year, but how could I abandon my class and colleagues with just four weeks to go?

The next day I went to see my doctor and by that night I was putting on my first Estradiol patch. By Sunday my hot flashes had stopped. I went back to work on Monday, and on Tuesday as I walked from my car to the front door of the school I froze by the flagpole when I realized that for the first time in years there were no negative thoughts tearing through my mind. I was cured, and the bastards who invented HRT (Hormone Replacement Therapy) should be canonized.

Then the patch slipped off in the shower. I replaced it as soon as I noticed, but that night I was awake with hot flashes again. I got dressed and went to work weeping, tears still flowing as my students arrived for the day. “What’s wrong, Ms. Ellis?” Bella asked me. “Why are you crying?”

“Sometimes people cry for no reason,” I told her. She nodded because this was something she could understand. Bella was a frequent flyer of the Calming Corner. Then she gave me a pat on the arm, and went to hang up her bag.

For the morning meeting my students sat in the circle on the rug and stared at me with unusual empathy. I held up my fist to model how my amygdala (the thumb) is over-stimulated and now the rest of my brain (the fingers) is mush so I cannot think and cannot stop crying. “Maybe you should use the Calming Corner,” Bella suggested. I told her I would think about it. After our meeting they lined up silently for PE. When I dropped my class off at the gym, I told them that I would be going home.

“Will you come back?” asked Bella, now with tears in her own eyes.

“Of course!” I assured them. “I promise I’ll be back soon. I just need to get to the doctor so she can fix my amygdala.”

This time when I cried in my principal’s office he said, “I think you should consider taking a leave of absence.” I stared at him, wondering what a worthless piece of shit I must be to not be able to finish off the school year, just because I am feeling fragile. Sensing my hesitation, he explained, “You know, it would be different if you were working at a tech company and you could sit in your cubicle or turn off your camera at home and send some emails or process payroll or whatever. But this isn’t that kind of work. You really have to be okay to do this job.”

He offered to teach my class for the rest of the day so I could go home. That night he sent me an email explaining that one of the best English Language teachers in the school, adored by my students, had agreed to cover my classroom for the rest of the school year. I had no excuses to stay. Breaking my promise, I did not return to school.

I spent the month of June working on my amygdala, and the rest of the summer attending to the Great Transformation of menopause and making sense of my shifting role in my family and community. I went to some form of therapy every day. I walked my dog and held my cat. I read The New Menopause and All Fours. And I filled three journals, trying to dig down to what is me beneath all the layers of failed expectations.

I am calling it my Menopausabbatical.

Through all of this, every person in my life (colleagues, friends, my partner, my parents, even my teenage children) told me it was okay. Stop. Go. Fold in on yourself, be quiet, and rest. The world will wait for you. You are loved, but not needed. Even as I cried, I understood my great fortune. I know I am unfathomably privileged to be able to follow their advice and take this time for myself.

I feel like I have been a caterpillar moving through life, my body now cooking to completely reorganize my molecules, and with the proper time and attention I might emerge a butterfly. It’s a scary mess inside the chrysalis, but it is necessary for metamorphosis.

In my next post I will consider the essential need for sabbaticals of all kinds and for all people, but especially for teachers. It shouldn’t take a nervous breakdown to make us take a break. Because, you really have to be okay to do this job, as a wise man once told me.

My first teaching position was in a large rural district north of Burlington, Vermont. I was hired to teach sixth grade in a consolidated elementary school the size of my daughter’s college. I had just completed a master’s degree in only nine months at a small liberal arts college, which means I was the master of nothing and I knew it. A seasoned fifth grade teacher, of my current vintage and experience, taught around the corner from me. When I popped into his classroom on the Friday before Labor Day to borrow a stapler and told him how scared I was, he gave me a pep talk: “I always get diarrhea before the first day of school. Every year, like clockwork. Can’t sleep a wink, thinking about what’s coming.” I thought he was old and crazy. Turns out he was spot on.

The first day of school is opening night of a 185 day run of a Broadway show, and all the critics will be there. It’s the grand opening of a new franchise, and while you know the customers will show up, you have no idea if they will buy what you are serving. Even the veteran teachers who have seen it all are at least a little bit apprehensive.

The teachers in my district went back to work last week and had only four days to connect with colleagues, plan their first lessons, and set up their classrooms. Elementary school teachers have to move furniture, clean desks, organize entire classroom libraries, set up bulletin boards and supply shelves and calendars and cubbies, and label everything all before the students arrive. It’s like building a set for a reality TV show. We even have to think of lighting and sound design.

There are teachers who really kill it in the classroom setup department. They know how to place the desks so there is a natural flow to the space. They have themes and stick to them. They spend their summers scrolling through Pinterest for inspiration. Their rooms are welcoming, cozy and organized. It is important that classroom spaces are appealing and predictable so children can relax and learn.

I am not one of these teachers. Classroom set up has always been one of my greatest challenges. My brain does not naturally understand if the markers should go near the front of the classroom, where I can monitor who is mining and hoarding the red markers, or near the door, where they can steal the markers quietly without disrupting my teaching. It has taken me 20 years to settle on a basic classroom layout that meets everyone’s needs, and I still don’t really know what to do about the goddamn scissors. I find Pinterest demoralizing.

In my second year of teaching I had just gotten married and changed my last name to Ellis, so I spent most of my teacher prep days making huge construction paper signs to label each part of the room around a tropical Ellis Island theme. It was super cute, and I found cutting and pasting to be very soothing. I laminated and put them up before realizing that there would be no room for actual content on the walls, so I tore them down before anyone could see them, especially my colleagues, and never experimented with a theme again.

Instead, my classroom begins as a blank slate. I try to make sure things are organized and in the right place (with solicited advice from my colleagues), but the walls are bare. The first thing my students do is make the name labels that will go on their desks, folders, and book bins. Slowly over the week we write and decorate the posters that will remind us of routines and rules. They draw self portraits that will go up on the walls, and make other drawings that will fill our home with color. (note: This approach is not my invention! I was trained early in my career in Responsive Classroom, which promotes “Guided Discovery”; essentially, we don’t give anything to students before we teach them how to use it, and we co-create the learning spaces.) My classroom is nothing to write home about, but it works. Well, it usually works.

If I were at school I would be teaching my third graders to enter the classroom, and hang up their bags, and sit at their desks, and stand up, and walk to the circle, and sit down, and pass the talking stick, and listen with attention, and walk to the line, and stand in line, and walk to the cafeteria, and play on the structure at recess, and ask to use the bathroom, and get a drink of water, and get their snack, and clean up from snack, and get a new pencil, and take care of their pencil, and put the cap back on the markers so they don’t dry out, especially the red ones. And that’s just on Day 1.

But I am not teaching today, and I do not have diarrhea. Instead I am sitting at my desk by my window and watching what feels like a parade of parents walking their dogs a little bit later than usual, with a friend and a cup of coffee, breathing a sigh of relief that their children are back at school, and once again there is a rhythm to the world, and they can get back to their jobs and their independent lives while the teachers take it from here. It’s another school year, off to a good start.

Close and lock the exterior door.

Cover all of the windows.

If the blinds work, pull them down.

If they don’t, cover them with paper.

Have the children sit silently against the wall, in a line

like sardines,

or in a clump

like socks in a drawer,

away from the doors and

away from the windows,

in case… in case…

Do not talk.

Do not whisper.

Just hide

and wait.

The drill takes less than five minutes, enough time for the administrators, who must conduct the Lockdown Drill, or Safety Drill, or VCI (Violent Critical Incident) drill, to check all the doors and windows. Sometimes there is whispering or giggling. They are nervous. Some are bored. They are children who are being made to sit in the dark because we are practicing for the possibility of being attacked by an armed civilian. I cannot get mad at them for making noise, so I say, “Let’s imagine we’re all animals sleeping in a cozy cave.” Which never seems to help.

“Why do we have to sit here, Ms. Ellis? Why do we have to hide?”

I never know how to answer this. Recently an administrator told us to, “Tell them we are securing the building in case an animal, like a wild skunk, is inside the building.” Seriously? I tried that, and Miguel just said, “What are you talking about? We’re hiding from a guy with a gun!”

Some of my students are exposed to the news at home and know all about school shootings. Some of them have been sheltered from the hideous reality and turn to me with wide eyes to see what the teacher has to say.

So I say, “Sometimes there’s danger inside the building, and we need to leave safely. That’s what we call a fire drill. And sometimes there’s danger outside the classroom and we need to stay inside, and that’s what this is. We’re just staying safe together.” Most of the nine-year-olds seem satisfied with this. Danger is pure abstraction. Some of them have already been exposed to gun violence at home or in their neighborhoods. The possibility of death is familiar. A few are wise beyond their years and know I am full of shit and scared and can even tell how pissed off I am that this is even a thing.

We started doing lock down drills in 2012, after 20 children were killed at Sandy Hook Elementary School. I remember thinking that this must be the last straw. Legislators would surely wake up after so many babies were martyred that day. More than a decade later, we are still sheltering in place.

I mourn the two young lives lost yesterday at Annunciation Catholic School, 8 and 10 years old, the ages of my students, and I grieve for the innocence of the children and their families whose lives were permanently altered by the slaughter. This was not an attack by an enemy with an objective. It is terrorism from within. And it is preventable.

Every time there is a shooting on school grounds, all teachers in this country are impacted. We are reminded that we could be the next target, and when that happens, how will we protect our students? We feel rage at the spineless adults who can control the flow of guns into the hands of the mentally ill in our communities, and who do nothing in the name of the Second Amendment. We need our legislators to work together to dramatically limit access to weapons, regulate and monitor social media platforms, and throw as much money as possible at community mental health programs and professionals.

There is much more to be said, but I’ll stop there for now. Unfortunately, I assume I will have cause to write about school shootings again before the year is out. And even I am getting those First Day of School jitters, with so much to do before those school doors open on Tuesday.

I am thankful for all of the organizations that continue to apply pressure even when shootings aren’t making headlines, such as :

https://giffords.org/

and

https://www.sandyhookpromise.org/

They need our support as much as we need theirs.