Greatest show on Earth

I posted this sign on Facebook yesterday, or maybe it was the day before. Its a sign I finally, after several years of wanting one, got for my birthday from last year. It's hanging in my classroom window and if you drive down Indian School Road, about a half mile away and look between the trees in the early pre-dawn morning, you'll see it. It's symbolic, at least for me, for everyone one who works at our school, every school around the country, all grade levels, for every child, that we educators are ready for the 2012-2013 school year. I called it 'lighting the lamp' and every day, after I get to school, in the pre-dawn hours, we will light the lamp and be open for business.

I get to work with some humans that are truly amazing people, heroic in some instances.The kids and some of their stories make you want to go in and kiss your kids on their foreheads while they sleep. But these are adults.

 Our head night custodian won classified employee of the year-for the entire district-the whole district. This guy would give you the shirt off his back if you asked him-then ask you if you needed his shoes as well.

In my department alone, a department I have had the privilege to be the department chair for the last five years, twenty teachers in all, I had two teachers have their entire schedule flipped upside down two weeks before the beginning of school and although they weren't the happiest people in the world, they rallied and starting Monday, they won't miss a beat. Imagine going away on vacation and coming back to work and being told that the work you did and made sure was set on your desk so when you came back from Wallyworld, you wouldn't be too far behind, you discover instead of a desk there's a coffee maker and a rattan chair.

Another teacher  has to sleep at various friends homes because her abusive husband is at home. She will be ready. The kids won't even know.  Then there is a young woman in another department who, after working all day, goes and sleeps in a chair next to her elderly father who is in the hospital, taking care of him for the last two weeks. She's made it every day, coming from the hospital and returning at night, driving her mother there as well and returning her home, amazingly strong and unless you knew what was happening and were able to look real close and see behind the veil, you couldn't tell she was running on fumes, physically and emotionally.

Monday is game day. It is the start of a nine month run where, in that time, young men and women will find themselves, discovering hope, while many facing the dragons in their nightmares, discovering they really are true. Oh, and with some of these kids, the Boogieman really does exist. Some others, luckily less than the number of fingers on one hand, will not see their 2013 summer.

This is my second career. in my entire life, never has my work ever exhausted me like it has being a teacher. Last year, the idea of changing careers and being that guy who has to open the envelopes on those stools sample cards we mail in from our annual home test kits was looking pretty good compared to a teacher.

Then it happens.

Just when you are ready to stand on your desk and throw yourself off, some kid from three years ago, comes back to visit. Crap, you want to go home, not talk to some kid you don't even remember the name of. He comes up and shakes your hand and tells you he's doing fine, getting ready to finish at ASU. "In what?" you ask. You figured it would be rude not to ask.

"I want to come back and be a teacher, like you Mr. Williams." Crap.

On top of that little lift, within ten minutes, two of your teachers come in and tell you if it hadn't been for you, they would have quit. Crap again.

So, thank you Synergy Labs for your job application, but I think I'll stick it out and see what happens. Where else can you be among heroes and make heroes at the same time.