The meaning of back

I like Back to School Nights. If they were earlier in the day, they'd be perfect. As it is, getting home at 10 p.m. after a full day is made worth it by the chance to talk about how great the kids are (and perhaps make it worth it for parents to troupe around the school after a full day of their own). Back to School Night is too short a time to get into the nitty-gritty and too early in the year to have much to gripe about anyway. Everyone walks away with a warm glow--and that goodwill is money in the bank if things get hard down the road.

The Back to School Night here was different only in the sheer volume of parents who showed up. They took up almost all the chairs in my room, which had been set up for a 25-minute presentation by my buddy teacher, Ocanada and I. I teach humanities to half the 6th grade. She teaches math and science to the same bunch. (I call her Ocanada because she once campaigned passionately in favor of playing the Canadian national anthem during graduation at her former school near Toronto.) My partner teacher, Aussie (who has been mentioned before) is the humanities teacher for the other half of the grade. It's kind of a cool set up. Teachers share kids with one colleague and subject matter with another.

Anyway...our parents were a virtual United Nations of smiling faces. Before we started, we had conversations going on in Arabic, Dutch, German and every sort of accented English (Australian, British, American, Canadian). Many of them were first-time middle school parents, which can be as awkward a parental stage as adolescence itself. Let me hear from the moms and dads out there, but I can only imagine how it must feel to watch your child grow from a bright-eyed, apple-cheeked mid-sized kid into a furtive, sulky middle schooler. As is often the case, these parents nearly collapsed with relief to discover that Ocanada and I had seen it before and, yes, it would all turn out OK with just the regular amount of groaning and gnashing of teeth (yep, talking about the parents here, not the kids...)

It felt good to present a united front with Ocanada--we are very much on the same wavelength. I don't always feel that way here--and I'm not sure why. Is it the size of the school (about 90 teachers in grades K-12)? The lack of intensity surrounding the work? Or maybe this is what you get when people have work-life balance? They don't have to be in each other's pockets all the time. So they can do things like leave school at a reasonable hour. And, on the other side, keep materials to themselves or look at you a little funny when you suggest that everyone have the same classroom rules. It works both ways, but it seems to work.

Because at the end of the day what's cool about teaching is that the sum of all those little parts doesn't even come close to representing the whole. A group of smiling, somewhat nervous middle school parents; a bunch of 6th graders waiting outside the classroom door before school; the super-corny quotes; the kid who wedged himself in his own PE locker; the one who called herself the Swedish meatball; the cheers when I pull out the read-aloud book--these come closer. I'll let you know if I find the rest...