About Eric Rosenbaum: Eric Rosenbaum is a blogger and is currently pursuing his M.A. in Humanities at University of Chicago.
Last weekend, I went to a Halloween party for teachers. My
girlfriend, a middle school teacher for Chicago Public Schools, was my ticket
inside that chamber of secrets. While at the party, I couldn’t help imagining
how my younger self would react to being surrounded by costumed teachers. Throughout
middle school and high school, I was very interested in how my teachers saw me,
or how teachers saw students in general.
Yes, I was excessively nerdy in middle school. But I’m
willing to bet I wasn’t the only person who has wondered how teachers speak
about them behind their backs.
There was a particular policy at my school which made my
desire to know the inner minds of teachers that much stronger. Once a month,
all teachers gathered in one classroom to discuss students’ progress. I never
learned exactly how those meetings functioned. In my head, I imagined the
teachers deconstructing each student individually, meticulously uncovering and
sharing each of their faults. Every time they met, I wondered if they had a
picture of me on a bulletin board, my transcript projected on a screen.
It’s not that, at that age, I idolized my teachers or put
undue emphasis on their estimations of me. More than anything, it was the
mystery of those closed-door meetings that I found intriguing.
So I found myself at this party, surrounded by teachers in
costumes. There was a Joker, a Dr. Who, and a Binder Full of Women. There was a
guy dressed as Avril Lavigne with his girlfriend who was dressed as Skaterboy.
One person came in street clothes, but wore a chicken hat. Another person came
as a chef, carrying a loaf of sourdough bread which was eventually eaten by the
other guests.
Some conversations circled around school. At least at the
beginning of the night, when I was just trying to get to know people and the
only tool in my conversational arsenal was, “So you’re a teacher?” But for the
most part, nobody was interested in talking about work. And when work problems
did come up, they were almost always about administrators or other teachers.
Students were universally loved, but they were not the main topic of
conversation.
This is a lesson I’ve had to learn repeatedly in my life
after college: the people who ran the world were never as interested in me as I
thought they were. Of course, teachers do care tremendously about their
students, and they spend many hours a day, before, during, and after school,
trying to help them. But they are far less critical than I imagined when I was
younger. Those closed-door meetings which, in my imagination, were so
reminiscent of a scene from The Wire, were probably nothing more than
simple planning sessions in which a few persistent problems met practical
solutions.
Maybe nobody reading this blog ever had trouble convincing
themselves, like I did, that their mistakes were not remembered and recorded by
their teachers. And I hope everybody realizes that their teachers are human
beings with personal lives outside of work. But if anybody out there has
similar worries as I did, take it from someone who has been there—teachers have
Halloween parties too.
