Barry Manilow and Junior High

I'm subbing. To be exact, I'm subbing for 7th and 8th graders and after just the first hour of adolescent angst, attempts at coolness and nonchalance, the experience is wearing on me. I feel the time-travel tug pulling me back to my own middle school days, three years of my life that I would never want to revisit. But here I am, revisiting. True, today I'm subbing in a pinch to help the school. But by my own choosing, after ten some years of being a head teacher, I’m now a part-timer teaching writing to the 6th, 7th and 8th grades. That translates to an hour and a half a week with each group, in which time I need to engage them enough so that they listen, hopefully learn, and of course, write. I needed a new challenge; I got one.

Thirteen years ago, when deciding whether to take the leap away from business and go to graduate school for education, I went to a college open house. Advisors talked to us in small groups about, among other things, teaching adolescents. One advisor said, and here I quote for I've never forgotten these words, "You either teach middle school because you had a wonderful experience, or because you had a horrible experience and want to make it better for everyone else." I ended up by narrow circumstance focusing on upper elementary rather than pre-adolescence. Until now. And now that I'm here, I realize that I could not have handled this age group until I reached 40 and was confident enough in who I am.

Allow me a quick recap of my own junior high experience. In middle school, I showed up at the dance wearing a dress with flowers only to realize everyone else was in jeans. In middle school, I asked a boy to Sadie Hawkins and after too many days of deliberation, he said no. In middle school, I made the fashion forward choice to wear grey leather pumps to school one day. That morning, I tripped on the steps, broke off one heel, and spent the rest of the day hobbling around, one shoe intact, the other not. In middle school, my favorite outfit included brown corduroys and, the piece de resistance, a caramel colored, faux sheepskin vest. Toss in a mean girl who targeted me as her prey, as well as braces that included the night mouth guard. (This looked especially lovely on my 8th grade sleep away ski trip.) You get the idea. It wasn't until my junior year of high school that I was finally able to climb out of that pit of misery, and it took more years still until I was finally at peace with Me.

And here we cue Barry Manilow crooning, "I made it through the rain, and found myself protected/ by the others who/ got rained on too/ and made it throooogggggh." (Yes, I listened to Barry Manilow. And Barbara Streisand. And Liza Minelli.)

But here's the thing. During that long rainy season, I had a friend who belted out Barry's tunes with me, and another with whom I choreographed water ballet routines. My mother had a pot of tea waiting for me when I got home from school each day. And it was with H. that I played Barbie after I was “too old” to do so, and explored the nearby fields, looking for adventures and creating imaginary worlds.

If I can make it through middle school, I can certainly make it through a year of teaching it. And if even one student is excited about a story I share or a poem they write, or if one student knows that I see them, whether they are gleefully bouncing through the puddles or feeling a bit splattered by it all, then I think I'll be okay. Because as teachers, no matter the hours we log, we get to hold really big umbrellas for those needing respite from the drizzle, or the braces, or the sheepskin vests.