It’s normal, as a teacher, to get attached to students, but there’s been nothing normal since Covid descended on our school, our lives, our world in early 2020.
Then, in August of 2020, my personal world shattered. My son took his own life. There are days I’m still reeling from his death. I came back to work a week after he died, and I remain confident that was the right decision for me. It was soon, yes, but from 7:45 to 3:25, I knew what I was supposed to do and when I was supposed to do it. For those hours, I was a teacher. I had a job and a purpose.
But this writing isn’t about me. Not really.
It’s about my students.
Imagine being four days into your junior year of high school. The year is getting started, your teachers have laid out their expectations, and you’ve probably gotten to work. Then, on your fifth day of your junior year, other teachers are scrambling to cover your English class. Your teacher isn’t there because her son died the day before. By suicide.
Those juniors are now my graduating seniors.
When I came back to school the next week, some of my students offered kind, awkward condolences. Some sent a shy smile across the room, silently acknowledging the reason for my week-long absence. Mainly, though, they acted like high school kids. They were funny and wise, dramatic and impulsive, gentle and rowdy. They were 16, 17, 18 years old.
They were as normal as ever. Normal, of course, is relative.
They did not avoid me or my eyes. They adjusted to my need to work four days instead of five for a few weeks. They accepted whatever broken version of Woods was in front of them on any given day. They went about the business of being high school students dealing with quarantine, multiple stretches of remote learning, delayed or canceled sports. Nothing about their junior year was easy or typical.
Nothing was stable.
Part of a teacher’s job is to cover content—make sure the students are ready for their next level. Another, lesser-known component of the job is to provide stability. Some students come from safe, secure, stable environments, but not all; some find their safety, security, and stability at school. Stability was scarce their junior year; schools ran at the whim of the state, activities were scheduled then yanked away, entire classes and teams were quarantined, and mental health took a hit.
Then there was me.
While I was trying to drag myself from bed, shower and dress each day, do the job (honestly, just function), my students were the stability in my life. That’s a burden they shouldn’t have had to bear, but a burden that was part of being around Mrs. Woods in those early days. They did not flinch. At the end of the second year of my After, I still have some burdensome days. These students still don’t flinch.
I’ve thought many times how thoroughly weird it must have been for them, knowing what had happened, wondering if I would come undone, wishing they could avoid the entire situation. Hell, adults avoided me. Some friends and family tiptoed around the topic, a few—over a year and a half later—still refusing to utter Cooper’s name in my presence. These students, though? My students? They were in it with me every day. If I told a Cooper story, they listened. If it was a funny story, they laughed. When we watched the last scene of Of Mice and Men, they understood why I waited in the hall for the moment of the gunshot to pass, why I tried to tune out the psychotic-break-esque scenes of Into the Wild. They just rolled with it—heartbroken teacher and all.
So here we are, two school years later and mere days away from graduation. Those kids—and make no mistake, they were kids—are preparing to walk across a stage and into their future. They may need to prove themselves to the world or even their families, but I already know their collective character.
I will hold them in my heart forever.
Woods Writes 