God Gave Me Sons, Teaching Gives Me Daughters

I was raised by a single mother, the first daughter of the first daughter of the first daughter of the first daughter. Many women’s shoulders on which I stand as I survey the abundance of my life, it’s a line not only vertical but horizontal. Along with my mother and grandmothers are aunts and cousins who live in my heart and literally are a part of who I am and what I believe.

Growing up I knew what I wanted and imagined my life much as it is now: married, pets, home on a tree-lined street, working as a teacher and living as a mother to beautiful children. Nowhere in the image did I have a sense of how long and difficult the road would be to get here; likewise I could have never imagined the depth of the joy. Still, I take great pride in the fact that I visualized my dream and am now living it. The curious thing is that that picture in my mind had one very different element from real life: in it I had daughters; in life, I have sons.

There will be no fifth generation “first daughter,” no one to whom I can pass down my make up tricks or good hair secrets. I always imagined telling my dating stories and first bra stories and tough girl just-in-case stories; never did I believe, however, that I would be telling them to my sons.

When our first son was born and the doctor said, “It’s a boy!” my husband and I looked at each other with an eyes exclaiming, WHAT? Just as surprised as we were the first time, so too were we the second; that time my husband delivered the news, “Another boy!” Curiously enough, never a glimpse of regret crossed my mind either time. The doctor lifted those boys out of me and onto my belly and their warm, slimy, gushy little bodies felt exactly perfect to my eyes and my heart.

I miss the dresses. I miss the tights. I miss the hair and the bracelets and the Mary Janes; beyond that, however, in my boys I have everything I could ever want and need in my children: love, in its purest and richest form, from two little miracles who make me giggle like a child and think like a sage and inspire me in all ways to be a better me.

It is often said by adoptive parents that children don’t have to come from your body to be yours; they are just delivered someplace else until you find your way to each other. I always felt that way too; I’m also blessed enough to live that every day because I have the privilege of living in both worlds as mother: birth mother at home and chosen mother at school, a place where I nurture my students in many ways as if they were my own children.

It’s likely controversial to see my role in the classroom as motherly; however I suppose that it depends on one’s definition of mother and teacher. I see them on different sides of the same spectrum that nurtures, educates, role models, mentors, coaches, care-takes, respects, mediates, disciplines, and unconditionally loves. If that is controversial, perhaps that is a flaw in our system.

I don’t coddle my children nor do I my students. I don’t clean up after them, I don’t enable them, I don’t tolerate disrespect from them. I both give and expect respect just as I do kindness and compassion; I expect all of us to live and work to our potentials. I expect them to ask for help if they need it. I expect them to call me on not walking my talk just as they expect that from me.

Of course I do more and am more for my own children; they live with me and depend on me for their survival, not to mention our family serves as the foundation for their entire present and future lives. I am not a parent to my students, but for all intents and purposes I surely am one of their villages’ mothers. For that I am proud. For that I am honored.

All teachers have their niche group of kids; we serve all of our students however there are certain ones we teach especially well. These are the kids we not only teach, but inspire; the kids we not only remember, but the ones who are etched in our hearts. These are the kids with whom we connect in almost a divine way, as if God put both of us on a common path just to find the other. My guess is this is controversial as well, to admit out loud that there are some students I serve better than I do others. I am supposed to serve every child and serve I do; if we were honest, however, I think we all would acknowledge that kids are lucky to have several adults in their lives each day because hopefully there is one who totally “gets” them; and when they feel “gotten” they will learn, no matter their circumstance.

The kids I “get” generally fall into two categories: boys who need mothering and girls who need a role model.

(Before I continue let me be perfectly clear that I am very aware about the nuances around the issue of gender and how it is not always relegated to one sex or the other in clear and easily defined ways. These categories are broad umbrellas and generally, not always, generally, they fall into one of these two groups. Not always and not ever more, but for this present moment that’s where they are.)

You give me a boy missing his mom and I’ll find a way to connect with him in a meaningful way. It’s no mystery that I am a care-taker by nature and any child who doesn’t have that in her/his life will respond to that part of me, but particularly boys who are missing it seem to find their way to my room.

These boys owe me nothing, I’m not their mother or their grandmother, or even their aunt. They have nothing to lose with me and that very freedom allows them to open up as I begin to nurture the part of their hearts that they work so hard to pretend doesn’t exist; I give them the space to be the tough guy in class and to be the frightened boy after the bell. They can trust me and they know that my interest in them is to see them succeed. Especially since I’ve had sons, I have a very soft spot for them and they know it; I also have high expectations for them and they know that too. I don’t tolerate anything less than they have to give and that, perhaps more than anything, is what inspires their responsiveness and gratitude.

It is in the girls, however, that I find my true professional purpose, and I wonder if I could have had the appreciation for them that I do if I had daughters of my own at home. These girls are strong and smart and funny and, above all else, want something more from their lives; a something that exists just out of reach because they lack the confidence and internal resources to grab it. In these girls I see myself at their age and more than anything I want to give them what was given to me: courage.

I adore these girls but perhaps more so I appreciate them because they have taught me endless lessons that not only make me a better teacher, but a better mother and person as well. I like to call them my “daughters” because they truly are the reason I work in this crazy profession that pays me less than I’m worth and often treats me like I’m insignificant. These students, they are my girls. They may not be in my family line, but they most certainly are in my heart.

Each year I know I connect with many girls looking for a strong role model, a woman with whom they can identify as well as a woman they can see themselves becoming one day. Because I teach classes that lend themselves to personal stories and I teach in the high school from which I graduated, connections often come fast and easily. My girls, the ones who often grow into my village daughters, these are the girls who sit on the edge of their seats; some literally and some just in their hearts.

They are on the brink of womanhood, a little afraid, a lot excited, and really hoping upon hoping that someone will show them the way. I encounter these girls in a variety of states of being: some closed and unwilling to look me in the eye, others bright-eyed and almost puppy-like. Some are athletes, some are actors, some love being girls and all the feminine niceties that go along with it, some resent everything about it. All of them, however, are looking for the one person outside their family who they can emulate and follow into the unknown that is adulthood.

I go home to my boys and know I was meant to be their mother just as I know to my girls I’m meant to be their teacher. Teacher and mother, one and the same, both gifts I carry with great care.