The Things We Carry

Please make certain that you have read The Things They Carried chapters assigned in the previous blog post. Today, I asked you to write a reflection on the things that you have carried throughout this educational career or your lives up to this point. I did write one of my own last year while my students wrote theirs. I have pasted it below, but it also reminded me of a blog post I wrote a while back. The link is below, if you want to check it out. It might be a good time to read it, as you are coming to the end of your time with your teachers, going on your senior parade, etc..
http://athenajdavis.blogspot.com/2013/11/its-heavy.html

Below are links to three Tim O'Brien interviews/reviews/articles. I would love for you to have read and/or listened to them by class time tomorrow.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=125128156

http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2010-04-18/entertainment/ct-ae-0418-lit-life-20100418_1_e-book-read-tim-o-brien

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/24/books/review/tim-obriens-things-they-carried-read-by-bryan-cranston.html?_r=0

The Things I Carry

Written in April, 2015

One year away from halfway through… Halfway through the “home years”, halfway through my teaching career, halfway…halfway…

In the past fourteen years, I have carried many, many things. I have carried things for my students and I have carried things because of them. Some things are so very heavy and painful to bear. I have carried the crushing blow of a college rejection, the anxiety of Spring Break trips, the heavy load of the death of a parent. I have suffered under the weight of test scores and I have nearly drowned in the flood of white with blue lines or black text that covers my desk. I have carried the knowledge of kids who work all night and go to school all day just so that they can help a parent pay the bills, of a girl who was skipping school to chase the paper trail that is beaurocacy from the Social Security Office to the bank to the Housing Authority so that she could stay in school and live in a safe place. I have carried disabilities and health plans. I have carried the stress of seniors as they feel pressured to make life decisions RIGHT NOW when those life decisions don’t even need to be made for several years. I have carried the financial burden of a student who didn’t have the money to pay her father’s burial expenses and the funeral home was going to hold the body until they found the money. I have carried the weight of an empty chair at graduation, cap and gown draped over it for a student who never came home. I have carried other students across the stage, metaphorically speaking, to receive a diploma that probably should have had my name on it as well.

But oh, the beautiful things I have carried… I have carried the bite in the air of a Friday night football game, the tears of a successful curtain call, the triumphant cap toss in May. I have carried projects that perfectly captured the theme of a literary work, bags of brown research paper envelopes that proved to some that what seemed to be impossible was very much within their reach. I have carried Holocaust Memorial Projects that took my breath away because I know that THEY GOT IT, they embodied the message and purpose of Holocaust education. I have carried checks to non-profit agencies that represented blood, sweat, and tears from Holocaust Lit kids who went so far above and beyond in their projects that it astounded even me. I have carried the words of thousands of letters of recommendations. I have carried 2100 (more or less) names and faces. I have carried five yearbooks and the staffs I will never forget. I have carried 13 proms. I have carried college graduations and military deployments and weddings and new babies and new jobs for the “kids” who will always be “mine”. I have carried millions of text and fb messages and the occasional handwritten letter that boost my spirit in a way very little else can. I have carried requests to proofread and analyze long after these people leave my classroom.  I have carried the thrill of exciting news, the joy of seeing someone find his or her dream calling, the excitement of watching an athletic ability flourish at the collegiate level.

I have carried the words, the stories… so, so many words and stories. I think when you teach English, you become, in some sense, the keeper of the stories.