In school, my friends and I rarely thought about our coming lives in the workforce, let alone how school was prepping us for them.
But one moment sticks with me, where my sixth-grade teacher let her guard down for an exasperated moment and gave us the first vision of what was coming.
It was one of those late-in-the-school-year afternoons when we’ve all had enough and are being huge shits to each other: relentless mockery, throwing erasers, making angry arrangements to fight after school…the works.
Ms. K, who’s also had enough, screams (fittingly enough) “ENOUGH!” at the top of her lungs. Since she doesn’t usually do this, we all fall into sudden dead silence. She puts her teaching book aside and sits on her desk for a second, thinking. After a deep sigh, she begins:
“You don’t know how special this time is. School is the only time in which you are all equal. You will be adults soon enough, where you’ll be each other’s bosses, and some of you will have more money than others.”
“You probably won’t speak each other.” Her voice quivers, the rare time that as a kid you see adults show that type of emotion.
“Or if you do, it won’t be friendly anymore. You’ll be barking orders, you’ll be making each other’s life miserable. Kind of like you’re doing today. So please, just be kind to each other now, while you still can.”
I didn’t think of it much at the time. In fact, we recited her speech in exaggerated tones while fake crying during our walk home that afternoon. But it’s touching to think on it now, as I live in the world she warned us about.
If I were to quibble, I could say that maybe she could have helped us imagine a better adulthood instead of wallowing in her resignation. But either way, that was her truth, and in that truth, she knew she was preparing us for a future that sucked, and she was grieving on our behalf.
Thank you for grieving on our behalf, Ms. K.