a letter to a former student

Truly yours. Your biggest fan. This is Stan.

Great to hear from you. I saw your parents a couple weeks ago. I see your sister on B days. I hope everything's going well on your mission. Speaking of cliches: nobody's perfect. Just do your best, man.

It's my 6th year teaching. (I had you my first year. That's crazy. It doesn't seem that long ago. But it does.) So much has changed. But, I'm still the same guy. I'm still trying to be myself as much as possible. I'm still trying to get my students to love to write (and read, sort of). I still like the students. I enjoy being around young people. They're enthusiastic. They're alive. They're full of angst. They're trying to figure out everything. I love that about them.

So how have I changed? Well, I've gained like 10 pounds. I'm going bald. I'm getting some gray hairs. I'm smarter. Yeah, I'm smarter. I think I understand more about teaching. I'm embarrassed by some of the lessons I've tried (although I will say that I busted out the lesson about Regina Spektor's "Samson", because I remember you once said it was a good one. I taught it this year for the first time since my first year). I think I'm more compassionate. I understand students have other things on their mind. I understand that students have a lot of crap they deal with outside of school. But I still struggle not to take things personally.

(These are deep, heavy questions by the way. I like them.)

How have the kids changed? The easy answer would be PHONES. But that's not really true. I'm tired of people blaming everything on the internet. I mean, everyone has a freaking iPhone, I mean everyone. And Twitter is taking over the world (maybe not, maybe just my world). It's actually not that bad. I like it. I use it. I do see how it affects them socially, though. I'm worried about my own kids and iPads and video games and ADHD and everything. My oldest son (Cy, he's 9) wants to play on his iPad and all I see is a socially broken 16 year-old who doesn't know how to talk to anyone or look anyone in the eye. (Wait, I just described myself at 16, and at 34 for that matter. Maybe we're all a little broken.)

This is a difficult question to answer. I try to look at students as individuals instead of groups of people or types or students in general. So it's difficult to quantify, if that makes sense.

So let's go to the final question: what impresses me about students.

I love seeing a young person trying to be himself/herself. Not worried about fitting in, just worried about finding himself/herself. Some of my favorite students are NOT popular. They don't have a lot of friends (because high school kids can be very particular about who their friends are). I like the students who aren't afraid to be alone and aren't depressed about it. Or maybe they just have one or two close friends and that's it. They don't need to be in a group of 15 to be happy. I'd rather have two close friends that 16 superficial acquaintances (even though I'm pretty sure that's how many of my friends I had in tuxedos at my wedding, I don't think I even remember all their names).

I enjoy seeing a young person be real. Again, this is related to the first thing. They're not worried about fitting in or saying the right thing. They're just interested in being real. They're honest. They don't know everything. They're not afraid to laugh at themselves. They're kind. They're especially kind to people below them (on the social ladder, even though there aren't very many). They don't look at friends as investments or social capital. They're just looking for kindred spirits. And they have passion. I love being around people that are passionate about something. Like art or writing or music or something. But not sports. I mean, I'm passionate about sports too...but that's not something that impresses me about someone.

I don't even know what I'm saying anymore.

Seriously, I'm glad to hear from you. Not much as changed here. I'm still teaching and still loving it and still writing and still wanting to write more and still watching the Oscars and still wishing I was writing my Oscar acceptance speech and still wondering if I'm going to write anything this summer and still trying to be a better husband and father and teacher and human being and still failing at everything but still trying and I forgot to eat lunch today.

Anyway.

Preach on.