a student, a teacher, and a trip to a wedding

(Adrienne and Brandon)

I have so much I could say on the topic of my teaching career and my feelings about it 8 years after leaving.  It was a job that gave me enough anxiety to have nightmares about my AP students for 7 years afterwards.  (Thankfully, it has been about a year since I had one of those, maybe I'm healing.)  It was a job that still gives me panic attacks whenever I give serious thought to returning.  I literally put my life into that job and seldom felt like my efforts, stress, and sacrifices were worth what I was giving on a daily basis.

However, I really did love my students (well, most of them.)  I really loved, and still miss seeing, their eyes light up when I just explained something really hard and they actually understood it.  I loved feeling like maybe, just maybe, I might have a tiny amount of influence on their lives and hoped that it was the good kind of influence.  That part was also daunting - to know that they needed it so much and I could really mess someone up if I wasn't careful.

(Adrienne and I on the Salt Lake Temple Grounds.)

This brings me to Adrienne.  A lot of people wonder why I made a special trip last month to Salt Lake to see a former student get married.  Trust me, it's not a common occurrence.  She was in my AP chemistry class the year I was pregnant with and had Grace (she had also taken my honors chem class the year before.)  I wish I had kept just one of her assignments or exams for the scrapbook.  I still remember her perfect handwriting with carefully laid-out problems and lab write-ups, each one more beautiful and correct than the last.  I could have used pretty much every one of her exams for my key to grade the others.  I'm not making it up, or remembering it through rose-colored glasses- she was that good.  She wasn't just a nerd, either, she played varsity basketball, was a blast to be around, and she was genuinely nice to me and everyone around her.  Her parents were awesome.  She (and other students like her) made it worth showing up to school one more time.  Sure, the kids who really struggled needed me even more, and I tried to "show up" for them too, but that gets hard to talk yourself into when your alarm goes off at 4:50am, you know you will need at least 3 cokes to get through the day, and your salary is less than a manager at McDonald's.  You just need a glimmer of hope that someone will appreciate you that day.

She really was one of the best, if not the best, student who ever entered my door.  So, then, one has to ask herself, did she really need me at all?  Wouldn't she have been totally amazing, with, or without my class?  Wouldn't she have succeeded in life, regardless of anything I did?  The answer is obviously, yes.  She would have been fine if I had never been a teacher at Olympus High School.

Adrienne and I discovered, soon after she graduated and I left my job, that we were more like kindred spirits and really, quite frankly, had HAD to be friends.  She contacted me by e-mail right after I moved to MA to tell me what she was doing in college and our friendship took off like a rocket.   She and I wrote to each other over e-mail for years after that.  We talked on the phone often too.  She, a chemistry student at the University of Utah, and I, a stay-at-home-mom-riding-instructor in Massachusetts, formed a weird little friendship.  She even tromped through a blizzard one terrible night to come and visit me when she was doing medical school interviews in Boston.  I saw her every chance I could when I went home to visit family in Salt Lake.  I followed her schooling, her social life, her love life, and all that was in-between.  She reminded me what I taught her and allowed me to re-learn myself, and gave me extra reasons to look forward to teaching my own growing girls.

Our friendship followed her through medical school at the U, medical service missions to Africa, my life as a mother,  and our move to NM.  With the invention of facebook, and my better-practiced texting abilities, we lazily let the e-mails and phone calls die down, but still saw each other as often as possible.

When she texted me last fall to say that she was engaged, I was ecstatic for her.  The road to that engagement was a long one.  I was instantly invited to the wedding reception.  I doubted that I would be able to go since she was getting married the day before Mother's Day in my busiest month of the year, we were running out of airline points, and David's job faced furloughs.  But, I planned to certainly send a great gift.   A few months later, I casually mentioned to David that I would really love to "see that girl get married."  He barely said anything as he picked up his ipad and started looking for flights.  (p.s. I have THE best husband.)  He started plotting how he would take time off work, take care of the kids, and let me go - no question.  Not only had Adrienne invited me to her reception, I was kind of stunned when she also invited me to her actual wedding ceremony in the temple, as well as her fancy family wedding dinner at Rice-Eccles Stadium.

This is a long story, but it has a point, I promise.  As I walked into the temple waiting room, I felt so out of place.  Did I really belong in this intimate setting with her family?  Maybe I should just be inconspicuous and appropriately blend into the wall.  I planned to greet her parents and then do my best at becoming a wall flower.  Her mom came up to me and hugged me harder than I have maybe been hugged in my life, and grabbed my arms as she told everyone I was "the reason for all this."  She introduced me to everyone as "Mrs. Chapman!  Adrienne's teacher!"  (Adrienne stopped calling me that a long time ago, but I understand her mom... I do it with my kids' teachers too.)  Still, I really couldn't place all the fuss.  Maybe, I was responsible at some point, for Adrienne not giving up on science when the studying got hard - like back when she was a junior in high school.  But, I could not possibly be responsible for this girl getting married and heading off to an M.D. residency and catching each one of her dreams she's been chasing!  I'm pretty sure her mother had more to do with it than I did, and let's not forget amazing Adrienne either!

Then, as we were in the sealing room waiting for Adrienne and Brandon to come in, her mom stood up suddenly and whispered- as loud as she could- to her son across the room, "where's Mrs. Chapman?!"  She was so worried that I wasn't in there (I was there in the back row, trying to appropriately blend into the wall again.)  Again, I was floored that she would be worrying about me when her only daughter was about to walk into the room to be married.

Later that night at the reception, I stood in line to wish them well one more time and tell Adrienne good-bye.  I won't be seeing her for a long time now, since a week later, she graduated from med school and is off to her residency in Michigan tomorrow.  Her mom hugged me tight (again!) and sobbed into my ear "the INFLUENCE of a TEACHER!  You'll never know!"  And, right then, I knew she was right.  I wasn't totally the reason, or even close, for Adrienne's success in so many areas of life (I'm ABSOLUTELY sure I had nothing to do with her sweet basketball skills.)  But, that sophomore year in my honors chem class... Adrienne found a spark of interest in science.  She found the reasons she liked it, and found out she was good at it too, really good at it.  She had a teacher who let her be good at it, and helped her along the way.  She saw (in me) a female person who had graduated with a degree in science and decided she could do that too.   She used to call me in the middle of a hard chemistry class at the U and tell me it was my fault she was a chem major.  She realized she loved it all and wanted as much of it as she could get.  And, because my classroom was a safe spot, especially for girls, no one stomped it out of her.

I know how important good teachers are.  Ironically, it's kind of one of the reasons I quit.  I didn't feel like I could keep being as good a teacher as I knew I needed to be without requiring hospitalization at some point.  I was burned out from trying and could not see any end to the stress and anxiety it caused me, especially after having Grace.  It required too much.  Others do a beautiful job at balancing it all (I could name a dozen colleagues whose stellar teaching careers have spanned decades without falter,) but at the time, I was not much of a balancer.  It was all or nothing.  Maybe I would be better at balancing it now.  Maybe not.  But, all of this came into sharp focus for me when Adrienne's mom nearly squeezed the life out of me.  At the exact same time of the wedding, we were preparing to say a pretty sad good-bye to Grace's 4th grade teacher.  I know it's still quite early in her school career, but Mr. Emery has made exactly, that kind of difference for Grace at school and in her life.  (That is a totally separate post, coming soon.)  The influence of a teacher at the right time and place can be astronomical.  Sure, we parents need to take some of the credit for failure or success, and so do the kids, but there is really nothing like another adult, especially a classroom teacher who sees them on a daily basis, in your child's life, to steer them in the right direction and reinforce all that you try to teach them at home.  Usually, the really good ones, do even more than that.  They take what you have given your kids and put it on a new plane.  And, the kids listen!  They eat it up and they listen, they follow example, and at times, even more than they listen to and follow their own parents.  Parents need teachers.  It takes a village.

So, having said all this, I felt very honored to "see this girl get married."  I would have liked to have seen her medical school graduation ceremony too, but a SAHmom can only make so many trips to Salt Lake a month by herself.

It makes it even more cool that Adrienne and I are now grown-up friends and we can exchange things in a more equal way.  There always comes a point on the spectrum where the student becomes the teacher, and for Adrienne, that was a long time ago.  I love watching her and learning from her.  She keeps me young.  She is single-handedly the reason I learned to text on my super old phone with only the number key-pad.  She reminds me what is out there for my girls.  She reminds me that my girls won't be mine for very long and I have very little time to enjoy them under my roof and try to influence them.

The wedding was absolutely gorgeous and as perfect as Adrienne's old exams.  The weather was perfect.  She could not have chosen a more flattering dress for herself.  She could not have chosen more fitting venues, colors, food, or activities for the day.  She could not have chosen a husband who would compliment her more.  She knows who she is.  It was a little trip down nostalgia lane for me.  She got married where David and I did, in the Salt Lake Temple.  She had her wedding dinner and reception in the giant glass tower over-looking Salt Lake on one side, and the University of Utah football stadium and campus on the other.

(kind of a little jealous of the wedding shot on the U in the football stadium)

She and I have collectively spent so many hours at that school now, and it was really crazy to stand there at her wedding reception and look over that campus and all the memories and educational milestones that it holds for both of us now.

I look back at my, somewhat short, acutely agonizing, but sometimes personally fulfilling, teaching career and think that maybe it really was, all worth it.  If I ever have a mental episode and get crazy enough to go back to it,  I know it will be worth it again.  Harriet wrote in my Mother's day letter this year that "I know my mom is smart because she tot hi school."  Maybe even a career I had before she was born will influence that little sweetie too.   But, we're going to need some good teachers along the way.  I'm still not totally sure how I feel about my time as a teacher, but I'm glad that one kid thinks I did a good job.