Taking Time to Delight in Teaching

In high school I was a theater kid. To this day, I remember some of the great moments of anticipation waiting behind the curtain for the next entrance, sometimes hastily throwing off one costume and squirming into another. In particular, I remember one show my senior year in which I had to change costumes several times back stage. One of them was an absolutely beautiful, very tight, backless 1930's style wedding dress that was exceptionally hard to put on. But I was an expert of the quick-change. This was nothing. In fact, the race against time to get the dress on and the microphone set before the music began was one of the most exciting parts of the show.

My first year of ACE, I saw each day as a series of quick changes: from stern teacher to jovial mentor to roommate to cultured resident of a new city to explorer. It was overwhelming. I was changing pace too many times, and everything was a costume. As fun as anticipation can be in short bursts, for me, it is certainly not a lifestyle. I also got very confused when suddenly the different areas of my life overlapped: it was like being caught onstage in the wrong outfit, or even in the wrong show.

Being an ACE teacher is an experience which cannot be compartmentalized: it is not a series of costumes but instead the embrace of a wide-ranging identity. There are times when one just has a job, where that job is separate from the life led. This is certainly not the case of the Catholic School Teacher. No. Now I find myself scanning the Young Adult section at Barnes & Noble. I find myself spending a weekend afternoon at a middle school basketball tournaments. I find myself delivering a dining table to and eating tacos with a student's mother.

Part of finding this balance and ending the quick-change charade also involves taking time to step away from the classroom and embrace that being a teacher is still being a person. A poet I enjoy, Jack Gilbert, writes "we must risk delight/we can do without pleasure/but not delight." In Tucson, I find delight in watching the sunset turn the mountains behind the ACE house pink, in attending Monday night yoga with the girls of the house, in going on long, cool hikes in the winter, and in sampling the variety of amazing restaurants and coffee shops the town has to offer. Taking this time to delight, and sharing these joys with my students makes my experience here one complete one, not a collection of disjointed roles crammed into the space of a day. Now, even though it seems that time races by too quickly, it is not time filled with the anticipatory fear of missing the next cue but instead with the delight of a dynamic and multi-faceted experience.