The Independent’s Brazil-bound schoolteacher/ waitress diarist takes in the last smells, and reflections, of two years in the classroom.
June 27, 2006
For the last time, possibly forever, I’m sitting at my desk in my classroom. The entire building is empty; the only sound I hear is that of the air conditioning circulating through my blue-carpeted, white-walled room. My walls are bare. Where there used to be brightly colored framed prints opposite my desk, there is nothing. Where I once hung blue paper to display my students’ work and hand-written goals, are bits of that blue paper clinging to old staples. After the fall dance, when Ann died her hair black, she leaned up against the wall as she sat in the back row and left a black smudge on the white. I found a letter Isaiah wrote me and the laptop Jasmine left behind. A baby shower invitation. Copies of discipline reports. My handwriting is still on the world map, a triangle drawn between three continents at the end of last year to show the slave trade. My books are here, too — ¬¶the ones with my name on them that I brought from Providence. I’ll leave them behind. I took my name down from outside my door: “Ms. Coggio Literature.” My white drafting table with its white stool from Ikea. The tag on my now empty file cabinet that marked the third drawer from the top “Literature.”
I sat here at my desk when I saw Albert sneeze so hard during a silent moment in Advisory that his face contorted and I couldn’t stop laughing for 20 minutes. I sat here when Brinn told me her mom had cancer; when she showed me the obituary; I stood here when she was arrested. I sat here when Martin showed me his writing about his father; when he roamed the hallways in the winter, trying to come to grips with his internal struggles; when he came to say goodbye. I sat here at my desk writing, writing, this whole time — “in the silence of an early morning or late afternoon, or while my students wrote, or when I was so moved by their talent that I had to tell someone. It is so quiet here now. I almost long to hear one of them shout.
Another chapter closed, another act in this play drawing to an end. If I could do it again, would I? Three times now, my eyes have brimmed with tears. Two years ago, in this very spot, I looked across this room at Dennis and we caught eyes. Mine were teary, having just said good bye to one of my students who left early on in the year. Who would have known then that two years later I would be the one to leave? One of the things my students said when they walked into my room was that they liked its smell. It’s just a Glade Plug-in. Today, cleaning my room out, I found a new Plug-in, the same scent I started the year off with. I plugged it in and now this scent fills the room. I am reminded, with each breath, of the sweet students I met, of the struggles we all went through, of the absolute gift I have been given of learning how to teach.
Several times over these two years I’ve said “teacher” with a chuckle. “I’m a teacher,” I’d say, “though I use the term lightly.” At times, I haven’t felt successful; I haven’t felt like I’ve been doing what my teachers did with me. I often felt burdened, strung-out, dead tired, and frustrated. What room did I have left to “teach”? And how could I call myself a teacher when, in these past two years, I’ve done nothing but learn? These years, these students, these other teachers and friends have taught me and prepared me to move on to the next step. They taught me to follow my heart and to know when it’s time to say goodbye. They taught me how to make decisions, how to keep a cool head, how to try to find something to laugh at. And I thank them for their lessons.
And so now, in the quiet of my classroom and with the comfort of my keyboard and my desk, I can say goodbye and I can be thankful for this time.