making note of the exits

the specific anxiety of teaching in america

I grew up not far from Newtown, Connecticut. Newtown is the kind of place where many of my public school teachers lived: it was more affordable and less busy than my suburban hometown, with more wide open space. It’s maybe a 30 minute drive or so from my childhood home and you can reach it by driving down windy, lush green roads.

When describing it to folks who are not from Connecticut, I say it is every positive stereotype about my home state that there is: green and vibrant; beautifully kept old colonial houses; friendly; peaceful.

My favorite history teacher lived there. He had a tradition at the end of every year: his current AP class would play Capture the Flag against his AP class from the previous year in his sprawling backyard in Newtown. Then we’d all come together for a barbecue with his wife and little kids on his back patio.

My year, we brought pirate flags as well as a “Don’t Tread on Me” flag which we flew out the windows of the cars we carpooled in to “intimidate” our enemies (which, looking back on it…who let us do that? who thought that was a good idea?). One kid even wore head-to-toe camouflage hunting gear, minus the gun of course, so he could more easily sneak into our enemy’s territory. He had created a “map” of the terrain of his backyard—grass, stone walls, muddy areas—for us to study and use for strategy.

how we probably looked rolling up to our teacher’s house

We talked smack against the other team of former students, proclaimed that we would “destroy” them. Our teacher, of course, was tickled by the whole thing and encouraged the competitive spirit. He got to host a battle, on his own turf, and share his life with us in a small, generous way. It was idyllic, a wild romp out in the woods.

As an adult now, I realize it was awfully generous of him to invite a ton of us wild teens to his house in order to halfway destroy his backyard. It was such an act of vulnerability to let his students in to a part of his life like that. Frankly, we were a liability waiting to happen, one he didn’t seem to worry about.