For Mark, and all of his teachers

At an unfortunate and tragic funeral a few years back, I heard Wasilla High School Assistant Principal Mark Okeson speak. He said something about an educator being “guaranteed for life” for his students.

I think he has something here. Guaranteed for life. It has a nice ring to it. I know that one of the unexpected lessons I learned my first year was “once mine, always mine.” It does not matter whether I see former students play in a championship game or read about them in the Police Beat — I “had” them and they remain “mine.”

For example, when members of the Colony Knights basketball team sink two points I always point out to whoever listens that I had them.

Of course, I have not labored during birth with any of them, but somehow my 50 minutes a day in language arts five years earlier qualifies me as belonging to their victory. It does not matter that I cannot walk and chew gum at the same time, let alone dribble and shoot a basketball. Nor does it matter that none of them may be interested in English as a career. I had them. They are mine.

Guaranteed for life.

It is the curse of being a teacher to have so many kids. We belong to all of them, even when we fail to let them know that they also belong to us. When they move on to other classrooms and much, much greener pastures, they take with them a bit of our forever. Guaranteed.

So, it hurts when a young life is taken one morning without warning. Not the grief of a parent. Not the frantic confusion of a dear friend. But, a distant and undeserving hole enters my heart. I may even feel some guilt that the loss brings tears to my eyes.

They were not mine, really. I had not raised them. I simply had “had” them, come to know them, grown to care about them, wondered about them after their leave from my small, small influence. If they could have only known how much kinetic art I saw in them — potential unleashed.

Billy Mick, a cowboy who mentored me in my early 20s, once told me that if I ever should feel real important, just put my thumb into a bucket of water. Then pull it out and see how much water was left. My thumb leaves so little behind in my kids’ buckets. How could they ever know how much water they take with them from mine, that I am indeed guaranteed?

The obituary will never read that left behind this morning is a teacher who is opening her door to another classroom full of children, left behind wondering why, and how, and if.

I hope that this time I can do it right and let my kids know that, yes, I am a lifetime guarantee.

Emily Forstner teaches at Wasilla Middle School.