Lessons learned

What does one do with old photo albums?

There must be 25 of them in front of me in Mom’s den where I sit and pack for the big goodbye. Next to them is an old Bible with a partially peeled sticker on it. I wonder aloud who would put a sticker on a Bible. Then I tell my sister I don’t think you can throw a Bible away. She thinks you’re supposed to bury old Bibles.

And the photos? What about the photos? Do you throw them away? What if the Native Americans are right and the photos have part of our souls, I ask? She doesn’t know. Just leave them for now, she says.

So I do, leave them for now. I move my chair over to Dad’s old Army footlocker and raise its weathered lid. The smell of dirty wool socks wraps itself around me and the bundle of notebooks and papers inside. “Well, would you look at this”, I say. “Here’s all my lesson plans from my first year of teaching.”

I am all of 22, on the Jicarilla Apache Reservation, with long beaded earrings and longer hair, writing the lessons, now faded with ditto blue ink, that rest in my lap. I see Mr. Suazo, the principal who looks like Cortez, saying, “Pay attention.” Your grade book and lesson plans are legal documents.

These three-column weekly lesson plans easily reach 15 to 20 pages. The first column is for the teaching objectives, all beginning with a number followed with an objective beginning with TSW, or “the student will.” The second column is line referenced with an activity, worth 20 percent of the grade. The third column reads “Assessment,” worth 80 percent of the weekly grade. Then, aligning with each objective and each activity, I include a script of how the lesson should go. I blink back the memory; I have written actual scripts complete with stage directions for my lessons.

I hear Suazo tell me to make no mistake: some things change, but most things stay the same. Teachers will always be under a microscope, he says. Be professional.

So with that in mind, I write my lesson plans in duplicate, return late at night to my classroom-in-a-trailer and practice aloud my questions and directions. In pantomime. To perfection.

Wait. A black-covered journal tips its brittle pages from underneath the weight of the lesson plans. My first classroom appears in front of me; it is a collection of dusty hand-me-downs. Deedra Lucero, Buddy Largo, Philbert Pinto, Missy Atole, Clyde Gomez and Kenny Reval. They become alive in my labored hand. I re-read through my pages of the work, pressed in cursive with the earnest desire to make a difference. Or at least not fail.

“I think today went better. The reading groups worked! Whew. About time. I think I might be getting somewhere. But, as much as I think I am getting better at this, I don’t understand how I am supposed to motivate them to read when Clyde refuses to get off the floor, and Kenny is in the bathroom trying to cut a tattoo into his hand …”

I still don’t know how, I chuckle to the self of long ago. But, Suazo was right. Some things change and most things stay the same.

I straighten the papers into a neat pile and decide not to chance fate. I begin to pack part of our souls, colored by Kodak, gently into a box.

Emily Forstner teaches Language Arts at Wasilla Middle School.