ODE FOR A TEACHER

Being a teacher is such a noble profession, those people said, and she believed them. She gripped that belief with immovable knuckles, a terrified twenty-two year old, when her high school students snickered at her bloody eye on her first day. Broken blood vessel from stress, but those unknown kids didn’t know that. Her resolute hold on that belief loosened when, five years later, they started the rumor about her having sex with her boyfriend during a virtual choir class, and she sobbed to an administrator she had only talked to once before. We’ll take care of this, the administrator assured her, and she went home and collapsed in the shower, crying. Twenty-four hours later, one apologetic, confessional email from the culprit arrived, and the situation had resolved. But the five kids who believed the rumor see her differently now, and she knows there’s nothing that can change that. A chorus teacher! those people exclaimed. Oh what a fun job that must be! You just get to sing with kids all day!!! She wishes those people could see her at 7:25am begging her freshmen class to try that vocal warmup one more time while the moon still shines in the murky February sky. The kids slump in their chairs, doze off, or check Snapchat for the hundredth time hoping that that bitch Callie took down her story from the night before. But there’s good days too. It’s like a rollercoaster ride, she once told those people as they mindlessly nod and smile. Up, down, good, bad, twists, turns, rocketed upwards, jerked downwards, dragged along, no control, terrifying, exhilarating, and something you do all over again even though you know it’s going to be that way. A good day isn’t a concert well-received or a competition won or a trip with everyone arriving to the bus on time. Those are nice, even lovely, she’ll admit, but they’re not her favorite. It’s the moments she doesn’t share because she assumes only she’d find them beautiful. Like when the tenor bass choir hears one of the sophomores fart. Those boys start making their own fart noises, so she stops pounding the same two notes on the keyboard and joins their incessant laughter. Or when the kids sing a dissonant chord so in tune that it shimmers. And in her choir room, frequently dank with mold that thrives in untouched corners, the brilliant chord lingers, and everyone stills. So she leaps on her keyboard bench and shouts, Y’all are amazing! and when the kids’ cheers crescendo at her rare praise she has to stop beaming and start shushing them. Or when the treble choir persuades her to be in their latest TikTok video, and their infectious enthusiasm forces her to end the theory lesson ten minutes early and perform coordinated centipede movements alongside them. We love you so much, the kids still say, but that one kid who tells her she’s a terrible teacher is the one she remembers. The one she didn’t win over. The one who’s out in the universe somewhere today and despises her. Maybe if I had said this, maybe if I had done that instead, she thinks. She often leaves school with tears slipping down her face, and the list of different choices not taken pummels her tortured brain. She stays up late at night, eyes bleary from staring without blinking at her laptop screen, planning a more creative lesson, researching a group activity that teaches both rhythm and team-building, attempting a new technique for sight-singing because her usual methods aren’t bringing success. Learning, Trying, Hoping. I have to be better, she says to her exhausted boyfriend before he falls asleep beside her. I have to be better for them.

And then one kid comes up and hugs her real tight after the chorus concert, and he doesn’t speak, and she doesn’t speak, but somehow that sets the world right in that one wordless moment where a student reminds her she’s loved. She means something beyond all those other moments that tore at her frame and devastated her soul. Because they forget, these kids, that she was thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, eighteen a handful of years before. Despising some of her teachers too, mocking them with her friends, giggling at nasty rumors before sharing them. They don’t know, these kids, not yet. But there’s always at least one, one who reminds her, one who sees something more. A noble profession. But she’s not noble. She’s ordinary and steady and unremarkable. I can’t wait to make music with my students someday! I just love it soooo much! was her mission statement about an idealized future. But it’s not the music that sustains her now, never that. It’s the kids, she tells those people, but they stopped listening once her experience didn’t match the outdated picture in their heads. Her kids, is how she actually refers to them, though she has none of her own. They call her their choir mom. And sometimes your mom annoys you, sometimes you hate your mom, sometimes for a long while. But each of those kids knows, even the ones she hasn’t won over yet - or maybe never will - that when they walk into Room 1705, she’ll be waiting for them behind the keyboard where half the keys stick, in her dated loafers, and misshapen cardigan. A smile touches her face as she looks at them, and they find themselves smiling back. And that’s something. It’s enough.

Kaitlyn Garner has a BA in Music Education and currently works as a private voice teacher, music director, and classical singer. Kaitlyn has always loved writing and has had short works published in The Broadkill Review, Foliate Oak Literary Magazine, and Auroras & Blossoms.