Crossing Another Threshold

By Cindy Reitzi

June 2005

There’s no place like home. - Dorothy, The Wizard of Oz

You can’t go home again. - Thomas Wolfe

It’s a strange notion to go “home” again, and as a sub I’ve had many homes. I’ve rented, by subbing for other teachers; I’ve owned a home, by teaching my own classes. So, with a divided heart, I return and return again home with a different role to play. With familiar strangeness, I observe and participate with past students – there but not there; coming home but not part of the immediate family. Now an aunt, not a mother.

Four years ago, my first group of freshmen marched over the threshold from middle school into high school English. Now, they are poised on another threshold: high school graduation. While I said goodbye to my “former” students at the end of 2001, my attachment persisted. I never really let them go. So now I’m on the brink of loosening this attachment. With it comes the pang of possibility that I may never see them again. With it comes a divided heart between familiarity and seeing them near, and the necessity to stand in the doorway and bid them goodbye.

A threshold in a classic Hero Myth is a dividing line: the future hero is poised to go from familiarity and the safety of home to the uncertainty and danger of adventure. It’s when Sam says to Frodo that he’s never been out of the Shire and then takes that step; it’s when Dorothy opens the door and steps into a Technicolor Oz. It’s incoming freshmen, on the threshold, ready or not, to grapple with the obstacles and opportunities of high school. It’s seniors, the moment before they walk across a stage.

Classrooms are oddly familiar proving grounds, places of open arms or unrelenting stress, hell on earth or home. The best are dynamic contradictions: places of temporary permanence or restless stability, opportunities for comfortable risk or safe adventure. They are unique spaces to discover defining moments, experiences in life that personally define love, community, courage, persistence, passion, beauty, strength, acceptance, loyalty, honesty, maturity, or empathy. Where each class – 5th hour or 9th hour – has a character, shape, and personality that carve out unique definitions of teacher and learner. In the best classrooms I’ve experienced, those roles are blurred – not in the technical sense of who’s in charge and gets paid as the teacher – but in who learns what from whom.

There’s a process by which teachers and students mesh to become a community or a home to each other. People who don’t understand teaching think that teachers teach and students absorb. Lifeless classes feel that way. Some confuse earned authority with authoritarianism. Novice teachers may or may not have difficulty adjusting to becoming an authority figure or role model.

When I began teaching freshmen in 2001, “teacher” and “Cindy Reitzi” did not occupy the same skin. I was playing a role that was not yet natural to me in my own classroom. Of course, I planned and thought hard about what and how to teach, but not intuitively. When you learn something new, all the movements are deliberate, broken down, clumsy. But as you become skilled, you experience flow – a certain concentrated effortlessness. With time, tacit awareness replaces deliberation about each step. It’s like learning to dance. Initially, you watch your feet and focus only on the steps. You don’t hear the music. Then you coordinate with a partner, so you’re not stepping on toes. With time, you’re no longer aware of the steps; the pair of you simply glide in sync. You focus on the music.

A class takes on an ethos, habits, and vocabulary as it unfolds into a home. Andi starts to do my attendance every day because that feels right. Marcell occasionally breaks into song.

Emma gushes, “Last-night-I-ordered-a-pizza-from-that-place-on-the-corner ...” Just when you wonder where the story is going, she bursts out, “Then-I-started-reading-The-Odyssey. Oh my God! The language is sooo beautiful!” And it’s OK to be passionate about literature.

Pretty soon they start to make “suggestions.” By the end of the year, about eight of them just about maul me to act out the Romeo-and-Juliet-fall-in-love-at-first-sight scene. So I let them all do it, and it’s way better than the lesson I planned. Later, a student with a language arts learning disability tells his speech therapist that English is his favorite class. I’m grateful to know that English 9 is home to him. By the end of the year, “teacher” and “Cindy Reitzi” are no longer strangers, but the definitions of both have changed.

“Home” is not just a place but a state of mind. But, like in a hero myth, we can’t go home again because we return a different person than the one who left. Still, if we are transformed by our experiences with our students, we can take the echo of home with us. If so, it sure makes “goodbye” easier.

Dedicated to my freshmen of 2001; Class of 2005.

Posted June 2, 2005