If you aren’t sure about a career, like if you are in tears by third period because the jittery 13-year-olds didn’t learn anything in three days reading the same chapter, and they keep singing the same TikTok song to the tune of you questioning your career choices, life choices better said, maybe you should add a lockdown drill to the equation and then see how you feel about it.

This is where I was on the exhausted Friday morning, in a month with no days off (April), at the point of the year where the hormones are at a fever pitch manifesting in reckless stupidity like tripping each other, farting and blaming the closest person next to them and the teacher stopping the lesson because they’ve all put their t-shirts over their noses and can’t stop laughing, at the end of a week where we were supposed to have a lockdown drill.

My God, My God, would I take a bullet for any one of these children?

And before I answer that question, because I won’t answer it, why should I have to ask it? 

So yes, we were told at the morning staff meeting on Tuesday that the lockdown drill would be on Thursday. I missed the meeting because it was on the calendar, but not the weekly update, and I read the weekly update, but don’t check the calendar. The calendar event was created without alerts on it. So I can make copies of these calendar events and set my own alerts. But.. I don’t. I don’t administrate all day. I manage my emails at random during the three minutes when a kid isn’t asking me to go to the bathroom, or how to do something, or to go get his water bottle because he forgot it. I manage children. So I missed the meeting. But the science teacher told me: “The lockdown drill is going to be on Thursday. There will be a fire alarm. Ignore the fire alarm. Make all the kids huddle against the wall. Update the spreadsheet to say if all your present students are in your room. Then wait.”

Okay, I can’t get these kids to be quiet, specifically third period, even when it’s for a grade.

I can’t get these kids to be quiet even when it’s at the risk of losing Fun Friday, or losing candy, or when I make big wide angry laser eyes that look like they’d blast you into stone. #medusa
I can’t get them to be quiet even when I am in tears in the corner because it’s tears or rage.

So you think that I am going to get 30+ 13 year-olds to be quiet when they’re huddled together against a wall and they know it’s a drill? And they’re nervous because this is the world we live in, and that leads to jokes and giggles and just generally not shutting the hell up?

It’s Friday. All Thursday long we anticipated the drill which was g-d annoying. The district called home to warn the families beforehand, all of the students knew it was coming. So all week long, specifically all THURSDAY LONG, the students said: “What if I leave the room and they do the drill and I’m in the bathroom. What do I do? What if there really is a fire and there is a lockdown? Would we just stay inside and burn to death?”
And I want to respond “¡en Español, por favor!”

And I’ll be honest, a more kind teacher, or a more wise teacher, may have stopped the class at the height of all these questions to speak to their concerns. But I did not do that. I told them that there wouldn’t be a fire, there hasn’t been a fire all year and statistically, it will not happen during the 10 minutes we have another drill. And they kept asking “What if’s” until I looked at all of them and said: “Do you think that that is a question that I can answer? If it is not a question that I can answer, please don’t ask it.” At that point, half of them were asking with a smile on their face, which is also how you know they’re asking to make their friends laugh and disrupt class. And then when you try to move on, they protest because you’re clearly inhumane and WANT them to die in a fire.

What I really want to do is to stop class, and look at them, and ask:

“Do you see me? Do you see this papel picado that I spent a day and a half hanging across the classroom that I brought from Mexico City in the heat of July when I moved all my stuff by myself from Tucson to Phoenix in a state where I have no family and in a city where I know three people, and all three of them are teachers who work on this hall? Do you see that after 8 months you all still don’t know the difference between “¿qué?” and “¿quién?” even though we spent a semester clapping our hands over our heads and shouting “¿qué?” “Means ‘what!’” and “¿quién?” “Means ‘who!’” every time the words came up? Do you see me, trying to teach Spanish without you all driving me to do drugs? And I don’t mean good drugs, I mean the cheap stuff that could be laced with baking powder because it’s all I can afford?

Do you think that I know the answer to the question: “What do I do if I burn in a fire because I am hiding from a shooter?” Do I look like I have been in combat, or read Risk Assessment for Dummies, or know how to protect 31 teenagers from danger? 

Allow me to a use the same word in English and Spanish: No.

Now, I can’t tell you all the reasons I picked this job, but I know for sure one reason is that I AM NOT CALM UNDER PRESSURE.

For me, teaching Spanish was supposed to be LOW PRESSURE.
But it wasn’t until I experienced hearing the second bell and simultaneously realizing that I didn’t have a lesson plan for 6th period, like at all, or until I knew what it was like to watch a lesson plan bomb because the students can’t look at a phrase that says: “Carro en el hospital” and figure, just take a leap of faith, that this might mean “car at the hospital” that maybe there is a lot of instructional pressure on teachers that I did not anticipate. 

And any of my friends, including the three who work on my hall, would tell you that this unexpected pressure has been much harder than I expected. When it’s met with snarky emails from parents, or worse emails about you to the principal, kids flipping you the bird right to your face at a school esteemed as “a good school,” and students saying “I hate this class” while in your class, it’s been downright painful at points. But, even though it might seem like life-or-death to a perfectionistic diva like me who wants everyone to love my class and sing my praises, because yes I Am She, well, I still know that no one is expecting me to install oxygen tubes up their nose or stick them with an epipen. OH WAIT I am actually expected to do the second thing. Okay, stay focused.

Point is: I don’t perform open-heart surgery. If I did, I would probably leave something in there like a unicorn sticker or a dash of glitter a la “Profe. was here.” And drive home in my Tesla.

Alas I chose this career that sees students with hearts wide open, and I only have a handful of tools to operate on them. I thought I was teaching Spanish.

When people say: “No, you’re doing a good thing. You signed up to be a teacher because you like helping people.” Wait, I did? No, that’s at all what I did. I signed up to teach because I like learning. I liked learning Spanish. I like speaking Spanish. And I like kids. That is why I signed up to teach. I absolutely didn’t sign up to help people. I am not a helper type. Please see the aforementioned unicorn sticker for assurance. 

And I certainly DIDN’T sign up for saving people. I am simply not Jesus. 

And to prove just how unJesus I am, the principal walked angrily into my classroom and looked at all the students. 

“Principal Sherman and I just went through both buildings checking that doors were locked and classrooms were quiet. And out of ALL the classrooms, YOURS was the only one that was not silent. And we have learned that a shooter would definitely have come into this classroom, according to the risk assessor from District.” 

I stared at this woman, this woman I respect more than most, and I wanted to crumble into tears and sob into her arms. 

And the reality is, she did not sign up to protect students from danger any more than I did. We signed up to educate. And yet, there I was sitting in a chair as all of my students huddled against the floor below the smart board. One student grabbed a chair and held it over him. My classroom doesn’t have desks, just chairs, so really, if a shooter wanted to, we would all be dead. The students whispered: “Profe, shouldn’t you be on the floor?” 

And I realized in this moment, as I stared at these children on the floor, that I haven’t stopped to be sad about the school shootings of late because I can’t handle it. If I came to work imagining that I could be in a school shooting, other than getting shot the side eye, I wouldn’t come to work.

This morning, I drove to church. I saw a man in a sleeveless shirt walking on the sidewalk. His skin was dark brown, and I had to catch and address the micro-aggression that popped up in my mind that he was unhoused. He was probably not unhoused. He was just a man walking on the sidewalk. And then I walked into the church, and I sat behind the choir director who is gay. And I listened to the pastor who is also gay. And I remembered that there are a lot of people who must be a lot more scared than me. It is scary to be black in America, often fatal. It is scary to be out in America. It is scary to be a teacher, too, but this is a job I chose. These people didn’t have a choice.

Being a teacher is hard, and calls for bravery, and, yes, teaching is scary. It broke my heart to see those kids, even or especially the ones who have actually driven me to tears, huddled against the wall.

And then the pastor preached about “Dirty Jobs,” mentioning that being a shepherd in Biblical times was also a thankless job, he mentioned teaching among them. I felt so seen, and so dispirited, that I had to hold back tears because I was wearing mascara: the most thankless job of all.

I really don’t believe in God, like the way I don’t believe in the USA. I know it’s there like God is probably there in some shape or form, but God and the USA, and so many people, could do so much better. 

So that is what I will try to do: I will try to be better. I will try to be brave. I will try not to be scared. 

A lot of people don’t have a choice.