The Ball, The Face; The Student, The Teacher

History will judge us by the difference we make in the everyday lives of children.

nelson mandela

To a teacher who’s quickly reaching the point of forced surrender,

It all took place as you were calling out numbers for Steal the Bacon. His number and the number of a young girl was chosen. You felt the intensity of the competition steadily growing. And before you could yell, “Stop!”, the red dodgeball was pelted at her right cheek. He, the student you had called, being the one who threw it, pissed that he didn’t win that round. He’s a feisty one when it comes to the gym. Basketball, soccer, dodgeball. You could see that he was skilled, no doubt about it, but with that skill came pride. The boy knew he was good. He was used to winning, especially against girls.

But not this time. Not after what he’d done to her. You wanted to eliminate any possibility of pride or victory in him. You wanted this boy to feel his proper loss. Defeated. Humiliated. You jumped up, grabbed his shoulder with your right hand, pulled him towards the girl with the now reddish face. Infuriated with the injustice of his transgression, blood boiling, adrenaline pulsing, veins throbbing, you shouted at him, “Apologize right now. What the hell’s wrong with you?” His cousin, a hefty 2nd grader, rushed up to defend him. “Hey, you can’t touch him like that! You’re like 2 years older!” You were much older than that. Sigh. That age is supposed to correlate with maturity and discretion just so happened to slip your mind in those few seconds. The gym froze. The game stopped. Numbers were no longer called. Now, it was just your name. The Assistant Director asked to see you. You’d never been in enough trouble to be sent to the Principal’s Office, goody two-shoes that you were. Well, this came pretty darn close to that.

You spent the night figuring out how to phrase your apology, but mostly wondering if one should even be offered at all. Were you sorry? You put your hands on a boy, yes, but you were doing so in the name of justice! He was a boy, something you remembered only after the fact. It wasn’t just that, though. He was the student you hadn’t been on good terms with from the start. The one you just couldn’t win over, and slowly it dawned on you that much of your fury towards him was rooted in an envious sort of desire for his approval. He was a boy who threw a ball at a girl, and you were the teacher who allowed your emotions to overcome your better judgment. Suddenly the framework of justice by which you were viewing this entire situation began to shift. He was a boy. She was a girl. There was a ball. Thrown in a gym. And you were the teacher. In the moment, it doesn’t seem so simple. But sometimes, if you give the events enough time and distance, the simplicity of it all makes its way through and you humbly accept it.

Sincerely, Esther