a snapshot

"So you realize," I say, as I take tickets and check their names off the list of prom-goers, "that part of the price of your admission is a picture with me before you leave tonight."

"It's a must," comes the reply. And we smile and laugh, but I mean it, dead serious. That, beyond the terms of my contract, is exactly why I'm here. Souvenirs and remembrance. Tokens from the end of the line.

I am not the only teacher, of course, with a camera wedged into an evening bag. I am not the only teacher who will be asked to stop and smile. Maybe no one is more sentimental than a high school senior. Except for, maybe, me.

This year's graduates do not, perhaps, represent my greatest accomplishments as an educator, if such things, as the bureaucrats tell us, are measured in test scores and GPA. But considering that they have witnessed nearly ever minute I have spent as an ESL teacher--all the other years,working in junior high and community college and at the university were other lives--it seems fair to say that what they believe me to be is what I am.

To have spent so much time together may or may not have been the educational ideal, but it has been what we've had. They were everything from my proving ground, to my 8-3 homeschool, to my experiment in whether familiarity does actually breed contempt (not always, or at least not every day). I believe that they think that I know things, and that they've learned from me--both about life and about school. I believe that they think that I try. That I'm trustworthy. That I am too nice except when I am in a mood and too disorganized always (though I've never actually lost anything). That I will do anything I can. For better or worse our six years of experiences have made me the teacher I am, so far, so of course I wanted that picture. Not to remember--I'll never forget--but to see myself through their eyes.