Wrestling with failure 1, “Forget you even know me”

D has been really down the last few days. Her job has been getting to her. I know, I know, ... you’re tired of hearing about her crappy job teaching too many classes a day to unmotivated students and reporting to a criminally mendacious administration. You hear it a lot. But it takes a lot out of her morale. And some days she looks back on what she wanted to be, and the contrast is just too much. So we’ve been writing back and forth about this.

She started the conversation about a week ago. Wife and Son 2 and I drove out to Hogwarts because it was “Parents’ Day,” when we got to meet all of Son 1’s teachers and learn about the program for his freshman year of high school. Then after that all the school closed for a few days so that all the students could go home for a while after having been away nearly two months. I had told D that this might interfere with my writing for a couple of days, so she knew all about it in advance. And at some point during the weekend she wrote me as follows:

“I am glad Son 1 is fitting in so well and the two days have been rewarding. I actually tried to learn about your schedule at Hogwarts, just to help me know what you were seeing and doing, but that was a mistake. Looking at the pictures and reading the site just made me acutely aware of the differences between the education a person receives at Hogwarts and the lessons taught in my school. I found myself embarrassed (why did I ever take you into my classroom?) humiliated, and yes, angry. I don’t know how to close that gap, but I realize that Son 1 will not, in a million years, really understand the experiences of my students, and I can’t begin to imagine what life must feel like at Hogwarts. The class issues, the race issues, the history and experiences of his parents...all these differences add up to another world. The implications for civil society are huge. I don’t know what to do or to say on a personal level. I feel a welter of emotions; none of them happy....

I need to concentrate on grading anyway. I’m way behind and I’m becoming panicked and worried; I feel like I’m doing a terrible job and I need to go better. Not that my students will ever compete with your children or mine, but that injustice causes me to be blinded with tears of anger and frustration. My real struggle is to carry that weight without sinking like a stone and without a certain edgy anger. I’m not there yet.

So I’ll leave you, driving home on a beautiful fall day with both boys in the car and the prospect of a delightful holiday ahead for the entire family. I wish you much happiness, fewer interruptions from work and, please, forget you even know me for the duration of Son 1’s break.”

Cheerful stuff, huh?

I wrote her back, in part, as follows:

“Of course you know that forgetting you exist is out of the question -- not for the duration of Son 1's vacation, not for the weekend, not even for a moment. But your letter troubles me.

I could have understood it had you spoken of a sense of despondency or defeatedness from comparing the gritty reality of your school with the photos of Hogwarts, but that's not what you said. Instead you spoke of embarrassment and humiliation -- of asking yourself why you ever let me see your classroom -- and I have to admit it sounds a little odd to me that you identified those feelings instead. Can I say why it sounds odd to me? I think there are three reasons, very different from each other.

The first reason is, in this case, far the most superficial, but it is also absolutely true. It's just that I love you -- so much that embarrassment seems unimaginable to me. What I mean by that is, ... well, let's look at your class room. How could I possibly fail to adore it? It's your classroom! That by itself means that of course I'll adore it....

The second reason is the most practical: it is the line of thought which concedes there are disappointing things about your school, but which remarks immediately that none of them is your fault. You aren't responsible for the disadvantages which so burden your students; nor for the deep dishonesty of the administration; nor yet for the poor choices of the novice teachers....

Then there is a third line of thought, radically different from the first two, which nuances that second reason by saying that no, you are not responsible for all those obstacles in your environment; but you chose them anyway. I may be able to explain this point best by using an extended example.

I think in a way that for you to tell me you are embarrassed by your school, and by letting me see your classroom, is a lot like my saying that I am ashamed to let you see our house because it is always such a wreck. Of course it is a wreck, notwithstanding the valiant way you fought to better it while you were here [see the story of our second date, here and following]; and of course at some level, yes, I am ashamed to let you see the place. But the three levels apply here too. (1) I know you will continue to love me anyway. (2) I know you know that the clutter and the deep uncleanliness isn't my doing, and that I'd be more diligent about cleaning it up if I didn't feel like the only one to give a damn. So far, so good.

But it is also true, at the deepest level, that I signed up for this willingly. Twenty-six years ago, I stood up before witnesses and said "I do"; and while it is certain that I did not know in detail what the consequences would be of handing over my decisions and willpower to this madwoman, there was some level on which I knew that they wouldn't be good. But I did it anyway. To this day I'm not sure that I have figured out a complete inventory of reasons why I did it.... But that's as may be. It's a choice I made, and the consequences -- including the fact that I live in perpetual clutter -- all flow from it. To be ashamed of the outcome now is, as Nietzsche put it, "to leave my decision in the lurch"; to forget that, at some deep level, there was something important I wanted to get out of this choice that I made.

It's the same with your teaching at your school, except in your case I think the reason behind the choice is easier to find (and more honorable). It's not like you couldn't have chosen some other outcome in your life. If you had really wanted to teach at some other kind of school -- Exeter, Andover, Hogwarts -- you could be there now. God knows you're capable enough!... But instead you chose the place where you are today. Now of course there were practical reasons constraining your choice. There always are. But if teaching at Andover or Hogwarts had been important enough, you would have found a way around them....

That doesn't mean there aren't days -- how I know those days! -- when your choice makes you gnash your teeth with rage and anguish and regret: days when the students are being ridiculous, when the administration is being more than normally dishonest and corrupt and criminal, when every muscle aches from exhaustion and your soul hurts worse than your body. Yup. Been there, done that. But days like that pass. One day, you will no longer hurt and your soul will be at peace. And the question then will be whether the goal you wanted to achieve was worth the cost.

What is the goal? Why do you choose schools and settings like this? I've always assumed that at some level you do it out of discipleship, as a follower of Jesus of Nazareth. But if that's true, if my guess is right, then you will always teach in the kind of school where the students have things tough: whether they are "at-risk" or "underserved" or whatever the technical term is at this or that particular school. If my guess is right, then the odds are you will never teach at a school like Exeter or Andover or Hogwarts -- not because you couldn't (you could!!) but because at some deep level of your identity you choose not to. But in that case the comparison between your school and a place like Hogwarts is a foregone conclusion; and so far from being embarrassed by it, you might just figure it is an inevtiable by-product of the way you carry out the challenge of discipleship.

Well then, if this is the station you have taken up to serve God, why aren't your results better?... Let me recall the comparison I drew between your career and my marriage. I think we both took on challenges that were beyond us. You hoped to raise the valley to the plain, or even partway up the mountain -- not for one or two students in your lifetime, but for an entire class at once -- preferably year after year. I hoped (more modestly) to save one lousy human life -- one soul, no more -- from the countless demons that beset her. Up till now, we have both failed. But remember what I said before, that Sister Failure is not our enemy. Maybe in the end it will turn out to be OK that we failed. Maybe all it means is that neither of us is God. In any event, let's neither of us be embarrassed or ashamed -- in front of each other -- for those failures. Let us trust in each other's love, and in the prospect of unbounded forgiveness.”

D answered that she was grateful for my saying kind things to her, but I obviously didn’t succeed in improving her mood much.

“Your comments about my choices and your choices seem about right. I know I am struggling more than I let on; I am drinking far more than I ever have before.... Part of the problem with alcohol abuse is the secrecy you develop around drinking--how much, how often, all the excuses.

I am deeply lonely. My daughter wrote yesterday and accused me of being incredibly passive about my life and I responded with a shrug and silence. I know I'm passive, for all the reasons you laid out a couple weeks ago. Perhaps I don't have the faith in Providence I need to make a major change. I know that I have a hard time just getting up and doing enough to get by. Right now, I don't feel like a decent teacher, let alone as good as you think I am. I am also impatient with my less experienced colleagues because they make my job far more difficult.... My frustrations, my deep loneliness, my sense that nothing has meaning or worth leave me in a very dark place with no reason to care....

You are right to wonder why we have chosen such impossible tasks because indeed, we both know there can be no victory. The odds were and are stacked against any easy success and perhaps it was never realistic to begin with; the Kingdom is not of this world. That doesn't discount what we do, but it's more a case of providing witness to God's coming presence than changing the world in some dramatic fashion. I know you love me and I know that on some level, you really do affirm what I am doing. I know you don't judge my classroom...except I also know that you would never dream of sending your boys to my class. You know there is a better system of education.... I'm embarrassed because I know this...I realize that you enjoyed visiting my class just because I teach there, not because there is anything truly notable about what I do there, the same way you had a great time at Son 2's school play without thinking it was remarkable theater. Unfortunately, I'd like to be a great educator. I know I fail. On some deep level, that bothers me. I know that in the end, all will be well, but I also realize that now, so much is broken and grieving. Most of the time I can live within this tension, but recently, I'm failing...sliding off the roof, you might say, unable to play my violin with either conviction or beauty.”

It was hard to know what to say to this, and so it took me several days to reply.