Museums

In one day, I made a lot of mistakes. Yesterday. But, today, I am back in the museum.

The Museum is what happens to a school when it starts to die.

New things happen, but the feel that things aren't meant to be touched, that you should start memorizing people and places in your body. You steal a walk, a tilt of the head. You remember a vest.

And where you would once jump in and try to fix something, you pull back. The view has been selected. The process is going to continue as is. There is a meaning to it. It is not to be interrupted.

The students complete the exhibit carefully. They go to class, mostly, they participate in events. The memories are not settled yet. It won't hit them that it was over, and that the school has closed until much later. A year or two after the school has closed and they want to look at it. When they don't have any pictures of ____. When they realize that nobody is there anymore. None of the people you thought you would tell -- when. Sure, you will stay in touch with some people. But, there are people you didn't know you needed, and people whom you don't know are traveling on your road. And teachers you didn't realize you always meant to ask something.

Mostly, the students will forget about it as they enter new places that become their old places, meet new teachers, etc.

The teachers will feel alien as soon as they get to their new places. Some will lose that feeling and some will feel .... who knows yet.

At present, I am in the Museum. Hidden in an area completely unused. The library. In here no one can see me, which is what I want. I am here with other colleagues who have learned better than I how to function within their imaginary spaces. One whistles. It's very intriguing. Like he's in a shop, in the back room, preparing the shoes, the books -- whatever he's working to create. He is immensely busy on every select project. The whistling makes him seem like he's much slower than he is. His fingers are much more nimble as he shifts, and organizes and considers. Whatever he's making, it's delicate, but important. He has classes later. There is no nervousness, just planning, plotting. An extended rehearsal. His presentation is going to be masterful. He's in love with the smallest detail of it.

It is my fault that I have never loved the individual pieces, the hinges, the smallest items. Mine have been improvisations with notes and tons of props and materials to build it with. What I have loved has been the surprises. Over time, I have controlled the variables so that we are "on task" as precisely as possible. There is still a wild energy I try to maintain -- a tangential question or one at the center which is meant to set off fireworks. Not that it always does.

So, for me the act itself is how I prepare for the act itself. I write the sketch, I select everything,
but like writing, teaching is also about re-teaching. For me. Some people are directors and playwrights in their classes. The classroom is the one place where I like to be an actor among actors. Where I feel, oddly, neurotypical. It's also been my source of acceptance for going on 17 years. Maybe it's that we're having some degree of fun or that because we're all working on something...for whatever the reason, my oddnesses just blend in with the activity. No one who has been my student really ever asks me why I dress the way I do, or much about how I live my life. It's patently apparent to them, somehow.

In the Museum, improvisation is much harder and I am much more focused on steps. I'm teaching my students steps of a routine to get through a number. The number has been prescribed and will not change.

We are enacting our various kinds of endings. My job is to help the kids exit, anyway that's safe. The simplest way to pass the Regents, some quick rules for how to handle yourself in college and then they have to go out the door and, as I say to them every day, I can't save them anymore. I can't give them extra time.

I must admit it is equally devastating to both know you are powerless and to know your students are being sent in harm's way. It was my last "power" in the super-hero world that I live in sometimes. I could do something about one kind of mess. A little bit. I could protect one or two kids the way my teachers had protected and defended me. I could say, "No, you are not going to take this bright kid and tell him/her he's nothing just because he didn't follow all the rules. Some of the rules are actually worthless. He/she has his/her own system of measuring worth and he/she can defend it in writing like a budding thinker. Move out of the way."

Now, I give them the rules, teach them to follow and fight later. If there's time.