One of my assignments at my job is to scan student identification cards when they come into our school. This is not as easy a job as you might think -- you have to be mindful of students who are suspended, you have to confirm the identification of students without identification and then manually enter them into the computer system. While you're doing this, you also have to make sure students are behaving, removing hats and any gang related flags or beads from their persons. All this has to happen while hundreds of students are coming into the building and trying to go to class. Plus, you want to be polite about it all as tempers flare easily. Our students go through metal detectors and have to virtually strip to do so (there's metal in everything these days, especially sneakers and shoes). Kids pile up in clumps while someone is checked and checked again for mysterious sources of concern which often turn out to be forgotten bobby pins.
We have a good team of people doing this work. Everyone has a serious, but kind demeanor so there isn't usually any difficulty. Except for the occasional student who refuses to remove a highly expensive hat or one who irrationally responds to a request to be re-scanned (and it is irrational -- it's never someone who really is hiding something) the mornings go quietly and smoothly.
My students, unlike me, have gotten used to coming through webs and webs of fingers. The fingers who hand them late passes, temporary ID's, hand them back their belongings after scanning, point them to the auditorium when it is too late to be admitted to class, point out which stairwells they should be using (our school building houses four schools, all of whom are supposed to use separate stairwells to decrease traffic). They shake and pound fists with friendly hands of guards, other deans, counselors and their friends. It surprises me when students will later in the day say, "Don't touch me!" to me or other deans and teachers as they are so welcoming to the veritable groping of the morning. Maybe they've had enough after that. More often, though, those are students who want to unnerve you and to deny your power to affect their future with our without a tap on the shoulder.
For me, however, the cathedral of hands that defines the morning ritual is far too much. The hands that grip me on the shoulder, stop me from typing in a name of someone before I look to see if they have a new ID, point out reinventions of the procedures I had just become accustomed to, demonstrate the proper way to remove paper from the printer, point out keys on the keyboard to names I cannot hear because of the noise and even those who rub my back after having slapped my hands to stop them from typing -- this collection of what feel like diabolical digits is sometimes enough to trigger agony in me. It's not that I don't want to be stopped from making mistakes or that I don't like to be touched. I ache to be touched most of the time as there are few people in the world whom I trust enough to hug me. However, therein lies the paradox; I don't trust most people enough to stand within less than a foot of them so being consumed by the over-reachings of all manner of staff frightens me. I am used to the distance and temperament which people give moderators of debates -- my classroom and even my manner are rooted in the Socratic method. So, I sat with my head in a basket of my own fingers on Friday in the pauses between rushes of students. There was the comfort of my own hands and the chance to warm my face with my own breath. And to hide the onslaught of tears which overwhelmed me later in the day. On top of the changes in routine, I was asked to be stricter with students who don't have identification cards. When I was so and I asked for assistance from a colleague, I got a flat out "ask somebody else." No matter what the reason, and I am sure it was quite legitimate, that broke me. I felt mauled and alone.
Everything that my colleagues are doing is correct and right and good and they mean absolutely no harm to me. If anything, they are coddling me. Even when they refuse me it is because they are too busy and they know that someone else WILL do what I ask.
How do I explain that it is frightening, all this hand-work, gentle slapping of the wrist to push my hands to stop moving on the keyboard, pointing here and there to faster ways to enter information which contradict what I was told yesterday? It is all meant to be helpful, but it is the opposite to me. It makes me trust myself and them even less.
Fundamentally, I understand that there isn't time to do more than grunt, point, and nod. When hundreds of kids are at the door, sentence structure goes out the window.
It just makes me feel raw and vulnerable to be so much a creature pawing through the winds when I have spent a lifetime in the igloo of the classroom. The spoken word has been what has given me the illusion of safety my whole life. Spending my mornings without those shields only reminds me further of how insecure my job and my life really are.
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