Lists for the Beginning of a School Year

 Usually, on an August Wednesday like today, the lists begin their churning. I wake up with my heart beating to the syncopation of the words to-do, to-do. I lift my small notebook off my desk. For the whole summer, my small notebook—my desk itself—has felt dormant, like a thing subsumed by hibernation. Smoothing out its spine feels strange to my fingers. I pick up a pen, write the words as cleanly as I can. To Do. I know this is the first—the only—time I’ll write so neatly in my little book. From September to June, I jot notes on the subway and in the hallway between classes, in the middle of dinner parties and while I’m trying to hold my coffee. During the school year, my scrawled To Do, in my little book, looks erratic, like an EKG chart.

*

In September, the crimson doors of my school flare open. Their red thudding continues its adamant rhythm till June. Those doors, with their muscled bustling, always remind me of a heart. A passionate, hard-working, unceasing heart.

*

I get together with my colleague Josh. He coaches the boys’ soccer team, and he was afraid that the team would be de-funded. He says, “We’re starting soccer pre-season.” He says, “When I say that phrase—‘We’re soccer starting pre-season’—my heart does this thing.” He says, “I can’t explain it. But I’m so excited, it really feels like my heart is skipping a beat.”

*

Usually, our school’s office is the thrumming pump that runs the entire building. But—in the way I don’t often notice my own heart—I rarely notice all the office does. Our five administrative assistants churn endless papers— the contents of which I cannot even begin to comprehend—over desks. The only chit-chat they have time for is the rattling-out of code letters and numbers; these letters and numbers are associated with various arcane pieces of paperwork; these pieces of paperwork direct my life. The hands flicker, with ceaseless adeptness, over drawers of inscrutable files. They navigate occult School District computer systems, surreal Telnet programs that pre-date the invention of the Internet. They issue early dismissals to students, calling to confirm the early dismissal with every single parent. Unlike me, they don’t even seem to need lists to organize all of this.

*

Here’s a list of the things I usually love about the first day of school:

1-    Providing the freshmen with directions, even—especially—when they’re too scared to ask for help. The 9^th graders are always instructed: The school is laid out like a giant E, on its side. But when they’re wringing their printed roster papers in terrified hands, the giant E image is surrealistically, confoundingly useless. Sometimes I tell them about how I, myself, was a freshman here, subjected to the labyrinthine throttlings of this epic, monolithic E. I tell them about how I sat, in a silent panic, through an entire period of Chemistry, having mistaken it for my Bio class. The freshmen say, “Thank you,” and I say, “You’re welcome.” Actually, most of the time I say, “You’re welcome, sweetie.”

2-    The sound of my heels in the hallway as I’m rushing to class. The feeling of chipper, swishing efficiency. The moment—before each period I teach—of leaning, in my teetering shoes, toward the new.

3-    Learning my new students’ names. Even more than that, the moment of transformation—when the kids cease being names on lists, and become people. When I learn that Sara’s pet peeve is when someone taps a pen on a desk during a test. When Sebastian talks excitedly about Fight Club. When kids describe their sports, describe their break-dancing, describe their skateboarding and blogging and internet geeking. When I learn that Daniel is planning on becoming a competitive ballroom dancer.

4-    Picking out an outfit to wear, in the early-morning dark that feels so different on the first day of school. Standing there staring at my only business suit, and a sleeveless dress. Weighing professionalism against comfort; remembering that my classroom is not air conditioned, and has only one window. Choosing the dress, and inevitably sweating to death anyway.

*

Usually, from September to June, my blood feels mostly like a flow chart of the things I have to get done. I know this sounds like a terrible life. But for me, and for many of my colleagues, it’s like a galvanizing zap of zinc-tinged excitement, like an electro-magnetic jolt of focus. I used to work an office job, and, every day, I’d sit and wait for the clock to click to 5:00. I’d try to proliferate my paperwork—to muster a sufficient number of tasks— just to fill up the entirety of my workday. I never had to keep to-do lists. The main thing I had to do was to keep from falling asleep. Now, as a teacher, I’m always astounded when it’s 3:00—then 4:00, then 5:00. I snatch at the fleeting edges of the day—trying to make it last longer, trying to get more done.

*

Usually, the first day of school makes me aware of my cardiologic existence. Of course, it’s expected for my heart to skitter a bit with first-day jitters. What’s less is expected is the other stuff my heart does:

1-    Surging with joy at the sight of a former student, who’s walking into my office, yelling my name.

2-    Sliding into a strange calm when I pick up a piece of chalk for the first time.

3-    Feeling a click of gratitude as I’m moving, in the midst of tons of kids, through the super-crowded halls.

*

At school, I am quite famous for my little books—the ones in which I keep my lists. When we were in the preliminary stages of laying out the school’s literary magazine, the student editor said, “Ms. Toliver, do you keep your old little books?” In fact, I do keep my books of lists, going back a few years, on a self in my office. They are often surprisingly useful. She continued, “Can you look back to the list we had for the last issue? So that we know what to do?” My kids, too, are list-makers. Their planners are thick with lists—brambly addendums and adjustments and marginal notes to themselves. They add dark, thick, deeply scored lines, crossing out each assignment they’ve completed. This building, with its red doors, is a place for us—neurotics, compulsive over-acheivers. To-do-ers.

*

I guess that’s why this August is so odd, so uncomfortable. Now that it’s here, I’m expecting a rhythm to start in my ribcage—galvanizing, turning the first gears of fall. I want to look at my class lists, but there are no class lists yet. I want to enumerate the activities I’ll do with the kids on the first day of school, but—since the SRC eliminated my department—I’m still not entirely sure what classes I’ll be teaching. The lists of the missing, the lists of the laid-off—teachers and counselors and noontime aides—float in an enormity of silence. The administrative assistants—the logical brains that make the lists for my principal, for the kids, for all of us—are all looking for new jobs on monster, all creating Linkedin profiles. And then there are the other lists: lists that summarize our contract negotiations, lists of sacrifices that we teachers are expected to take on. These lists are bullet-pointed, emailed or printed—sometimes in clinical font, sometimes in the font of panic. In no particular order, these lists include: no guarantee of potable water in schools, no guarantee of supplies such as books provided to schools, %13 pay cut, no seniority, time added on to the school day, %13 reduction in medical benefits. 

*

This August, any lists I manage to make just feel like an admission of paralysis. Where a heartbeat once was, there’s only a panicky echo. If it sounds like anything, it’s maybe the backwards hitching of What to do? What to do? What to do? I can barely even list what’s missing. I can make no claim that it’s first one thing, then another, then another. My natural impulse to prioritize, to fix, just seizes up instead. There’s nothing but that same phrase—What to do? What to do? What to do? Against my chest, inside my lungs, it pushes its weight of blankness. And its weight—its weight feels like the weight of a drowning.