Improv at Intermission

Actual teacher in the wild practicing for their next class. Organic non-toxic paint powder hand dyed and ground with mortar and pestle by teacher while “watching” show with partner. Partner helped with the green.

One of my children has a teacher, Mr. NAME-REDACTED*. On alternate days, my child and a small posse of friends, maybe four or five kids, eat lunch in Mr. NAME-REDACTED's classroom with him. They don’t talk about school stuff or lessons or classwork (unless they want to). Often it’s just watching a show or talking about an issue that’s come up in their lives, but usually it’s just the normal joking and laughing that comes with being a goofball teenager, navigating high school. My child is definitely loveably quirky, so you can imagine the conversations (I cannot vouch for their friends).

Recently, my child was talking about a show that they all watched, definitely some fun teen thing that I imagine Mr. NAME-REDACTED wouldn’t have watched on his own. In fact, it occurred to me, it was possible that Mr. NAME-REDACTED was unable to tell the kids at this point that he needed his lunch time to do anything, ANYTHING but be around a group of high school students AGAIN. Was it possible that my delightful child was not picking up on some hint?

I posed this question to them in the most delicate possible way: “Are you SURE that’s okay with Mr. NAME-REDACTED? Like REALLY sure?”

“Of course, Mom!” they replied. “We wouldn’t go if it wasn’t okay!” (Insert the implied eye-roll here).

Fine…Fine. I trust them. I let it go. But the thing is I didn’t really let it go…I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it. Because the truth is, when I was in the classroom, I don’t know if I would have been so constantly generous with my free time. I certainly had lunches with students now and then, but when I did, there was always the looming knowledge that there was SOMETHING that I was NOT doing…something that needed to be done: copies to be made, lessons to be planned, work to be graded. When you are a teacher, free time is usually not free…there are strings attached. Each moment of “free time” comes at a cost. There is always something to do, something to improve. There’s always something that you just KNOW could be exactly right if you had only had five more minutes. Five minutes can seem like the difference between success and failure in the classroom.

And even if you are magical and aren’t any TASKS to finish, even if your to-do post-its are completely squared away, you know there will be a room full of newly-fed, hormonal teenagers swarming in at any minute, and they are expecting more than a lesson. They are expecting World History with jazz hands, fireworks in French, Algebra as an opera.

All this to say, time isn’t the same for a teacher. They are on stage in the classroom for their lesson followed by preparing to be on stage for the next lesson. When Mr. NAME-REDACTED welcomes my child and their friends into the classroom during lunch, he might as well be directing and playing the lead role in a live musical, and then taking intermission to stage a separate improv set at the theater down the road.

We all know that Mr. NAME-REDACTED isn’t the only one who does something like this. It might not be a lunch, it might be a special joke that fills a student with security, or a little note to tell a student that they’re on the right track. It’s taking a minute to mention to a student that their effort is noticed, or the extra help in the morning when they just know that a student is SO CLOSE to that learning breakthrough.

Teachers don’t do these things because they’re in the job description, and they don’t do them because someone expects them to. They do these things because they really, truly seek out the uniqueness, the potential, and the spark in their students. Even if it means listening to corny puns and discussions about the nuances of The Owl House (on Disney+).

So, Mr. NAME-REDACTED, and all you other super star teachers that give up your free time, even knowing you might have to listen to someone like my child waxing poetic about the lore of Five Nights at Freddy’s, please know that we see you, and we appreciate what you sacrifice to make our children feel seen.

*Name redacted because apparently, much like a trendy new club in NYC, when word gets out about this sweet hotspot, EVERYONE will be flooding the scene and the OGs will NEVER be able to get in. +

+Or so I’m told by a certain frequent patron.