THE DEATH OF A TEACHER

This year began as the best year of my life. 

Now, at the end of this long, hard, pandemic year – one of the hardest ever for every teacher – my classroom phone rang, as it sometimes does during class, but instead of ‘please dismiss so and so” the principal’s secretary was on the other end. It was three-quarters of the way through fourth period. 

“Is everything okay?” I coughed. 

“Hon, ask your neighbor teacher to come watch your students and come on. The principal wants to see you.” That wasn’t a yes or a no. My students stared at me as I excused myself carrying a pad of paper and pen. 

I was going to get offered Team Lead after the banner year I’d had. Even my PLC leader was worried in December when I was commended for my innovative work with failing students. Yet, I’d never been called out of class before. It had to be good though. I had excellent observation scores, demonstrated growth on the benchmark and my team was honored by the high school English department lead. I hated how the heels of my shoes clicked on the floor as I walked. Had something happened to one of my kids? Did someone else have Covid? Die from Covid? Or, my heart sank, was there another suicide?  I despised the clawing sensation in my chest, how my heart palpitated, my anxiety steadily climbing with each step.

Not everything was always going to be bad. The air I sucked in seemed thinner than usual. 

 I hadn’t done anything wrong, I tried to convince myself. Still, my stomach sank, souring the cauldron of coffee roiling in there. I was a good teacher, and like so many, I’d taught through the worst year of my fifteen-year career. Many quit, giving up long before the race was over. I stood my ground, walked in when I was scared for my life. Smiled behind my mask so the students would feel a semblance of normal. I forged the way forward for one hundred and fifty-seven wonderful minds. I turned the corner, forcing myself to focus on these things. 

That said, the principal promised in every faculty meeting he appreciated the hard work stating in each meeting, how much he cared about us and how he wasn’t looking to let any of us go. But my mind was convinced I was walking to my end. It had to be good, but if not, I’d find a way to fix whatever was wrong. I loved the school, these students, my colleagues, my AP. I loved the school.

So, with as much confidence as I could muster, I lifted my chin and opened the door with a click. His secretary drawled out what I already knew. “Come on in, he’s in the first door on the right.” Her perfect blonde hair dangled into her somber blue eyes. She refused to meet my gaze. Not good.  

I hadn’t entered since June. I dared not breathe heavily, and yet with each exhale the inhale became more difficult. Walking there was like climbing Mount Everest because somehow, deep down, I knew this wasn’t going to be good. He hadn’t spoken a single word to me individually since August.

I turned the corner to find one of the assistant principals sitting facing the principal, also refusing to make eye contact. She was not my favorite person at the school. She had a strange relationship with one of the male students I taught. With her full load of students, she repeatedly contacted me over the last few days trying to get me to change his grades. I would, when he turned in his missing assignments, but not until then.

Desperate for something, some hope, I turned to my principal who joined the ranks of people already ready to unsee me. My stomach churned.

I tried to keep things light with s perky, “Hello.”  As far as I knew, this was another commendation. I’d done nothing wrong. 

“Hello.” He sighs out as if it was arduous to talk to me. “Come on in.” As if I wasn’t already in the darkroom with its long mahogany table and leather chairs. 

“How are you guys?” I wasn’t going to consider myself convicted of some unknown crime. Not yet. I was going to act as if all was well.

What a pain it was to have been through so much trauma already. It seemed to always send me tiltawhirling out of control when faced with the unknown. 

“Good – we’re good. It’s been a long week for sure for us. I want to start by thanking you for this year and all that you’ve done for our students and everything related to that. I do have news I have to share with you. Uh,” I could barely see him through the dots spotting my vision, but he looked tired. “your contract is not being renewed for 2021-2022, so for the next school year it's not being renewed.” He steepled his long white fingers. 

I stared unseeing at him. Lost at sea, bobbing over waves that were unending, rolling on and on until I couldn’t even see myself as they wrapped around me and swallowed me whole. Nonrenewed. I glanced at the assistant principal who sat facing the principal as if I wasn’t even in the room, as if I was of no consequence as if I was already gone. How? How was this happening? 

He went on as if he hadn’t just left me in an ocean of confusion on a tiny lifeboat with a hole in it. “I wanta – two steps – I want to give you this letter and give you a moment just to read that if you don’t mind.”

“Sure.” I mean what else was I going to say. I’d never in my perfectionist lifetime been nonrenewed. It’s kind of like being laid off, except often it’s reserved for failed teachers, those that don’t move the students forward. But I’d done that. I’d moved them in a year when no one expected anyone to grow. I’d been successful. I’d done my job so well he himself commended me. I wanted to shout at him, tell him he had the wrong teacher, that there must be a mistake.

His chair creaked as he leaned forward to hand me the one thing I’d rather set fire than touch. I definitely didn’t want to read the insidious words ruining my life. How would I pay the bills? How would I keep our brand new house we just bought in December? How would I go home to my disabled husband and tell him that I, the breadwinner, no longer had a job? How would I tell the kids? I’d done a good job. How could this be happening? 

I let my eyes glance upon the words. My heart thundered in my ears. My stomach twisting at my newest fate. Why was there no indication this was coming? Why hadn’t anyone put me on a plan of action, or told me that I wasn’t good enough to stay? Was I not good enough to stay? The cloying scent of his cologne nearly choked me. What had I done to get let go from my dream school?

I finished the letter. It gave me no relief. It was like the last nail in a coffin I didn’t even know I was in. I waited for the principal to look at me, but he didn’t. It was like I was fading on an endless horizon where the ocean met the sky. I wanted to be in the sky, floating to heaven, not here facing one of my greatest professional fears.

 He stared down at the rug. Did he know my name? He never said it once this year. Did he know who I was? Maybe this was a mistake. Maybe he’d written the wrong name on the paper. I checked again, but it was my name, my address, my life being dismissed. “I’m finished.” 

“The next thing is,” He glanced at the papers on his desk, still not looking at me. “just – you’ll keep that letter – that’s yours. This one, so simple as far as it's just acknowledging you’ve received that paper. So you can read this top, and I’m going to hand it to you, but just put your name and your signature here where it’s asking for it. Just read this top part please.”

I wondered if I should wait. Could I fight this? What had I done? But my PLC Leader warned me if I ever got called into the principal’s office to just let the principal talk. So, I signed. My pen hovered over the date. What day was it? What month? Why was I getting fired? What had I done? I racked my brain over every parent email, every failing student, over every behavior plan and IEP I was responsible for, and nothing came to mind. 

“It’s May the fourteenth.” He reminded me, breaking me out of my thoughts. 

Was the room smaller suddenly? I wrote the cursed date in. My shoe fell off my heel and I worked to slide it back in. I’d worked an entire year during a historic pandemic with one hundred and fifty-seven students, over three hundred parents, more than thirty IEP, and 504 plans. What had I done?

My hands shook. My throat ached.

“They- Um, if there is a next question, I’ll preempt it. Usually, it’s, ‘tell me more’ or something. This process is directed with standard operating procedures straight from Central Office, so I cannot say anything else beyond this quote. ‘Your contract has not been renewed for the 2021-2022 school year. I know – it's understandable to say this is hard to hear. So, the secretary will take care of the rest of your day. So you can ease out, and I’m sure -  and I assume you want to take that option-“

“Yes.” The word was raspy. I hated how it was thick and fat on my tongue. I gripped the leather chair and stared at the mahogany table. My dream was slipping through my fingers. Gone. 

“Um, then moving into the weekend you can gather your thoughts together, and um, um we are taking care of today is what I’m saying. Don’t hear that I’m saying we don’t want you to come back. We want you to finish your contract, and, you know, I think that you would want to look at next steps for you. I think this will give you some needed time this weekend. Okay?”

“Kay.” Was the room spinning? I wanted to fight, but he wouldn’t even let me say my part. I was given no questions, no voice, no options, nothing. It was like I was a pawn on a chessboard just being moved off. 

“So, um, that’s it. Let me get the door for you.” He stood but his chair didn’t make a sound. I didn’t look back at the assistant principal. 

I gathered my papers struggling to make them line up. They were rustling when I wanted to be screaming instead of messing with stupid papers. How? How was it, I didn’t have a job there anymore? What just happened?

“And, I’ll tell the secretary, you don’t have to.” Noises in the office brushed over me and through me as if life was going on for everyone else. It reminded me of my husband’s brain cancer. How we were in the hospital while people just outside our window were going out to dinner and partying on a Friday night. 

Did the office staff know? 

No reason? 

He wasn’t going to say anything. Just, hey thanks, but goodbye. 

Seriously? 

The office staff were laughing and joking. It prickled along my skin like a middle-school taunting bully. I was barely holding my insides in. My breath heaved out of me as I walked down the hall back to class. My heels clicking so loudly I felt certain I’d be asked to be quiet. 

I carried the cursed paper into my classroom where my students waited for me. 

“Mrs. Burrows are you okay?” one of my sweet students asked. She’d come a long way this year and I was fiercely proud of her. 

“Fine.” Only a few more minutes. 

“What happened?” My one student who always stood by my desk fiddled with his mask. I probably wouldn’t get to see him graduate now. 

I wouldn’t get to see where any of them went next. I wouldn’t know the end of this story like I didn’t know the end of so many others. Thousands of students knew my name, but to me, they were all a blur I’d loved and lost with no idea where they landed in the end. 

***

It was calming to hear my supervisor’s voice, someone I trusted at the school.“This is so hard. I know it. I haven’t wanted to see your face for two weeks.” 

So they’d known for two weeks. Time I could have spent finding a job, time I could have made sure my family was provided for, but instead, in spite of all I’d given to them, they chose to keep me in the dark. “I just don’t understand what I did wrong. I’ve been teaching for fifteen years. I know how to do this job. What did I do?”

“It wasn’t that.” Warmth and caring infused his words, but all I heard was goodbye. “He has a way of choosing his staff, and he does what he wants to. I had no part in this.” 

“Okay. Makes sense. But it doesn’t explain why I wasn’t warned and given a chance to rectify what I did wrong. Why wasn’t I put on a plan of action?”

“It wasn’t you. Two teachers who were a part of the original faculty at the school eight years ago wanted to come back. He moved you to hire one of those teachers.” 

I nodded. My grip on the phone tightened. “Well, that’s fine. He can hire who he wants, but I don’t understand why he didn’t let me transfer. Nonrenewal is a black mark on my record.”

“He has his ways.” He sighed.

“His way is to just non-renew people?”

The rest of the conversation was a blur. I could breathe again. It wasn’t me. I applied with confidence because there wasn’t anything wrong with me. 

I walked lighter through the halls, but as each day reopened the wound something bitter took root in my heart. My heart still ached with hope the mistake would be found out. My prayers grew longer, louder, more tearful as I prepared to say goodbye to my students. What would I say?

***

“This is a code red, code red.” Silence filled the hall. I turned the lights off, closed the window shades, and silenced the movie. Ten students were sitting in my room with only five hours to the end of school, and they turned to me for direction. 

An hour passed with no text to tell teachers what was going on. One of my best teacher friends, trapped in the faculty restroom, texted. “I'm going to be pissed if this is a drill.” 

I laughed quietly. “It’s going on too long to be a drill.” 

“People aren’t supposed to be in the halls during a code red right?” 

“Right.” I glanced at the phones in my student’s hands, but it wasn’t a time to call them out on the rules. “No texting anything about the code red.” 

“Okay.” 

My friend texted, “I can definitely hear sirens.” 

I asked my student, who still had her phone in her hand if she knew anything. She said it was one of my students. He was banging on doors down the yellow hallway with a gun in his possession. 

“Okay, quietly,” I whispered, moving closer to the students, “Move under the computer desk with your backs against the cement wall.” I began handing out English textbooks. “Hold this over your chest.” 

“Wait, is this real?” One of my students stared up at me, eyes wide, clutching her phone to her chest. 

“Drills don’t last this long.” I turned my attention to the chairs scattered around the room. We’d already packed up. There wasn’t much to work with, but I picked each chair up and barricaded them against the door. No one was getting in. 

I sat there at my desk, ready to die, ready to fight this student to save the ones cowering under the computer desk, and it dawned on me, 

I might die sitting at a desk I’d already lost. 

Somehow, I was okay with it. 

After an hour passed, the code went from red to yellow, to green.

The principal left me floating in a rocky sea, and even then, I wouldn’t leave my student’s sides when a gunman threatened our lives. My decision was made. I was leaving teaching. They were right. I didn’t belong there.