Sooner or later, we're all just going to end up as soccer parents

Every so often, something reminds me rather suddenly and forcefully that I have "been around" for a while.  At my youngest son's soccer practice last season, one of the moms revealed to my wife that she had been a student of mine for one semester, back in 2004 - my first year of teaching.  I certainly had not recognized her and when I went up to her to see if I could figure out who she was, the memories came flooding back, and I actually remembered her name.

Teacher's and his former student's kids on the same team!

Ashley had been in my 5th period class - after lunch is always a tough one - and she remembers that she spent more time outside the class (sent out by me) than in it.  Now it became clear why she approached my wife instead of me!  "You hated me," she said.  Not true.  "And I was a bad person that year."  Also unlikely to be true.  She left after the first semester of 10th grade, went to continuation high school to catch up on her credits, and returned to graduate two years later.  Seeing someone for the first time in a while forces you to think about what you were like back then, too, and I was immediately struck by how much we had both changed.  Ashley was now married, with two children and a third on the way.  She was clearly happy and settled.  She'd gone straight into the workforce and now had a job at a car dealership that paid well and had helped her develop skills I (with my oh so impressive master's degree) knew I didn't have.  She was not the angry young lady who constantly disrupted my class and challenged my (close to non-existent) authority.

I, too, am not the same person I was back then.  Lest I forget, it is worth pointing out that I was a less than stellar teacher in my first year.  I was quick to anger and fairly intolerant of any students who failed to meet my expectations.  Today, I still have a long way to go to become the teacher, father, husband, and man I want to be, but I am - I think - more patient, more willing to listen to my students, and more emotionally and spiritually healthy than I was in 2004.  I tried - rather unsuccessfully, I think - to express the mixture of pride and guilt I felt in seeing her again.  I couldn't help wondering if 2017 Mr. St. John would have given her a better experience than she'd had in 2004, and how that might have changed the trajectory of her life.  But there's the rub.  Her life didn't need a different trajectory.  It worked out just fine.

I think our tendency is to be impressed with or even touched by the stories of people who have found success unconventionally.  We have such a rigid understanding of what children should do in order to become successful adults, and we see it as a setback or worse, a disaster when a child doesn't go to college or somehow messes up his or her education.  I was going to write about Nelson, another student of mine from that debacle of 2004-2005 and one of the chief instigators of the chaos that was my 4th period class, who is now a middle school teacher.  Then there's Sam, a student whose inability to follow basic directions in class exasperated me, and who, having been one of the least academically inclined students I've taught, went back to college in his twenties and now has a double major, speaks excellent French, and studies and climbs in Europe.  All while rocking a seriously cool man bun.

I think my response to these former students "finding their own paths" is more one of relief than pride.  Relief that the system - of which I am a part - didn't crush them.  Relief that they succeeded despite the system.

If we're honest, I think we all have had to find our own path.  I didn't know I wanted to be a teacher until I was 26.  I had a master's degree and I was cleaning school bathrooms and vacuuming classrooms for a living.  But it's not just about the careers we choose and the jobs we have.  It's about the people we become.  And when we stop to think about the paths we've taken as human beings - meandering, direct, potholed, smooth, voluntary, forced, hair-raising, yawn-inducing - the most important lessons along the way have probably not been learned in the classroom.

As I think back to that chilly October evening as I stood next to Ashley and found out about her life while our children tore around the soccer field together, I now realize that our paths, as different as they were, had brought us to the same place.   Being parents.  Raising our children.  Slaves to the dreaded schedule.  Doing our best to make a life for our families.  Worrying about money.  Loving our spouses.

It really is amazing to think that multiple degrees, 14 years of teaching, and approximately 13 more years on earth had merely led me to the same time, the same place, and the same activity as a 20-something former student.   The same activity that hundreds of thousands of regular Southern Californians do every day.  The great social equalizer: sitting in a foldable chair at their kids' soccer practice and hoping that the pizza at the end of season party won't be too greasy.