Is Teaching Hell?

A few weeks ago, I ran into my old boss, Yankee editor-in-chief Jud Hale, at the Dublin post office. We chatted for a few minutes, then he said, ‘I love reading your columns. But it sounds like you’re in Hell.’
     Oh dear.
     It’s not Hell. Sometimes it reminds me of the Greek Underworld, the domain of Hades, where everyone, good, bad, or indifferent, went after death. The Underworld had special areas for the decidedly wicked (Tartarus) and great heroes (the Elysian Fields), but most of the shades simply wandered forever in darkness. Homer called them ‘the shambling dead,’ which, come to think of it, is a fair description of the halls at passing time.
     There I go again.
     Every once in a while I’m asked why my stories about a teacher’s life are so negative. I used to hear the same complaints when I was a journalist. People would ask me, why is the media so negative? I would explain that this was actually a good thing: news, by definition, is that which doesn’t happen very frequently. Man bites dog. If the front pages and newscasts are filled with murder, corruption, and natural disaster, it’s because they are unusual. When stories about things that go right make headlines, it’s time to worry.
     Sure, I feel gloomy sometimes. Last night I woke up at one in the morning and spent the next hour reviewing a long list of my shortcomings and outright failures as a teacher. I don’t know any teachers who don’t have nights like that. Teaching is an easy job to do badly, but it’s impossible to do perfectly, and the field attracts a lot of perfectionists.
      This is my 100th column: 55,000 words, a small book. Out of curiosity, I went back and read all of them, trying to separate them according to tone. By my admittedly unscientific count, 41 were ‘negative,’ 32 were ‘positive,’  and 27 (including this one) were too hard to categorize.
     That seems to show me leaning toward the dark side. But looking at them individually, I find that what seems negative about some columns is that they focus on the problems that every teacher encounters -- the students whose lives are so chaotic that learning seems impossible, the students who are capable of learning but for some reason choose not to, the relentless demands on one’s’s time and stamina, and most of all, the unceasing war with a popular culture that promotes the thoughtless, selfish, brutal behavior we’re trying to discourage. 
     Still, that’s not the whole story, as we were reminded earlier this school year when our principal, Sue Dell, shared with the faculty a letter from her daughter, Allison Howard. She was just leaving South Africa after two years with the Peace Corps and had no illusions about the racism, the despair, and the ‘true, ugly deprivation’ she had witnessed there.
 But she hadn’t grown cynical. ‘And then there were the good days, which were most days. The indescribable thrill of feeling like your work matters. Knowing that you can change someone’s world-view with a kind word or smile. It’s so very easy to do the right thing here. [It’s] something so meaningful and imbued with purpose. First, I had to figure out what fights were worth fighting. You redefine 'compromise.’ You redefine        'tolerance.’ It’s quite literally an act of forgiveness. The old stalwarts from another time were never going to be my allies. It took a long time to figure out what was what. You take a deep breath and find your way. Because there’s only one way: forward. Each day.’
     That’s what teaching is like, too. Most days are good days, and on the bad days, you take a deep breath and find your way forward. No, Jud -- it isn’t Hell.