Last week, I walked into the main office and found some folks shredding old documents. This is an ongoing process. Schools are hoarders of all things paper.
On this particular morning, I wanted to be nosey. I looked down. What part of our past was being sliced into a million pieces today?
I instantly recognized them: Attendance sheets! Somehow we still use these antiquated sheets in our first period class, which marks the “official” attendance of the day. Each sheet is lined with an endless number of bubbles filled with “A” for absent and “T” for tardy.
Utterly intrigued, I looked closer at a sheet just before a staff member fed it into the shredder. It was from December 2017. I recognized my name at the top as the teacher of record.
That’s when I had a moment.
I don’t remember the class itself that well, but I do remember the kids. As I read their 21 names, many of their faces and stories came roaring back to me. There was the girl who sang her life away as part of every school musical. There was the Ghanaian boy who gave me my Akan name based on the day of the week I was born. The student who came back to work in our college and career office for a year. The kid whom I struggled get to do any math, but who walked into class with a bright smile each day. There was the student I taught to ride a bike during our international trip to Denmark. The sister of one of those students on that sheet is in my class right now. The stories go on and on.
I haven’t thought about these kids in years. Teaching has trapped me in the present. There are lessons to plan, new students to meet, and a never-ending stack of papers to grade. But for a brief moment that morning in the office, I was transported back to my first period of December 2017.
Remembering those kids reminded me of the magnitude of my career. Those 21 students were my past, looking me square in the eye. Our momentary contact across time and space made me realize that, despite my best efforts to control my destiny as an educator, it is my students who have undoubtedly shaped me into the teacher I am today. Like a bank account, each of their stories has made a deposit to my pedagogy. I am rich with experience, empathy, and instructional wisdom because of them.
What I hope to stand for today is a direct result of our challenges and triumphs together. It was important for me to recall this because one day, my current students will be my past. Years from now, I might discover an attendance sheet, photo, or some other relic from 2026. What will it say about my teaching? How will it capture who I am as an educator this year? How might it show how today’s students have sharpened me for those who have yet to come?
I asked the main office if I could keep the attendance sheet. It’s hanging in my classroom. ∞
lazy 0ch0 