Ode to my room

I read the following letter and I identified with it in a profound way. Teaching is a profession of isolation from one's peers. Last year, we always ate lunch in the same teacher's classroom. We knew that her door was always open during lunch, and that we would always find a teacher or two willing to chat. This year, she's teaching at another school. We're lost without her. Today, I E-mailed my teacher-friend and said, "Will you eat lunch with me? I need a friend. I'm going crazy over here."

Here's the blog entry:

Ode to My Room
A friend sent me a copy of the note I wrote when I left Evergreen Valley High School in January of 2005 to run School Loop full time. It made me sad:

Left teaching today to see where School Loop will lead. Normally, when you leave a job, you get to say goodbye because you work with people in close quarters. But schools are different: We work more the idea of people than with the people themselves. Sure we see each other around, and some of us are friends, but we do our jobs apart, and most of what we know of each other is a construct, an idea built on the occasional war story, passing visit, and my personal favorite, worksheet left in the copying machine. So I guess it's fitting that, in the end, alone, I said goodbye to the one who knew me best, who saw it all: My room. I love my room. It was my first room, and it was all mine.

I loved its windowlessness, its little hideway where the folding doors contract, it's soft glow in my Christmas lights, its smart cart whose printer was always coming tomorrow, its mind-of-its-own thermostat, its metal closet that I never had a key to open, its wobbly chairs and oh-so-petite garbage cans. So I said good-bye to my room, and it, in its own room-way, to me. My room will find another, of course, and another and another and another. But I was its first, and my ghost, the idea of me, will always linger in its memory, as I hope I do in yours, because so many of you will in mine. Bye.

Mark Gross(Former) EVHS Teacher