In a month or two, our learners in Room 210 will enter into the world of 1692 Salem, Mass., via The Crucible. In Act II of Arthur Miller’s play, Mary Warren, returning from the court proceedings, remarks to John Proctor, “I am amazed you don’t see what weighty work we do.” What weighty work we do. Every time I read this line, I think of the weighty work I do and the weighty work I have done. I think about how some things can appear so light, but have much heft when they are held in the hand. I don’t mean to be overly personal with you in this holiday season (and maybe I do), but the work we do as lead learners in the classroom is weighty indeed. And how we miss this sometimes is in the thinking that someone else is carrying it.

It’s so much weightier than the desks we dutifully push back into straight rows, so much heavier than the turn of a key that secures the door to the room for the night, and so much weightier than the stack of papers in a folder carried out the door at the end of the day. We carry the weight of the interactions that happened, or did not happen, for that day as reflective practitioners.

I’ll say more about this, but first, let me tell you about my CrockPot.

Fifteen years ago, I had just arrived in Indiana, fresh out of the Navy. Instead of going home to northern Michigan, I opted to stay with a friend I met while in the Navy and I became a bartender in the bar his father had bought and co-managed with him. Upon arrival in Sullivan, Indiana (midway between Vincennes and Terre Haute), I stayed the next three days in that bar. My life over the next three months from September to December was an absolute hedonistic mess. Much of this period of my life is a blur. It wasn’t until I saw an ad requesting direct care givers for the developmentally disabled and the mentally retarded that I saw my life as being any different. I had traded a potential career and respect (I had an entire squadron that called me “Doc.” When this name was adopted by the patrons of Cutter’s Way, it lost all of its appeal) in the Navy for a life of pure absentia. I was having my Pinocchio moment, and as I look back on this time in my life, I am surprised that I could not see the slow process of morphing into a pure jackass.

One of my first purchases was an old CrockPot from the local hardware store. You would be surprised to find what you don’t have when you move from your childhood home to your first apartment or when you transition to civilian life after having three meals prepared each day be dedicated sailors in the galley. This CrockPot had dust on the box and was the only one on the shelf. It’s the “old-school” CrockPot with two settings and the brown crock. I used it to cook soup, spaghetti sauce, you name it. It was my attempt to create something that looked like home. I did this until I could no longer pretend that what I had was a home.

I was alone. I was depressed. I was, in essence, hopeless that there was anything beyond the twenty dollars I could make each night as a bartender.

I hated bar tending as I hated the notion that I was selling something to others that would unsettle their own lives. Many people who know me now cannot believe me when I say that if you knew me during this time of my life that you would not have liked me very much. Bent on self-destruction, I was not mindful of the collateral damage that might be done to others around me should things go badly.

Finally, on a day in early December, I went up the stairs of the house I was renting with my friend and found the 9mm pistol he kept in a Crown Royal bag. I had convinced myself that there was no real sense in staying in a place with no purpose and no direction. My relationship with family was strained, I wasn’t dating anybody, and I was not attending church. I put my military ID and newly obtained Indiana Driver’s License in my pocket for identification purposes. I sat on the floor in that upstairs room and mentally prepared to take my own life. Except for one thing.

My room was a mess. If the Navy had taught me one thing, it was how to keep a tidy barracks. I couldn’t leave with a pile of laundry and the mess that was my room downstairs. With a shaky hand, I placed Scott’s gun back into its bag and went back downstairs on rubbery legs. I sorted out the clothes in my room. Made neat little stacks. I made the bed. I thought to go to the local dollar store to pick up some items for the day. To this day, I cannot remember one thing I saw on that walk to the grocery though it would have been a good four blocks away. I cannot remember the cashier or whether or not he or she told me to have a nice day. I cannot remember anything I said to Scott that evening. I do remember that the next day I was no longer a bar tender. I opted instead to be a direct care giver in a facility where I met the most magical people I would ever have the pleasure of knowing (I shouldn’t have this, but I have a photo album with pictures of all of the people I took care of during the next two years of my life).

I met a very large woman with a four-year-old mind (Donna could have you stripped of your purse and have its contents on the floor before you even knew what was happening. She had one word in her vocabulary, “Sorry,” and she was sorry a lot) who could walk outside at any time of the day and find a handful of four-leaf clovers. For this reason, I always look for the magic in other people. You never know what they might be carrying. In the classroom, I look for that paragraph, that piece, where a student may need to say more. . .

I met a non-verbal woman with a cleft-palette and a neurological condition which caused her to pull her own hair out of her head. She had feet I can only describe as “Barbie-like.” Because she spent many years without appropriate shoes, her thighs were as hard as hickory. Because it pained her to walk long distances, sometimes I would carry her. She weighed but 70 pounds. Sometimes I would spin her to make her giggle. She is the subject of a poem called “Spinning Brenda.” For having met her, I always look for some way to lighten someone else’s load. This is why I carry your bag sometimes and insist on doing so. To get from here to there, sometimes we need a helping hand as much as we need our feet. In the classroom, I know that sometimes we need just a little extra time.

I met an autistic man, “Dink,” who was committed to the home after he attempted to burn down his neighbor’s barn. The only story from his childhood was when his sister, Sally, had kicked him “in the shoulders.” This brought great sadness to Sally, a grown woman who regretted that this was her brother’s only memory of her. Dink would follow this story with “She didn’t aim to.” Dink could recognize the car of every staff member and vendor who visited the facility. I was the only person that could get Dink into the facility van and then I could only take him to Wal-mart for Orange Soda and White Socks. It is a trust of the highest charge when a person selects another in a capacity of trust. In the classroom, I know that learners carry memories, good and bad, and they may have needs that requiring the help of a trusted lead learner.

Just one more. I met a woman, Brenda, who had to stay in a room by herself. The reason for this is that she would strip herself of her clothing. For the lack of a better description, Brenda was “wild, feral.” Her arms were covered in scars of her own making as well as those left by experimentation by mental health professionals in an attempt to understand her. Not to be overly-descriptive, but when Brenda would defecate, she would smear herself and the items in her room. For this reason, she never had sheets on her bed. Brenda would only hold hands if she knew she was going to the dining room and back. She “insisted” on having the other hand on a wall or railing. Any attempt to detour would be met with a stamping of feet and non-decipherable grunts and biting of her own hands. Brenda resisted any attempts at tenderness and caring for her was often met with injury of some small form. When Brenda fell ill with pneumonia and had to be admitted to the hospital, I was called to go to her bedside. Not knowing what to do for her, I grabbed a copy of Green Eggs and Ham and read it to her while holding her hand until she died. Brenda is the subject of an essay called “No One Cried Wolfe” that I share with students each year. In her final moment, I just swept her forehead with my hand. As lead learner in the classroom, I have to know there is a reason for a student who brings resistance in the room. Can I be patient enough to find the reasons why and be tender in asking and tender in my responses?

Oh, by the way, a student of Campbell and the Hero’s Journey might want to know the address of the house I were living in when I stood at the crossroads. I had lived there for three months. The address was 333 Graysville Street. You cannot make this kind of stuff up. Not the timing, not the clover clutching, not the spinning and laughing, not the orange sodas and white socks, and certainly not the power of a purposefully selected read aloud at just the right time.

It’s a weighty work. This teaching. This learning. I would wager to say that I learned more from the disenfranchised, the damaged, than I could ever learn from the best professional development offered. The weight I carry as lead learner includes thirty more residents from the football helmet-wearing Bobby, to the suicidal Mark, to the young wheelchair-bound young man whose daily mantra was “Come here; I can’t see you (he was often left alone to tend his younger brothers and sisters and was beaten if they got into trouble while in his care).”

It’s weighty work to not be thankful for the things I have learned and the things I have become in the past fifteen years. It would be even weightier if I didn’t pull that CrockPot out and cook something inside of it this year. Anniversaries are important. What we do is so important. What you do is so important. What I do is so important.

It’s a weighty work we do.

I am thankful for each and every student I have had the pleasure of leading in the past seven years. I am thankful for the colleagues I get to work with and the ones I am getting to know. You might note that I believe in messy productivity over idle tidiness. I am thankful for the family I would not have known if it weren’t for a pile of dirty laundry.

It’s something I learned some years ago. About this time.

Oh, and that CrockPot? As this post just crossed 2000 words, I must tend to it. It is full of my eight-year-old Maddie’s favorite, Chicken and Dumplings. Have a blessed holiday season, each and every one of you. I am thankful for you.