"Homecoming"

Say what you will about Kanye West, but his Graduation album is, as the kids say, straight fire. The album dropped September 11, 2007, mere days into my senior year of high school. These songs accompanied me during my first solo drives in my 2001 Toyota Corolla, freshly licensed and ready to take on the world.

I find myself playing back this album two times a year: both at the beginning and the end of each school year. So, it seemed fitting that I play this record on my way to work today knowing full well that I would be visiting my hometown high school for a highly anticipated PD session.

Being the first day of school for teachers, I was up before the crack of dawn filled with anticipation and anxious to begin my fifth year at Palmyra High School. Leaving the house as the sun was beginning to rise, I tuned Spotify to Kanye West and began listening to "Good Morning". I rolled up to my building, iced tea in hand, excited to take on the new day.

Our first day was filled with the rigmarole that often accompanies back to school for teachers. There were colleagues to catch up with, mail to sort, documents to review, and bagels to eat. Soon enough all of our district staff piled onto yellow buses and headed to our professional development destination: Cinnaminson High School; or, as I call it, my old high school.

Entering the campus brought back a flood of memories. Although the building of my former high school no longer looks like I remember, the feelings of nostalgia were all the same. I walked up to the school's auditorium, since remodeled, both excited and nervous to catch of glimpse of many of my former teachers.

Don't get me wrong, I have the best high school memories and truly believe that I am one of the few lucky ones who can look back on that time in my life with fondness. However, I should mention that, in high school, I was not a stellar student.

In fact, I wasn't even a "good" student. Sure, I was respectful and quiet and attended all of my moderate and advanced classes (except one double lab period, once, and I paid dearly for it), but I was apathetic to a fault. High school Devon, ironically enough, didn't see the "point" of being in high school. Despite my natural intelligence, I was super lazy and unmotivated throughout the majority of my day. If anything, my natural intelligence was the only thing that helped me pass high school without being constantly grounded by my parents, who, I should mention, both work in the education field, both as a former administrator and support staff specialist. The only courses I truly cared about were foreign language (Spanish and French) and my English courses - go figure, says the English teacher.

Was I a pain to some of my teachers? Probably, especially my AP history teacher who was clearly (and for good reason) annoyed by my apathy. However, being on the other side of the fence, I wonder what my former teachers thought of me during that time. Did they think I was lazy? Disaffected? A loser? Incapable? Or was that just what I thought of me?

"Be the adult you needed when you were younger" is a meme that I've seen a lot recently. I hear this sentiment and then think back on my time in high school. And then I think about what I do now. I want to preface this by saying that I have the utmost respect and admiration for every teacher I had the pleasure of learning from during my time in high school, and in no way do I attribute my academic apathy as anyone else's fault but my own. However, I feel that there is a cosmic reason as to why I have chosen teaching as my career path, and I feel that my struggling high school self is the reason why.

In my own classroom, as in any, I encounter many different types of students on a daily basis. They're all my favorite, obviously, because teachers can never pick a favorite (right?). That being said, I don't think it's a coincidence that I am oftentimes drawn to making the closest and strongest connections to those students who are often viewed as apathetic, struggling, rough around the edges, or disaffected - the students that are often the topic of conversation in the teacher's lounge, to say the least. Typically, these are the kids that I maintain the tightest bonds with even after their time in my classroom has come to an end.

Students who struggle to become motivated, or who have a predilection for confrontation, or who like to disrupt their peers, are my people. I get them, and I think they know that. As a high school student I didn't want to fail, but I didn't really care enough more than I had to (meaning, more than I had to in order to not be grounded). It's when I see this quality in my students that I feel obligated find ways to motivate them to some measure of success, even if that success simply means completing a project or reading a chapter of a book. It isn't always easy, but there's nothing more frustrating than seeing wasted potential; I'm sure my former teachers would agree.