Goodbye

4th year Big House crew and damn was it a good bunch

After just saying goodbye to a roommate and feeling my eyes get soft it's finally time to write this.  I've wanted to write about goodbyes since I last left The States two months ago.  Why are they so damn weird?  They're so forced, unnatural and just odd.

With your best friends it feels like a checkbox.  You know you'll see them again but if you don't do it before leaving the country, well, you'd be kind of a jerk.  I recall a particular one with my friend Josh (yep, best friends since the third grade and we share the same name.  We often just go by our last names.)

Keefe:  Well, you take care bud.
Pearl:  Yep, you too man.  And keep in touch.
Keefe:  Will do man, I'll see you around.
Pearl:  Yeah man, I'll see you soon.

I've known the guy for 25+ years and this is what we say.  Keefe, if you're reading this I'm not dogging on you, rather just pointing out the absurdity of it all.  But maybe that's why goodbyes are so odd, there's no such thing as a good one.  Maybe I need to walk into the next one and say, "I'm gonna muck this up.  Later friend."  With your friends it's a formality that simply leaves things feeling informal.

Then there's the goodbyes you're glad you didn't say.  There's a garden that seemed bare but it turns out the soil needed tilling in a new way.  Things seemed broken, old, and used up but they were only egg shells and coffee grounds and now they're being remixed to fuel something new and you're happy to watch the beauty grow again.

Then there's the ones you definitely should say.  The one time I attended therapy in my life I'll never forget something she said in the first session.  The gist of it was if you're experiencing negative notions more often than you are positive feelings, something needs to change.  So simple and so useful.  This week I walked away from a good paying job with bonuses and tons of vacation time.  However, it was a place I felt didn't value education and didn't value the students.  Being a teacher can be a fairly thankless job sometimes and being a part of privatized education often feels like you're a token put in a place to help the school make as much money as possible  This school, however, pushed it a bit further with its lackadaisical attitude toward setting goals and letting eager little minds go without an environment in which they could flourish.  I'd had enough and on Friday I said goodbye.

I'm not leaving Chanthaburi though, so what I didn't plan for was the goodbyes to all my students.  I reverted to the awkward ones and told a lot of my little ones, "this is not goodbye, it's only see you later."  Ugh, I felt like such a cliche tool but I also couldn't stand the feeling that I was in some way abandoning them.  And of course these little heart-breakers didn't let me go without moistening my eyes and hugging me tight.

A girl in my P5 class when I told her I would always be her teacher, "you sure will, and I will always remember you as my teacher."

A note from another read, "...when Dad left I felt more connected to you."

Being a teacher doesn't mean grading tests and finishing grades.  You're a parent, you're a motivator, you're a counselor, you're a teddy bear to squeeze, and you're a friend simply trying to pave an easier path for them later.  These were goodbyes I was not ready for and dry eyes will take a few days.  I taught seven separate classes this year and I know all their names and quirky little personalities.  I am not bragging, rather I'm honored they opened up their classrooms to this little math nerd of teacher.  We "y=mx+b"-ed, we pythagorized the shit out of some triangles, and we "ho-dhi minus hi-dho all over hoho"-ed  (thanks Mr. Roney, still haven't forgot that one and now you've infected another generation.) 

Much love to my students these past two years.

Sincerely,

Mr. / Teacher  Josh

Notables

I am incredibly fortunate, and on Friday I walked out of one school and signed a contract with another.  I am so excited to be working with more of my friends in what seems to be a great environment.  Get ready new school, I'm going to math the heck out of you guys too.