new mother…new urgency

2.09.12 By Kati Delahanty

On September 19, 2011, I became a mother. I also became a different teacher.

Back in 2005 when I walked into the classroom for the first time as a BTR resident and a woman brand new to teaching, I loved the students instantly. Loving them is the easiest part of the job.  Liking them can be a challenge, and understanding them often feels impossible, but the loving comes naturally. I have always vowed to respect them and to remember that they are people before they are students.

And I remember (during BTR and every year since) hearing from my colleagues who are moms and dads about how parenthood drives, colors, and impacts their approaches in the classroom.  That always made sense to me. Of course each teacher brings her experience into the work; that’s what makes teachers so valuable—each one offers unique insight and perspective.  But I didn’t realize, then, how profoundly becoming a mother would shift my thinking about my students. I didn’t think I could love them more.

I’m not sure that I do love them more, but I do, now, love them differently. I can’t help but look at these big sixteen-, seventeen-, and eighteen-year-olds and wonder what they looked like the moment they were born. Did they cry right away like my daughter did? Did they find their thumbs or break out of their swaddles? Did they startle easily?  Ultimately, I can’t look at them and not realize that they each were—they each are—someone’s baby. They are grown… and smart… and fresh… and can do things with a computer I can’t even begin to understand, but to someone, they are still that innocent and fragile newborn. And so even when—especially when—I feel frustrated by their teenager tricks (you know, the things they do that make them both inexplicably irritating AND brilliant?), I now remember that they are each still someone’s baby and I need to get over my frustration and, let’s be honest, myself.

I’ve read plenty of books about teaching other people’s children. And, again, I didn’t used to worry about what that means because I love the young people I work with. But understanding now in a real way that my daughter will one day spend all day with teachers, I feel a renewed and slightly more fierce sense of urgency around improving and being a better teacher.

I had this moment when I was sitting outside Mass General in the wheelchair with my perfect and brand-new daughter in my arms, waiting for my husband to pull the car around. I looked up at the giant crane and bulldozer and all of the other huge pieces of equipment involved in MGH’s remodel, and I honestly thought that I was well within my rights to wheel myself over to the construction site and ask them to hold off on their massive project until we were in our car headed home because my daughter just doesn’t like noise. And when people walked by and wanted to look at her, I had to actually stop myself from jumping on top of her to protect her from every germ, negative thought, or drop of spit that might contaminate her air. And while I realize hormones might have had something to do with these urges, I’m realizing more and more every day that the desire to make life as good as possible for my daughter will never lessen or go away. And I hope, with everything in me, that her future teachers want to make life wonderful for her too. That doesn’t mean that I want her teachers to shelter, coddle, or keep her from experiencing life’s hard and hurtful lessons or that I expect them to be perfect. But I want to trust that they are going to remember that she’s a full person whose feelings and life go on after their work day is done. 

So my charge—now that I’m back from maternity leave—is to make life and learning and literature as meaningful and pleasant as possible for all of the sons and daughters in my classroom because I know there are moms and dads and aunts and uncles and other important people out there who want that for them. And because they deserve it.