Safe Person

It feels... unfair. Somehow. Even though I knew from the start this might happen. Even though at times I didn't want to stay. But now as it's settled... now as it's done... it feels unfair.
The kids I got in grade 9 are in their last year. The grades they settle now is what will get them through to upper secondary. They've changed teachers every term for a year and a half. They were sceptical as hell when I got them, and still, I pushed through to them. Still, I find that I've made a difference. And I never thought that I would.
Getting to know this today is four days away from the end of the term. There's barely any time left to tell my kids the bad news and let them digest. And I can't even stay around to tell the new teacher all she'll need to know to get by, because they've scheduled her to start in the beginning of the spring term, and by then fellas, I'll be long gone.
It's not my place to do, but I am entitled to think what I want, and it's almost as if I hate the poor sucker coming in to replace me. Cause I'm lucky, in a weird way. I wanted to stay. And they wouldn't let me. I will get all the lovely, tearfilled goodbyes and everyone that I bonded with will be sad to see me go. The principal and the office will get the anger and the pissed off kids on their tail. I don't envy them.
See... I thought I was invisible. Thought that no one knew what I did for this school. That no one saw if I breathed or not. That no one noticed if I called in sick.
But I wasn't.
Invisible was in my own mind.
It was what I conjured on myself.
A feeling, of emptiness, of apathy, of loss, that had nothing to do with work, but that had all to do with me.
I gotten close to them by now. They tell me things like, they never want to have another teacher. That I've made the subjects fun. That I'm the reason they come there. Sure not all of them say this. But many enough.
Just this morning I said things about how we would aim higher in spring, how we'd do things differently, how we'd improve.
And the same afternoon... I have four days left to work, and then I'm unemployed, and a drop out student.
It feels unfair.
Not only to me.
Not only because I have so much left to give. So much left to teach.
But to the kids.
Take away their teacher. Someone they come and cry to, someone they confide in. Someone they can talk to about anything. Take away their safe person. Someone who sees them as what they really are, people, individuals. Not a bunch of kids. Not a bunch of faces. I see them. Them.
And now I won't be able to stay, because I don't have a shiny paper with a stamp on it saying 'Certificate Teacher'.
Fearing to be jobless, school-less, and hopeless,
but most of all incredibly angry and sad, says
The Poet in the Quite Given Up Jar