One aspect of being a teacher that gives me equal parts joy, wonder, and frustration is the connection I get to have with my students. By the time a person reaches highschool, they have often learned many things — among which is this: Not everyone can be trusted with your heart.

You desire, aim, wish for something. You share it with people. Some hold space for you — they listen, smile, and give you a hug. Not everyone does, though – some twist, betray, or prostitute the idea for laughs.

Thus, you learn to hide your dreams under bedcovers, fake online accounts, and affected indifference. You get burned by the comments and questions of well-meaning people asking after your passion project in that sticky tone of voice that does not exactly care for or want your betterment yet pretends to. You build additional backrooms and tunnels in your life and mind so that certain ideas can live, even if only in darkness.

A dream. A mission. A personal statement.

Those are the things I get to know of the young men and women I teach — things that their loved ones are oblivious to. (I leave alone for now the harder questions of why this is and whether it should be so.) Sometimes these are things deliberately hidden from their parents. Sometimes these are memories too dangerous to share to those who have a say in the lives they live. Sometimes these are random thoughts just a little too crazy to tell your friends and family, but that you’d like onenother huan being to know.

Being a teacher places me in a peculiar position in a student’s life. There is an assumed maturity or wisdom I hold and offer; I am a third-party to everything else in their lives — a paid actor if you wish — and thus have more of an objective perspective than their loved ones do; there is the authority and professionalism that provides a foundation for openness and vulnerability rarely appreciated or present in other relational dynamics. (Perhaps the clergy.)

At least, such conclusions my observations and experiences have led me to so far. I hold more secrets than I feel I have the right to. Sometimes I become the middleman between child and parent. More often I get a glimpse of how the teen views themselves — something precious and rarely shared, especially in their season of life.

And I hold them gently, treasuring, these tiny tendrils of hope that someone a little more lived would understand or appreciate or advise them somehow, and perhaps choose to warm themselves by the fire the student is themselves quite scared of yet feels compelled to steward.

It is an honor to teach. May I be worthy of doing so.