The Jilting of Professor Creel

You may or may not remember Katherine Anne Porter's "The Jilting of Granny Weatherall" and its final commentary on expectations, but let's just say my tale here reveals how my expectations of students' lives have been affected by teaching in the two-year college.

In the last weeks of this recent semester, one of my better students in an online class went MIA. He/she missed a deadline for a major assignment, didn't respond to email or discussion postings on the course website about missing the deadline, then missed the next assignment, all within an 8 day period. With my emails and discussions unanswered, I searched the student's online information for a phone number or alternate email address.

Finding an alternate email, I began to compose a message, and as I composed I imagined that I was in fact writing this email to a family member of the student who would open the email at some future date because the student had been hospitalized or had even died. Yes, honestly, that is what I thought.

Now, before you assume that I am a naturally morbid individual and am prone to extremes, consider this: in one semester I have lost students to the death of a girlfriend/baby's momma, a debilitating car accident, a hospitalized mother who speaks no English, and a miscarriage. I only recently overheard-- to my entertainment I must admit-- a rookie colleague dealing with the "I missed the test because I was locked up" treatment for the first time, which almost everyone in our department has heard at least once. And it is always true.

Why then would my mind not stray to death, dismemberment, and trauma when a good student suddenly disappears? This has become part of my reality as a teacher in an urban two-year college. I won't say it's an uplifting reality. It tugs at, and sometimes mauls, the generally hopeful demeanor that I bring to my work-- that I think all good teachers bring to their work. But it does ground me and remind me that school is one small, fragile part of my students' lives. It puts me in my place, which is not at the top. It reminds me of the multiple ways that I am tied to these people-- not just intellectually, but emotionally as well.

My story ends with an uplift of those emotions, a renewal of my hope. I crafted my email message tenderly for the imagined family member, but within minutes of receiving my message the student called on the phone. All was well, a mere technical glitch and a missed cue on the discussion board. Here were the assignments popping into my inbox; here was the student back from the dead, prison, or the hospital. Move along folks, nothing to see here.

I never told the student about his/her brush with death. It's probably best to keep that to myself.