The Lives of Teachers
“While this may not be the case for all adults in our community, I’d like to assume that many of the teachers didn’t always have the personality they have now. Some are growing into their voices and learning to be confident even as adults. Others may have always had that confidence and dash of jazz hands that allowed them to be popular or have a heavy-hitting influence compared to their classmates back in high school.”
As ignorant as this sounds, many teenagers including myself find it hard to believe that most of our teachers have a life outside of teaching. As in, they don’t just go to work, teach, give, or grade work and go home to plan how they’ll do the same thing in a different order for the next day. They have, like, actual lives, hobbies, friends and partners, interests and attend real events. Hell, I might even go out on a limb and say they go to parties every now and then, as well.
Given that my time at CSH is coming to a close, I decided to investigate the impact of highschool on adulthood with the adults in our school. To do this, I had to learn about each teacher’s life as a teen and what kind of person they were within their high school environment. Why? Because I find myself wanting to answer this question to the fullest extent: Does high school really impact adulthood the way teenagers think it does? If so, how do we choose the path that leads to long term success?
To start off my research, I tasked myself with getting to know some of the staff beyond schoolwork. Overall, I wanted to know the person they were before Comp Sci High. I particularly wanted to observe the high school experience of staff members to compare it to where they are now. Some questions I have going into this experiment were:
Do adults in our community create a persona they wish they possessed in high school?
For the person they are now, do they wish to have had someone like that during their high school experience?
A trip down memory lane and a few questions about their past would help me understand why some of the staff are the way they are, and why they surround themselves with specific people, interests and beliefs — most importantly, it would help me answer my questions.
Studies show that with the way our brains are developed, adults tend to mold themselves based on their adolescent memories. With high school being the most recent adolescent memory for adults, I wanted to ask about their high school experience and connect it back to their current role as well as the person they are today. With that fact I began to ask staff things like who they were in high school, what kind of friends they had, things of that nature. Although I could’ve asked any CSH staff member these questions, I wanted to hear from heavily under-appreciated staff, the behind the scene workers who work with students to ensure that they can be their best selves both emotionally, mentally and physically. So I interviewed the social work team. Why? Because the phrase be the change you want to see inspired this entire article.
While this may not be the case for all adults in our community, I’d like to assume that many of the teachers didn’t always have the personality they have now. Some are growing into their voices and learning to be confident even as adults. Others may have always had that confidence and dash of jazz hands that allowed them to be popular or have a heavy-hitting influence compared to their classmates back in high school. So I began my research. I decided it’d be best to input the answer of someone who represented the quiet kid archetype so that I could compare their growth to who they are now to see if high school really impacted adulthood. Director Gonzalez and Ms. Samel would be the best guinea piggies to answer my question.
DG’s told me that she “struggle(d) to put myself out there, but not because of others or how I am received, I struggled because of my own discomfort with vulnerability.”
Ms. Samel also responded with: “Socially, high school was a hard time for me. I went through a few different groups of friends but did not feel fully comfortable with any of them, and I always wound up getting frozen out, distancing myself, or both. I felt supported academically by my teachers, but I did not feel like I could talk to them about my social struggles or the loneliness I felt. I probably would have benefited from having an adult I could have talked to about it, though it honestly did not even occur to me at the time to seek out that support.”
Psychologists argue that low status and low like ability equate to struggles, but the teenagers who are total social outcasts enter adulthood with a shaky foundation. Based on the responses and what I’m observing today, this argument can be proven false. While I expected these answers from both DG and Ms. Samel, it is not to say that they display the HS version of themselves. DG is a leader in our community, which is a role that requires confidence, the ability to accept when you’re wrong, public speaking, and the ability to work with others. And, as for Ms. Samel, she displays the support that should’ve been offered to her as a teen, which shows immense growth both emotionally and mentally. To be able to be a support system for teens demonstrates reliability and comfort — something that neither DG nor Ms. Samel felt in high school.
On the contrary, The popular kids. Another archetype that I wondered which of the staff members in CSH had fit into. I already had a few people in mind like Coach Johnson, Ms. Diaz, Ms. Elle, Mr. O’Neal, and many others. In my survey I asked staff how popular they were and how they’d rate their experience. Ms. Elle and Mr. O’Neal to no surprise were in fact popular. But O’Neal’s response was definitely something that I didn’t expect, and will actually segue into the huge question I had initially proposed: Does high school really impact adulthood the way teenagers think it does? If so, how do we choose the path that leads to long term success?
Here is what Mr. O’Neal told me:
The people I surrounded myself with in high school weren't the friends I needed. Did we have fun? Yes. Do I have life long memories and life changing experiences with these people? Yes. Were they the most positive, motivated or supportive group of people? Absolutely not. My current friends are the complete opposite of the people that I spent my time with in my high school days. As an adult I choose to only associate with people that push me to become my better self and vice versa. Most importantly I only chose to associate myself with people who come from similar walks of life such as mine. I do this not because I feel I can't engage with people different from me, but as a black man it's mentally and emotionally tiring to regularly explain your actions/ideology in spaces.
O’Neal’s response is honestly quite refreshing. He shares how not only did he not make the best choices as most teengers do but he then connects it to how it affects him as both a black man and an adult. His response is the story of many teens here at Comp Sci High and will continue to be for most. Studies show that minority groups, particularly Black and Hispanic students, are more likely to make poor decisions, especially as adolescents which impacts them in the long run. But my main purpose with this article is to show that we are not the decisions we make in high school, and it will always be a choice for us to (not) change. The responses from the social work team, DG, and O’Neal can for sure represent this.
So for the grand question: Does highschool really impact adulthood the way teenagers think it does? If so, how do we choose the path that leads to long term success?
Based on the responses and commentary, you would most likely either answer no, or be on the fence because there is some truth to people choosing yes. But I don't think I myself will be able to answer this until I’ve grown and become a new person outside of my highschool identity. An adult will always tell you yes to help you make the right decisions, and other adults will tell you no and that our choices don’t always dictate our future.
I can, however, answer the second part of this article’s grand question. Success looks different for everyone else. It doesn’t have to be a six=figure lifestyle and having the most nice and expensive everything. Go down the path that you think can make you happy, not what your parents would think or your friends or even a teacher.
Writing this, I learned a lot about the journey that some of our staff took to become who they are today. Who they are today isn’t their final form as they’ll continue to grow and make mistakes the same way they did in high school and the same way we do every single day. They’re learning as they’re teaching the same way we’re learning as we continue living. Remember how I (I, as in almost every single teenager) thought that teachers don’t do much outside of their work. I can in fact confirm that teachers are not robots and they don’t just shut down once they leave the building. They have lives, stories to tell, mistakes to make, and children to teach.