My Babies

Even during my first year of teaching I called my students my babies. It always came up casually, like when informing Josh that I needed to buy Halloween treats or new dry erase markers for my babies. I’ve never thought all that much about what I call my students, but I do believe that nicknames can be rooted in our true feelings about a person.

The word my is in fact very indicative of the way that I feel about the group of 25 nose-picking hellions that I am assigned every year. I can’t be their family, but I can be a safe and caring adult in their lives, and for the 35 hours a week that they spend with me, they are my responsibility. As Saint-Exupery so eloquently explained, when we care for someone and make that person our responsibility, he or she tames us. Those children are not my job, they become a part of who I am, and I will always see them as mine. When other teachers make comments about my students—good or bad—I almost always tense up. How could they understand the needs, successes, and shortcomings of my students? Has that teacher listened to every wiggly-tooth story, sharpened 4,000 prize box pencils, or put Band-aids on the knees of my students? Does that teacher know what my students have to deal with in their homes or how much they’ve grown since I met them? And when my babies move on to second grade, it is months before I stop feeling jealous of their new teachers, the grown-ups who have supplanted me as their “favrit teechr,” the new receiver of hugs and smiles, the person who now gets to celebrate their successes.

The other word, babies, can seem demeaning, even if I do work with first graders, and I know that people could interpret it to be a desire to have babies of my own. I think, however, that it is more reflective of the way that I care for them. Don’t get me wrong. Not one of the students in my room is coddled. I dismiss complaints of headaches and paper cuts more easily than I ever thought I could. Stomach aches are usually cured after I cavalierly suggest a trip to the bathroom or a drink of water. But I do care for the students in my classroom, and it is easier to understand their behavior when I consider that, in many ways, they are still babies. It is much easier to forgive a first grader who tells another first grader that they look like a freak when you consider that their ability to appropriately manage their emotions is still developing. It is easier to be patient with a child who cries because they miss their mom when you realize that they are, still, quite young. And when does a child ever seem more like a baby in need of care than when they are proud of their accomplishments and you realize that—despite your honest wishes—they won’t remain your baby forever?