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minnesota writing project
center for writing
mwp.umn.edu
center for writing
mwp.umn.edu
Paul Glembocki
©2019
Nerves
With a heart making me aware of its pumping and quick breathes, I walk into Mrs. Bonesho’s fourth-floor classroom after starting in the basement about three minutes ago. I’m a senior who should take it slow and stroll in just as the bell rings, but that would be a risk. The smallest hint of perspiration hits my armpits after I drop my overloaded backpack down on the dark carpet and happily slide into my desk. It’s the last period of the day, the one where you just want it to be chill, but that’s not how it works in this room. I peek at Mrs. Bonesho at her desk completely focused on a conversation with a student.
Her gaze has always been different. She has deep brown eyes, and they hold you where you are until she decides the conversation is ready to end. You can feel her joy, fear, happiness, and focus just from the way her skin creases differently around her eyes. Her blonde, curly hair only goes down to the end of her neck while the rest of it bends up to the sky above her head. She wears black in her short heels, dress pants, and undershirt. Her sweater is also black except for a small gem pattern on both sides of the buttons. Her eyes finish the conversation with the student, and she rises as the bell rings.
This is when the nerves kick in. Now, her gaze focuses on the room. The walls that don’t have whiteboards are covered with large prints of Renaissance art in golden frames. She has a life-size knight’s suit of armor and a life-size cut-out of John F. Kennedy at the back of the room along with other materials spread around. The desks sit diagonally in a large rectangle of the room, so she can use two sets of whiteboards for her large-printed, cursive notes she will share about whatever topic we will cover. The five columns of desks go six desks back. I have never seen students sit up in class more than in here.
It is go time. She raises her voice with a mix of happiness and focus and asks, “Alright turkeys, where did we leave off yesterday?”
A sea of hands rises ready to answer the softball question. She has an antsy quality to her. She almost dances around on her toes while looking at us and deciding who will lead off the class. She chooses a junior pining for attention.
“You said we were going to start talking about Rasputin today.”
She smiles in delight and questions, for Mrs. Bonesho always had another question.
“Anyone know who Rasputin was?” This time she chooses a senior, one who has courage and sees an opportunty.
“I’ve heard he was a sexual Hercules.” The class bursts in laughter and Mrs. Bonesho
moves closer to him building the anticipation of her response. We strike our smiles into silence when her mouth moves to talk and her gaze focuses in.
“Who told ya that?”
“One of my friends in AP Euro.” The senior must feel just a touch of nervousness.
“I can probably guess who that was, but he’s right. He was also a bastard who would
not die.” She turns briskly, moves to the whiteboard, and grabs her black marker. She turns around and the question barrage begins.
“Who was the Russian Tsar in 1916?” The sea of hands rose again, and it continued for the better part of forty minutes. We were all hooked. It didn’t matter what we were dealing with or that it was the mid-afternoon, Mrs. Bonesho made us feel alive, and she made us think.
But the conversations were not always a historical investigation. She was one of the few teachers in the school who would go there, who would drop history to talk about the moments of now. She wasn’t stuck to a schedule; she modeled responsiveness and presence in the world around us.
I don’t remember where we were in our notes, but I do remember near the end of my senior year in 2012 when Trayvon Martin was murdered by George Zimmerman. The day didn’t start normally; instead of her jovial nature, she was somber. She felt a pain I and most of the other students didn’t understand at the time, so we talked about it. We talked about how a kid our age ended up dead.
“Who killed Trayvon Martin?” she asked. A smaller amount of hands went up than normal.
“It was George… Zimmerman!” a student responded, feeling proud that he followed the news like she’s talked about.
“What happened?” she continued asking. An even smaller amount of hands went up, but Mrs. Bonesho picked a new voice.
“Zimmerman was part of the neighborhood watch, and he ended up shooting him because he looked suspicious.”
“What made him look suspicious?”
The student continued, “I think he was wearing a hoodie or something.”
“Good, good.” She looked down and moved a bit over from her spot pausing to think about where to go next -- if it was time to dive in. She found a new spot, stopped, and changed her gaze. She had decided to go for it, and we could feel it coming, though we were still unprepared.
“Zimmerman claimed to be fearful. Why was he scared of Trayvon Martin?”
The class went silent. There wasn’t a single hand in the air. She gave us some time to think, but still, no one had the courage to answer. Awkward silences like these were even more awkward in her room because conversation was her mode of teaching. These moments were also more powerful. She continued to gaze at us knowing she hit a question we hadn’t spent enough time thinking about in our young lives. She dug into her stance and leaned toward us.
“Come on, what are you afraid of?” she asked in a low whisper to the whole class. Her tone had both challenge and tenderness, and it was a double-edged question. She was asking about the fear to be wrong, but she was also asking about racism. I was afraid of both, and I wasn’t alone in that. These were the moments that opened up my world, that popped my privileged bubble, that made me be more conscious of the society I lived in. I encountered fear and rarely was I the one to raise my hand in these moments with Mrs. Bonesho, but I still grew and continue to grow from them.
⧫
Like many other people at the onset of pursuing a career in education, I asked myself about the teachers who had the greatest impact in making me want to join the field myself. All teachers pick and choose different parts of educators that they want to emulate, and Mrs. Bonesho was the teacher I wanted to emulate the most. In being a shy, introverted student, I always wondered about nerves. I wondered how people felt nervous, if they experienced the same spine-tingling, momentary panic I felt in moments with the spotlight on me. And I wondered if feeling these kinds of nerves disqualified me from teaching, for I knew they would never fully go away.
Luckily, it doesn’t. I always thought Mrs. Bonesho’s antsiness was passion and excitement, but it was more than that. It was nerves too. Mrs. Bonesho told my friend once that she felt nervous before every class. If that was true, I knew I could be a teacher. If she felt nervous that often, I could too. It gave me a new comfort, though the move into actual teaching made comfort brief.
I will always remember the first day of student teaching, the lack of sleep, the arriving way too early to prepare and re-prepare for the day, the conscious choice to wear clothes that could hide sweat. I also remember looking out into the empty room that morning picturing all the bodies that would move through throughout the day. I pictured the smiles and the thoughts just as much as my fears. The nerves were there, and they were strong, but I knew I would get through it and grow just like I did back in Mrs. Bonesho’s.
There will always be the momentary nervousness before starting a day or between classes, for teachers always have to deal with extreme uncertainty of what is to come and how needs will be different that day. But the nerves have entered other aspects of teaching for me. I now know the nervousness about meeting with other teachers. I now know the nervousness that comes with parent-teacher conferences, and I now know the feeling Mrs. Bonesho had before she asked about the racism surrounding Trayvon Martin. I’ve felt it when I asked about Charlottesville, when I’ve asked about mass shootings and gun control, when I’ve asked about gender. I have chosen a job where I am nervous every single day, and that is good. It is better to feel the nerves than to flow with ignorance. The nerves mean I care, so I will embrace it.
