What It Is to Be a Teacher
by @caitlyn-c-warnberg
"What dew drops is, Miss W?"
Where do I start?
What dew drops is?
Should I address the syntactic structure of that question?
Should I even bother to correct the grammar here? Will it matter?
Or will this student roll their eyes because they've heard it all before?
They know how to speak properly. They simply choose not to.
Or that, at least, is the opinion of many of my contemporaries.
I don't know how I feel. I can't form an opinion about anything.
I'm too young.
Not much older than the 18-year-old squeezing into that tiny desk asking
What dew drops is?
Should I go into a scientific explanation about
how the heating and the cooling of the earth,
each rising and setting of the sun,
affects condensation?
I'm not even exactly sure how it works.
I apparently know more than this kid.
What dew drops is?
Have they ever been outside?
Have they been up early in the morning or late into the night?
Of course they have. This is high school.
There is no sleep.
When I was in high school, I woke up before dawn and worked late into the night.
I knew what dew was because it dampened my pant legs
as I walked to my car in the morning and at night.
What dew drops is?
Is this a real question?
Is this really what one addresses in a 12th grade English class?
Shouldn't I be sharing the true meaning of literature?
Or some life-altering insight into a canonical work?
No. I teach English at a high school.
And that means I answer questions like
"What dew drops is?"
And I love it.