Last Days

“Ms. Singh, wait look at this. Look. No! Ms. Singh! Look!”

I laugh and pause mid-staple-removal and watch a student show me the new choreography he learned last week. 

The last days of school—that liminal time after finals and before school officially ends—is always dancing and cleaning and sadness and sweetness. It’s enjoying the warmth that was cultivated over the school year. It’s reflecting on the joy that we shared as a group. It’s always like this, and I couldn’t be more grateful.

At the end of my first year teaching, we cleaned and made drawings and danced to Beyonce’s recently released self-titled album.

Today it’s Shawn Mendez. It’s Khalid. It’s BTS. It’s sliding around on rolling chairs.

It’s milk tea and mango crepe cakes, just like last year in San Francisco. It’s freestyling to a ukulele while watching your language because Ms. Singh doesn’t like cussing. It’s sweet letters and reassurances that we’ll stay in touch. It’s Vans Old Skool instead of Nike Roshe One.

I wasn’t sure what my relationships with students would feel like this year, because the strategies I use for relationship building are embedded in being a classroom teacher. This year I don’t have a classroom. And, at the same time, I have hundreds of classrooms.

I knew it meant I had to be visible, I had to sign up to advise clubs, I had to do what I know I know how to do well. And it worked. This year feels the same in all the important ways.

This year is also hard in unexpected ways.

Shifting enrollment in the district meant that teachers were displaced (i.e. transferred to schools with increasing enrollment, to balance class sizes and make sure no classroom was needlessly burdened) and my school took a particularly large hit. Over 15 teachers were displaced, including two-fifths of my role. I was able to get a full-time position in the same role at a school I know will be a great fit, and for that I’m grateful.

But right now, I’m grateful for our cover band that is performing hits from the Disney channel original film: High School Musical 2, Sharpay's Revenge. Gotta go, my solo for “Bet on It” is starting soon.

Growing and Changing Alongside San Francisco

“Alright folks you’ll need to make friends, introduce yourselves, and move towards the back of the bus!” the driver yells. I’m holding the black travel bag I got from Cal Academy between my feet. My green backpack still has a Golden Gate National Parks patch from when I used to live there.

I’m on the 28, a bus I rode every school day, twice a day, for two years. When I moved to Seattle last summer, I wondered why Seattle's buses had fancy cushioned seats. The seats on San Francisco buses are always hard plastic. Now, though, the seats in the front of the 28 have been replaced with flimsier pieces of plastic. This is not the bus I remember. But the need to press against strangers to let everyone on the bus is no different.

“Muh-rin. No MUH-rin. Yeah. I’ll take you there next week, you’ll love it,” a student from SF State says into his phone, “you’ve gotta get out of bed! Class starts in an hour!”

I’m visiting San Francisco during my spring break, which doesn’t align with their spring break, so daytime will be a lot of solo-exploring. I’m looking forward to it. I feel pulled towards my old neighborhood first, one of many places where I love walking alone. 

There are new signs on the lampposts documenting pedestrian deaths. The most recent one is on 20th and California, from February of this year. I walk to Bazaar Café to eat breakfast, hoping they still have the granola bowls I love. They don't. The café has new owners now, and the menu has drastically changed. They focus on music instead of art now. The brass instruments that used to hang from the windows are gone. The walls full of art are gone. The community bulletin board is gone. The wifi password is an incoherent set of numbers and letters from someone who just set up their first router. The one-room bathroom no longer has “lavatory” signs in a plethora of languages collected over the years, now it has one sign that says “whatever” under two dinosaurs. But the painted sign on the glass is still there. The bookshelf that used to hold books on loan from Green Apple is now lined with CDs and a sign that says "blast from the past: free! free! to a good home :)" I sift through them and grab copies of Bazaar Café’s Music Stew volumes 1 and 2, from 2000 and 2004 respectively. Maybe Bazaar is just returning to its roots. Maybe its focus on art and eclecticism was a departure from the norm.

My favorite dinosaur that sat on this ledge has been replaced? By a sibling?? 

Here's what it looked like two years ago:

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Mood.

A post shared by Grishma Singh (@grishmapolitan) on Feb 25, 2017 at 5:05pm PST

I meander my way past Sutro, past the bakeries I always thought I would go to but never did (and still won’t today, anyway), and remember again that this city forged me into my fearless self. It is where I made some of the hardest decisions of my life, it is where I learned how much I love my career, it is a laundromat full of heartbreak and several cafés that are the opposite of heartbreak. It is where I dragged Connor up a hill, running, so I could show him my favorite sunset before the fog rolled in. It's where we realized we loved each other, on our 5th date.

You can’t love a city if you don’t have memories buried there. I know that. I’ve only been back for two hours, and already my heart feels full. Already I am remembering why I’m here. Already my eyes are tearing up at the messages from former students asking me in all caps when I’ll visit Gal. Already I’m excited to hug and laugh with friends I haven’t seen in months. Already I'm smiling thinking about feeling the salty breeze on Ocean Beach, where I'm headed next.

Stay close to anything that makes you glad that you’re alive. I know that. As it inevitably changes, as it inevitably evolves, stay close to it, so you can revel in its—and your—growth over time. Some things about me are the same from last year, but some things are different now. And I'm grateful to catch up with San Francisco as we both evolve into our older (maybe newer?) selves.

Spring is Here!

                   

Hope you're taking advantage of the beauty this season brings :)