My Other Kids

 By Gregory Keer

In the last four years, I've had 242 children.

Yes, I've been completely faithful to my wife. No, she has not been earning frequent-flyer miles at our local maternity ward.

In my work as a high-school English teacher, I see the students as "my kids." While they're with me, I'm their guide and protector. It's a ton of responsibility, but they do go home to their real parents at the end of each day.

I didn't know I was going to teach. For 15 years, I focused on being a writer, working odd jobs as I scribbled words, hoping to be discovered. After yet another heartbreaking end to a writing gig, my wife showed me an ad for an English instructor. It was not a subtle hint. I needed to hold up my end of the income and steady work had become more important with two kids to feed.

As necessary as a paying job was, and as noble as teaching seemed, I had serious doubts. Although I had an English degree and a master's in film, the only classroom experience I had was as an aide with elementary-school students in the early '90s. Those kids ate me alive. The sight of me backing down from a fourth-grader who yelled, "I don't have to listen to you, Mr. Keer," was not pretty.

And why would I want to return to high school? Wasn't it enough that I spent four years barely passing algebra classes and rehearsing small talk in my head before striking out with the girls of my dreams?

So, when a small private school took a chance on me, I spent the first semester scared to death. Every day, I walked into class thinking, "What if they find out that I'm a fraud? What if they discover that I don't know a synonym for 'subterfuge' or why Mark Twain chose to exclude a certain chapter from The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn?"

But as time wore on, my lessons got better, thanks to the mentorship of my dedicated colleagues. I also saw my students for what they were: kids, not unlike myself a couple of decades ago, with all the same insecurities of adolescence. I thought about my biggest regret from those teenage years: I wished I were more trusting of others and more open about myself.

With visions of Robin Williams in Dead Poets' Society dancing in my head, I cracked jokes (most of them awful) and let the students lead the discussions with me refereeing to keep them within the lines of our academic goals. The kids learned that I was on their side, that I was far from all-knowing, that I failed more often than I succeeded. They also found out that identity is a work-in-progress.