I steal a look at the girls. They’re writing, writing. What about me? I taught them this, the words they’re stringing together so fast and sure

N

ervous energy, last-minute fumbling, girls pacing.

I find a seat and look around. This one consults her notes, that one pulls out a textbook.

“Notes away,” the examiner says, “We start now.”

Crinkling. Notes they pored over stashed away, the theories they bashed, disproved, resigned themselves to the sometimes-truth, okay mostly-truth of useless in their bags when they may need them most. But that’s an exam. I fiddle with my pen at the edge of the room.

I have no notes.

The examiner passes around the papers, and the room is silent save for the labored breathing of the girl beside me. You’ll be fine. But I don’t say anything because we’re under exam conditions and I’m taking this exam too. Though I haven’t taken notes, haven’t crammed for this government exam like they have.

I’m the teacher.

I know what you have to do in the exam. I’ve graded a hundred of their papers, more.

“9:37. Start.”

I breathe in, look at the index page, and read the sources. They’re accessible, understandable, not on some obscure or inappropriate topic. Phew.

I’ve been teaching English a while, but I never got this higher qualification. Back in seminary they hadn’t offered it. When I left, life happened. This year, teaching English at the level I’d never taken myself, I figured why not take the exam with the girls?

We are analyzing the intricacies of English, how context, identity, purpose shapes our language. And for a moment, I’m one of them, pouring knowledge onto paper, crossing out, scribbling furiously. But I’m light years away from 18 and unencumbered. From writing with that intensity, for a grade on a paper, and of course the loaded, “What did you get?” No one is going to ask me that. I’m far from that world; in my ninth month, squished into a chair.

I look at the second question, and freeze. Cold panic that makes a glacier of my brain. I steal a look at the girls. They’re writing, writing. What about me? I taught them this, the words they’re stringing together so fast and sure.

I am older, clunkier, wearied under the weight of words that won’t come.

I think of Rabi Akiva, going back to basics with the cheder children. That woman in the news, finally graduating at 67. Hair as white as the diploma.

Not me, I’m just a woman who is doing this for her job. A teacher; today a student. And it’s one thing to instruct, guide, know what the criteria are, how to do a, b, c, and d. But the response is more than the sum of its parts, than instructions and pointers. I should’ve tried it myself. So here I am.

My pen undulates over the lines. I do one essay, then the next. Maybe I can do this?

“Pens down.”

(Excerpted from Family First, Issue 647)