The end of school June 29, 2022

As excited as I was to take on a teaching job in the fall, I’m now that bummed that the job no longer exits. I was delighted to be offered an opportunity to work half-time teaching advanced biology at a private high school in San Francisco this year. Though the experience had its issues, for the most part it was pretty wonderful. It checked all my boxes: community, intellectual challenge, purpose, and structure. I had a feeling I would also fall in love with the kids, and this I did, in spades.

Perhaps, I thought, after all this struggling and questing and COVID, I had actually found a path that would sustain me for the foreseeable future. I was ready to repeat for at least a second year. After all, they say the first year of teaching is the most challenging, especially when one has to develop the entire curriculum. But that was not to be. The administration decided to replace me with a full-time teacher.

I found out that I would not be renewed on the last day of school. I have a lot to say about this experience, the highs and the lows. But for now, I’ll focus on two things:

First, what an incredible opportunity to delve more deeply into a topic that underlies all of life: evolution. Indeed, I invoked evolution as the lens for the entire year. I guided the students through elements in the periodic table, through water and small organic molecules, through amino acids, lipids, carbohydrates, and DNA. We went from spontaneously formed lipid layers with bits of RNA in hot vents in the deep sea, to extremophiles on our planet and the search for astrobiology on others. We considered how the remarkable advent of photosynthesis led to increase oxygenation in the atmosphere and the consequent burst in more complicated life forms dependent on mitochondrial respiration. We went through Darwin’s (and Wallace’s) argument for evolution, from the geological observations that preceded them through selective breeding of domesticated plants and animals. We discussed how science and creation stories rooted in religion should not be co-mingled. We looked at protein structure and gene structure and how the two-fold process of gene duplication and mutation gives rise to the vast repertoire of RNA and protein molecules and ultimately to the diversity of life on earth. We watched the evolution of the coronavirus in real time. We learned about human genetics and diversity through our own experience and analysis.

Second, the students themselves were amazing. I had juniors and seniors who had lost 1/3 of their high school experience to COVID. They were behind on their social development, some desperate to be with others, some afraid to. They were behind in their academic benchmarks from a year of zoom and a general droop in learning goals. As days turned to weeks and weeks to months, we got to know each other and to trust one another. They learned that I had a pretty high bar, but also that with some effort they could clearly surpass it. They built up not just knowledge, but learning skills and confidence. As masks came off in the spring, I saw smiles on even the most withdrawn students. We had undergone our own little evolution together.

Which makes it so much tougher to let go, to accept it as just one experience in a lifetime of many.