Phlox & Zinnia

It’s been a week since the venerable institution of Calvin College empowered me to move a string on a piece of cardboard and handed me an empty diploma case (and a cool medal that I’ll definitely wear when I’m old and washed up and need something with which to validate my life). I want to make more jokes here, but I also don’t want to intensify your emotional whiplash more than I already have.


Graduation weekend went surprisingly well. All of my family got along, I wore a cute dress and didn’t trip in the 3 inch wedges Ana and Danae convinced me to buy, Ana came out to GR, my students actually seemed sad that I was leaving, I shook hands and smiled for pictures, my church family got to meet my blood family, and my biggest problems were that my cap wouldn't stay on my head and that my feet hurt. It was a whirlwind, and I barely had time to watch the first episode of the Bachelorette, let alone think.

It was a joy to feel like everything was coming to a close, but it honestly didn’t feel like a close. Maybe since I’ve attended two other Calvin graduations, my brain didn’t quite get the memo that the graduate was me this time. Even as when I wished friends goodbye as they left for DC, France, Arizona and Utah, I didn’t understand that I was saying goodbye for good(-ish) until I was staring out the window at the open fields of the New York Thruway. I also kept feeling like graduation wasn’t a big accomplishment; maybe it wasn’t for me since I’m a privileged East coaster who has been groomed to attain higher education and has the drive and the want to complete it well, but I know that is far from most people’s reality. I ended up liking all the hullabaloo, but my favorite moments were at my house when Ana taught Noah and Greg how to play the flash game Pandemic and I made them watch the Bachelorette with us and at the Prince on our last night in Michigan when I pulled out a deck of cards to make my family play a game of Sevens.

I only missed her when I opened up my laptop screen and saw the picture of us from my high school graduation four years ago that I foolishly made my background and when I looked down the church “pew” in Creston CRC and thought, “Wish Mom got to meet everyone.” And when I cried with Grandma in the car about something as we made a pit stop for Starbucks.

Grief only really hit me again when Christine Metzger unveiled Auntie Ruth’s painting that she did in honor of Mom. Something about being 50 feet away from the classroom that she loved and 10 feet away from former teachers’ faces made her absence as real as what I’ve felt every morning this week as I’ve rolled out of bed and remembered that she’s not here to spend summer break with me.

Tonight, I attended a choir concert to see some of my students in action. Even though I was in the nose bleeds (who knew so many people came out to watch middle schoolers?!), I spotted most of my students and grinned as they awkwardly sang and swayed to the music. I said hi to a number of them afterward, and you know I’m going to bring it up tomorrow.

I also attended a baseball game on Saturday, just for the heck of it. While I was only able to watch an hour, I was reminded of the lives of students that I now miss due to me being a teacher, stuck in a room. It was fun to see how they cheer each other one and where their passions lie.


For all the heavy emotions and grief on this blog, I also want to let you know that there are so many lights throughout my day. Sometimes I gripe about students, but other times I just have to laugh at their antics. Here’s a sampling:

One morning, I decided to ask students as they trickled in if they liked the weather. It was overcast, sprinkling a little bit like it had been for the last week or so, and I was expecting everyone to complain about it. One by one, they went, “Oh, I kind of like the rain.” They talked about the sound of it on roofs and going outside to run around in it. Suddenly, it clicked for me: they love the cloudy skies because it reflects their mood, driven by those little angsty hormones.

In the last class of the day, I was sitting at my table, prepping for whatever I was going to do while my mentor teacher taught. I looked up, and one student was just perched on the table, balancing on the balls of his feet. “****,” I said, “What are you doing?” He looked surprised and said, “Oh yeah, I just kind of do this.” For the next few days, he intentionally perched on the table and grinned at me.

Two students without fail will always talk to me when they pass me in the hallways. I know logically that it is because these two students will talk anyone’s ear off, but it still delights me when one of them says, “Hi Ms. Johnson!” and then launches into whatever they are thinking about that day.

There was one day where they were working on their spoken word poems, my major project, when a student asked, “What can you do in 10 seconds,” as she wanted to show the frequencies of the occurrence of her topic. I bounced it out to the rest of the class, “Hey guys, what can you do in 10 seconds?” “Hold your breath,” someone calls out. “Hold your breath!” I cry, delighted by the answer. Three of the boys in front of me gulp air and look at me puzzled, and then they said, “Oh, we thought you telling us to hold our breath!” I had to stop I was laughing so hard.

A few days ago, a student came up to me and said, “Can we start a spoken word club?” I said, “If you want to organize it and get people together, I’ll supervise.” fully expecting that there would be no way she would want to do that. “Okay,” she agreed and then motored off to collect attendees. When three other girls showed up in my room the next day, I was surprised to say the least. They didn’t really get anything done, but they did some writing and the “founder” shared a strong poem with me. They were laughing and being silly and fooling around, and I felt so privileged to be in the room with them.

One student who I don’t know super well was God in the Easter chapel. One of the homerooms always does this chapel with a skit and a song, and all the homeroom kids act in it. This particular student is laid back, doesn’t really go out of his way to do much, but a generally nice guy. He came out in a referee costume, lip-synced words, and honestly acted his heart out. A few days ago, I had some students help me out by making a video to send to a job application. Afterwards during class, this student looked at me and said, “Did you get the job?”

We just finished reading Romeo and Juliet, and my mentor and I had restructured the assessment a bit. I pulled up a chair next to a student so I could be ready to jump in. This student before class had asked me why there were so many old people in the parking lot outside our window (they were picking up flowers for a fundraiser). At some point during the class, he turns to me and whispers, “See? Old people.” as if I’m not a teacher and not going to call him out for not paying attention.

Early on in the year, I brought an android toy to school, and I used it as a talking piece in a restorative justice circle for homeroom. I came to the first class of the day and saw that some students had broken off one of its arms (I learned a valuable lesson—never bring anything you care about to school). A student in my homeroom saw the robot on my desk and said, “Oh, I can fix that for you. I’ll bring in some glue.” He did, but the glue didn’t hold. It’s the thought that counts.


There’s also the innumerable little things: other staff members who intentionally include me in conversation (because apparently I’m really bad at lunch table small talk), students who ask me if I’m teaching that day and seem excited when I say yes, the different quirks of middle schoolers, a couple pictures that students have drawn of me, students who stay after a particularly awful class just to say that they still think I’m great, and the list goes on.

Overall, I love that I can walk through school and have a semblance of a connection with each student. I’ve graded (for all except one) some work of theirs, so I know them through that, but I see them from day to day and hear about all the things they talk about: face timing and movies and Instagram, but also who likes who and sports and classmates. It’s so fun to know these students and for them to at least be comfortable around me. That idea, that I get to do this relationship building and talking about literature and writing, for a job seems like I won the lottery. Other days I remember the drags of grading and logistics and the energy it takes to reframe student situations so you can see a fuller picture and consistently delivering engaging content, but for right now I’m seeing the love.

Am I sad to leave? Not really, because no matter how connected I feel, I’m still a visitor in this school. I knew the day was coming. I’m kind of excited because I know that this ending brings me closer to a terrifyingly new beginning where I’m the one planting the seeds for communities and relationships. Other student teachers have said this to me, and I think I’m ready to echo it too: I’m ready to have my own classroom and start to implement these visions that have been rattling in my head.

In your heart of hearts, who did you expect me to become?


Was I, acclaimed professor, nodding sagely as my students stressed in my office about credits and life? Was I the master high school teacher who was nominated for yearbook dedication every other year? Was I balancing babies on my hips and wearily glancing at the laundry piling up? Was I a novelist, scribbling phrases in the corners of notebooks as I taught women how to code their own revolutions?




Was I you?




Did you believe I’d fail? Did you expect to sand my pieces again when everything grated against each other? Did you resign yourself to picking me up by the scruff of my neck and depositing me to a man? Would you have been happy if I was just Ms.? How many oceans did your faith in me span?

Would you be proud of me? What would your face say when I bowed my head for my medallion? What would your heart cry when mine lit out for Michigan? Would I have valued your words as much as I hate their absence?

What would you have told me as I sobbed over the 13-year-olds who derailed my entire class? As I spend hours crafting feedback? As I tore myself apart over fuzzy futures? Who would you have told me to become?

Have you asked God yet why he asked for you so early? So

We’re having confession time here, because it’s always confession time on this blog: I’ve been avoiding this space.

The month of April has been a difficult one for me. Work-wise, it hasn’t been too bad. I’ve been working through the poems I collected from my eighth graders (now I have collected them a month ago and still haven’t finished them… whoops) and mostly chilling in the back while my mentor teaches Romeo and Juliet. I had another awful class where 4 students didn’t listen, disrupting learning for the other 22 in the room, and that was frustrating and brought on some self-doubts. I haven’t had a ton of extra evening or weekend commitments.

April should have been pretty good. But in the first week of April, I decided to reconsider a job in Massachusetts that I had previously passed up on. By the last week of April, I decided against that job again. Between those two times, I bounced back and forth between the uncertainty in Grand Rapids and the security in Massachusetts. I prayed, I talked to my housemates, I asked for prayer requests, and I tried to join Creston CRC, which was ultimately the thing that made my housemates and I say, “If I’m trying to join a church, shouldn’t I be trying to stay here?”

I should be secure and content, knowing that God will provide for me a job in Grand Rapids somewhere. But let me just tell you, I spent the last four minutes searching charter school jobs in Grand Rapids because that’s one of the only fields that I haven’t tapped into yet. There have been two times when I’ve been driving home from my Tuesday night seminars—tired after a full day of school, three hours of class, heading to another hour or so of devotions, and frustrated with my situation—and God has shown me that he’s got me through a beautiful sunset or a song that spoke to me. Yet whenever I’m around my fellow student teachers who are getting jobs and becoming more secure in what they are doing next year, my self-doubts start to creep in. What if I’m just good at school and I can’t translate that into being a teacher? How am I going about the job search wrong? I thought I was doing decently at this, but no one is giving me a call back. What do I do?

I’d like to give a neat and tidy answer to those questions, but I’m still in the weeds you all. I’m still struggling to let God take control of this part of my life that I want to control so badly and that I feel like I am controlling somewhat—I do have to send in the applications, right? This job search is showing me a lot about how I value myself, which I thought was dictated by my own standards but turns out is dictated by others’ affirmation of me, and how I deal with uncertainty and fear. Maybe God’s been preparing me for this through studying Jesus & Peter walking on water through John Ortberg’s book If You Want to Walk on Water, You Have to Get Out of the Boat; maybe he’s been preparing me through conversations that I’ve had with my housemates about the spiritual disciplines; maybe he’s been preparing me for this through Mom’s death. All I know is it feels unfair to have worked this hard and have felt so passionate about the work I’m doing in education only to be roadblocked by my lack of experience and job searching skills.


I know it’ll all work out. I just want to tell that to the Alex who is hanging off the cliff, feeling her fingers getting slick, unable to look down and see the outcropping ten feet below.

From my early days of roaming around the internet, using it to scroll through pictures that other people found funny on sites like iwastesomuchtime.com (it’s still alive ‘n [where’s the proper place for that apostrophe?] kicking, in case you are curious) and imgur, I remember this one image. It was an outline of an old-ish man sitting on a pile of books on a yellow background and said something like “That sad feeling when you finish a book and can’t bring yourself to move on quite yet.” I’ve seen many variations on that same theme—when you read a really great book that you don’t want to end, sometimes closing that back cover and setting the book back on the shelf leaves a hole inside you.

(#2 has the actual picture I’m thinking of; it has a little more on it than what I remember)


I’m feeling that same way right now, except it’s because I finished Kingdom Hearts 3 yesterday.


For the sake of time and all of your interest, let’s just say that thanks to my lovely “regular” cousins the Huizengas, I and my siblings all have one thing in common: that we love this video game series that mashes Disney films into an original storyline where the characters focus on hearts and the true power of friendship. It sounds like a trainwreck, but I love it so much that in my junior year of high school I forced my classmates to watch a clip of it and discuss it as a text in my AP Language and Comp class. Even as I’ve grown out of video games for the most part, I can’t seem to let this series go.

I can’t tell you exactly when I played Kingdom Hearts 1 and 2, only that I remember Kristin and Cami giving the first two games to us in 2007 or 2008, Lars opening 358/2 Days on Christmas Day 2009, and me being mad that we couldn’t play the upcoming game Birth By Sleep in 2010 since it was released on the PlayStation Portable. All of that to say, this series has been an investment for me, which came to the end of its first arc on January 29th, 2019 when Kingdom Hearts III released. I’m certain you heard me mention it—I even gave a shout-out in my introductory remarks to all my students who I met a week later. I had to wait until Lars finished the game (AND the secret boss), hold off while Anni played through the game over spring break, and grade the paragraphs I collected two weeks ago before I allowed myself to sit down on March 30th, 2019, and start my playthrough in earnest. By April 3rd, I had watched the end credits.

I could go on and on about the themes woven throughout the games, the cheesy dialogue that somehow still feels meaningful, and the wealth of characters who I’ve grown to love, but I’ll spare you. Point is, I finally know what I’ve been waiting 10-odd years to know, and I don’t know how to feel about it. I like having all the answers (kinda), but I feel this sadness that the journey’s over now. The plot points are wrapped up, the enemies are fought, and the dust has settled, but I feel less satisfied than I did when I was wondering about my favorite character’s fate. You could chalk this up to bad storytelling, but I don’t think that’s the case here. I think finishing this game is closing another chapter in my life.

I’m sad because this is the last connection to my gamer middle school self, who wanted to tell people that she was a gamer girl who loved Pokemon and RPGs because she believed that was what made her different and worth listening to. Completing this series severs me from the girl who watched clips of Kingdom Hearts set to music because they helped her process and connect with her own emotions. It’s also another strand threading back to Mom that’s slipping through my fingers—another reminder that I’m continuing to grow further from the person who she knew me as. And while a video game may not seem like that big a deal to who I am, it’s another part of me that she doesn’t get to see me fully synthesize into my adult life. The conclusion of this game reminds me that as time keeps running by, I’m leaving behind the Alex that Mom knew interest by interest, inch by inch, piece by piece. I know I need to grow and that I want to grow, but it would have been neat for her to see that growth too.

Finishing my favorite game series feels like yet another marker of my evolving sense of self, and it seems to have surfaced the sadness that comes with the recognition that I've changed. A part of me loathes to leave Kingdom-Hearts-loving Alex, but I am not defined by video games as I once was. I will always have a place in my heart for key-wielding anime-looking characters and their various journeys across the Disney worlds, but I feel this adolescent obsession fading as I mentally close the book of Kingdom Hearts. I’ve finally learned how to love and digest media without the need to own it all or know it all which ate at me as a middle and high schooler. Maybe that’s a recognition of my own human finiteness; maybe that’s just me growing up.