Why I Teach: A Few Words on Tamales

I’m in it for the food.  Molding young talent, inspiring minds, what the hell ever.  The kids feed me.  Regularly.  Momentarily, I’ll be heating up some Guatemalan cornbread to have with my coffee.  Just to make it look like “this complete breakfast” on the cereal commercials, I’ll top it off with a couple of prickly pears that a student brought me (and showed me how to peel).  I really ought to eat the pan de los muertos before it gets stale, but I’ve had it every morning this week.

Not every week is like this, admittedly.  My kids just did a project on their culture, for which they had to bring an artifact.  I may have suggested - strongly - that food would be an awesome artifact to share with the class.  But even non-project weeks are pretty lucrative when it comes to deliciousness.  A couple of weeks ago, a former student brought me a cheesecake.  Not some cheesecake.  A cheesecake.  An entire cheesecake.  Along with a dozen or so still-warm tamales.

Here’s the thing about tamales.  They’re a pain in the ass to make.  I’ve never made them…basic white girl, you know.  But they’re one of those foods you have to love somebody to prepare.  I think it’s like when I bake zucchini bread.  All that grating; if you’re not doing it for someone you love, it’s not worth doing.  Tamales are like that.  So admittedly, some are better than others.  The sweet kind, dyed a creepy Pepto-Bismol pink?  No, thanks.  But if someone makes you tamales, it’s an affirmation of your worth as a person.  Somebody loved you enough to make dough and fill it with something delicious and wrestle it into corn husks for you because you are valued.  Wow.  

My school’s kind of like the olden times on the prairie, back when all the families in town fed the teacher regularly.  When the kids’ moms make tamales, they send an extra in for me.  When I moved into my new house, a kid rode his bike over while carrying a homemade flan, a feat that was downright acrobatic.  For Christmas, I get 4,000 types of cookies and candy.  Every now and then I’ll randomly get a few rolls of injera with whatever that incredible spicy stuff is.  It’s pretty amazing.

Not to read too much into a tamale, but when you work at a school like mine, it’s easy to get a savior complex.  To see yourself as the Great White Hope, come to uplift the poor immigrant children.  I will accept their food gratefully, partly because it is awesome, but partly because it counteracts that tendency.  It reminds me that we belong to each other, and we learn from each other, and we serve each other.  Love comes in long notes in response to journal entries, in a couple of extra uniform shirts anonymously left in a kids locker.  It also comes wrapped in banana leaves or smothered in caramel sauce.  And I’m grateful to be loved.