I should have known the minute my students tried to reroute me from my classroom.

It was my first year of teaching. At the time, someone might hand you a box of chalk and a contract to read, but the rest of the rules you learn by breaking them. I learned, for example, that bulletin boards need to be updated every month, have a rubric and an exemplar on them, and display a small but notable range of tasks to showcase student mastery and teacher feedback. I barely updated it because I was too busy learning how to teach. I had stacks of ungraded papers and half-baked lesson plans all over my desk, and every lunch I ate had a chalky after-taste.

I also had a mild but stubborn case of oppositional defiance disorder stemming from years of activism and the George W. Bush era. A bulletin board seemed quaint in comparison to my other pressing duties.

But on January 24th of that school year, my 7H3 students decided to reroute me on multiple occasions from getting to my room. My assistant principal and the math coach were also in on it because they made our small talk longer talk. By the time I caught onto the jig, I let it happen. The window on my classroom door was dark. The student desks were pushed to the walls. The student who kept rerouting me guided me into a loud room where students yelled “SURPRIIIISE!”

I wasn’t expecting much of anything for my birthday, but the rice and beans and Dominican cake came in aluminum foil, their music (not mine) blared from a set of speakers, their video games played on the projector, and the students looked like they genuinely enjoyed each other’s presence. But it was sixth period and, at the time, I had to pick up my 7A4 seventh-period students from the cafeteria. I let 7H3 continue the festivities while I tended to my adult responsibilities. As I arrived with my 7A4 students back to my room, I faced a dilemma I hadn’t expected.

The answer to that dilemma: OF COURSE, I wanted to have 60 students in a room where I normally have 30.

At the time, 7H3 had already gained a specific reputation for starting drama with each other while collaborating against other adults except for me. People expected the least of them with few exceptions. They often had to hide their intellect in favor of a callous and belligerent veneer. That resonated with me – and still does – deeply.

I had asked 7H3 to be kind and allow 7A4 to enjoy the leftovers and the music for the time being. If not for their English teacher walking over to my room and giving me the rage-eye, I might have allowed the party to continue. We cut about 10-20 minutes into 7th period before everything went back to normal, but the moment stuck with me since then.

As I’ve now had 15 birthdays celebrated (to varying degrees) at school, I’ve wondered how I’ve applied the “big room” philosophy into so many spheres of influence. In that room for just a handful of moments, I hadn’t worried about state-mandated labels, overbearing administrators, or even seating arrangements. Maybe I worried whether or not everyone had their own social circle in that room or whether or not we’d always want to replicate that moment. I definitely felt anxious that a colleague might get jealous and seek to overturn my administrator’s tacit approval and destroy my chances of staying in this profession.

But at some point, the gathering became less about me and more about them, with the adult willing to step to the side while they navigated their own experience at the time. What’s it like to eschew the rules in favor of the collective? How do stories like these keep us doing the beautiful struggle work we must do? How do we navigate a supposedly anarchic situation and hold that tension so it’s not messy? What does it mean to keep this story to myself for so long, but still walking with visions of a bigger room in mind?

I’m not sure. I’m never sure. My circles are much tighter now than ever before. I just know that for moments at a time, I have definite proof that I can hold space for an extraordinary amount of people and all the energies that come with.