Spring Is Here

I've had various assignments lately but seeing as I've also been rehearsing a play that's set to go up in a couple of weeks, I've been too busy/tired lately to post much.

A few highlights...

I am, apparently, the first choice for that special ed. co-teacher at a middle school where I've already had several assignments. It tends to be a boring day because the classes are so long and I usually just sit there, falling asleep with my chin on my hand. In math class I have to sit next to one of the students I'm in charge of, he's not a big talker, but he also doesn't have a bad attitude, so I prefer him to some of the others.

Well, the last time I was there, we were sitting in that same math class and I hadn't even said anything to him since, "good morning" at the beginning of the day, when he turned to me and asked, "Are you going to be here again tomorrow?"
I responded, "I have no idea, probably not, though. Why?"
"'Cause you're fun," he said.
"What are you talking about? I'm just sitting here," I said.
He just kind of smiled and paused a moment, then nodded as if to assure me and repeated, "You're fun."

It was actually very sweet.

* * * *

Then the other day I subbed a half day in kindergarten. The teacher left almost no plans but luckily, the teacher's assistant knew what was up and took the reins while I mostly assisted her. If I weren't maintaining the anonymity of the schools where I work I would rave about this one. It's got an amazing location and is a very nice little school. That's all I can really say.

Anyway, I love kindergartners, they're adorable and blurt out random hilarity at a nearly constant rate. This day proved to be no exception.

The kids were trickling into the classroom in the morning, during which time they got to take a few moments and do a worksheet while eating the free breakfast provided by the county.

A word about these free breakfasts: sugar. They are, essentially, of no nutritional value whatsoever. They consist of a choice between small breakfast muffins that are basically just muffin-shaped lumps of processed sugars and simple carbohydrates, and chocolate cookies. I watched two kids open their chocolate milk cartons so that the top was completely open, then drop two chocolate cookies directly into the milk and eat them with a spoon. Ingenious? Yes. Nutritious? No. I am appalled. If this is the board of education's answer to making sure kids get breakfast because it's healthy and gives them a good start to their day, why not just deliver a case of candy bars to classrooms each morning? It would basically have the same effect!

But I digress.

So the kids who have already arrived were sitting there peacefully rotting their teeth and spiking their blood sugar when another little girl ran into the room, flung her arms out wide, threw back her head and cried, "I HAVE TWENTY COUSINS!!!" Everyone stopped and gaped at her. She dropped her hands, looked about the room, and then went to the breakfast bin to get a muffin and milk as if nothing had happened. The beauty of kindergarten is that the rest of the kids immediately went back to fishing their cookies out of their milk, equally blasé about the whole incident.

They were learning about seeds and got to plant birdseed in little plastic cups with soil and water placed on a windowsill. The smell of the soil was almost intoxicating, I am still drunk on spring having arrived.

I think the kids are feeling it too, because one little boy picked me a dandelion and made me promise I wouldn't throw it away but would put it in water when I got home, which, of course, I did.

The same boy wanted me to play on the playground with him, and I told him I was too big to go on the jungle gyms and such, but if he climbed up on the little fort they have and waved to me I would wave back. He finally agreed and ran off, and I figured he would forget all about me the minute he had joined his friends. Then out of the corner of my eye I saw some a small but rapid flurry of movement, and when I turned to look it was him, waving at me as hard as he could, his brow furrowed in concentration. I smiled and waved back, which seemed to satisfy him. He grinned back, dropped his hand, and then carried on playing in peace.

Later in the day they were doing some reading of different books they had in the classroom while they waited to be dismissed for lunch. Each student had a book, and they sat together at their little tables in their shockingly tiny chairs, reading.

Suddenly, one of the little boys gasped and pointed to a picture in his book. Turning to his comrades seated about him, brown eyes lit up from within, he exclaimed, "Look! A gorilla fighting a dinosaur!!!" As I walked by I glanced down to see what he was reading, and smiled in gratitude for the privilege I had to witness this moment: A child's discovery of King Kong vs. Godzilla. It was truly a thing of beauty.

Yesterday: Kindergarten

I can pretty much sum up my day teaching kindergarten with one line, as I overheard it (which was completely out of context), from a conversation between two of the kids in my class:

"Hey, Emily, remember when he laughed so hard his tongue fell out?"

Enough said.

"Perhaps some day I will sub for you again on a day when I can be nice to you. Today is not that day."

I worked a partial day for the zany social studies teacher I like, only instead of a regular lesson I had to give the county benchmark test for the section they just finished learning. It's one of those where if they talk at all you rip up their test, so I guess it's a big deal.

I had so much fun being quietly intimidating, it was great. Normally, despite all my talk, I'm actually pretty nice, and it has occasionally bit me in the...ankle... because at some point they take advantage and get out of hand and then it's hard to rein them back in. But today I got the chemistry just right, and the pay-off was awesome.

It's not that I was downright mean, per se. I just channeled my inner... military school instructor? Catholic school nun? Totalitarian dictator? And let me tell ya, it was mighty empowering. Old Benito may have been on to something...

Their teacher told me to tell them that if they wrote on the question packet there would be big trouble. Actually his exact words (and mine when I relayed instructions later) were, "Write on this and DIE." That got them because as one of the boys exclaimed, "And he means it, too!" So I adopted that Modus Operandi and ran with it for the rest of the day.

I told them that they had to be silent during this test because I did not feel like playing around with them today, they're old enough to know how they are supposed to act during one of these things. I said if they made a single noise I would assume they were cheating rip up their paper and that would be that, no questions asked, so no talking.

"Are you going to write on this packet?"
"No..."
"Are you going to talk during this test?"
"No..."
"If you stub your toe, will you make a sound?"
"Yes..."
"Wrong! You will not make a sound. You will walk it off and deal with it. Pain is weakness leaving the body."
(A few bleats of worry and confusion from the crowd.)
"That's a quote from the Marine Corps. It means that pain makes you stronger. You can handle some discomfort for this single class period. So even if you stub your toe, walk it off. Toughen up and deal with it. I'll write that on the board so you remember it."

So I wrote, "Pain is weakness leaving the body. - U.S. Marine Corps" in big letters on the chalkboard. Underneath it, in all capital letters and underlined, I wrote, "SILENCE."

It worked. They were silent the whole time. The first class murmured a bit toward the end of the period, but the second class was so good that I told them if they kept it up til the very end they would get a reward. Their reward was, "the satisfaction of knowing that your best, and that you came out stronger as a result." I couldn't help but chuckle even as I said it, but they didn't seem to mind that much.

When that last class was dismissed for lunch the teacher, who fought with the U.S. Army in a certain "limited skirmish in the Middle East," returned to the room cracked up when he saw the chalkboard.

Some may question my methods, but I don't think there is anything wrong with occasionally asking students to exert themselves and behave responsibly. Even in public schools. Just one generation earlier and they really would have had a nun with a ruler (or a firmly clenched fist) standing over them every day instead of me and a single inspirational quote for a single class period. My favorite teacher of all of my years of school was a man who used intimidation quite often, and he had our complete respect. He wasn't cruel, he was just honest, and he followed through with consequences. We got a lot done that year.

Anyway, it was fun for me, and I think it was fun for some of the students. I noticed some of the quieter ones smiling and seeming to enjoy watching their peers squirm a little. I'm sure it gets old being surrounded by the brink of chaos day after day. Even the ones who seemed worried at the beginning walked a little taller by the end of class. Maybe they secretly did feel satisfied with themselves. Plus, taking charge and not worrying about which pre-teen it bothered helped me get me back into my head space after a somewhat disconcerting week in my personal life that had me a bit off-kilter. So it was good for all of us.

On a lighter note, when I walked into the building this morning there were a few kids hanging around outside the front doors and one of them called to me, "Oh my god, you're the yoga lady!" Lol.