I should by all rights put this off for a day or two. I should get through tomorrow, go out
for dinner with my husband to celebrate our anniversary (it was two months
ago), sleep in and then have pancakes like always on a Saturday. I should give my mind and body a chance
to decompress and uncoil. I
should, but I won’t. I had a day
that kicked me in the teeth hard and I want to record it before the anesthesia
of time and rest dull my recollective powers and make this day seem better than
it was. I am sure this post will be
full of mistakes and typos. I
apologize in advance and will fix them later. I am too tired to edit tonight.
The really challenging part of sharing this with you, the
Reader, is that I cannot really tell you about it. There are ethical and privacy issues to consider and
observe. It is virgin territory,
this phenomenon of publishing words for the world to see within hours or even
moments of writing them. If I were
recalling this day years down the road when I am no longer teaching or at least
teaching these particular children, then I would have much more freedom to
share details while shadowing identities.
But my reality is working in a small school in a small town and it
does not take much detective work for the locals to figure out who I am
speaking of. I must be
careful. I want to be
careful. I would be mortified if
my selfish need to write caused anguish or embarrassment to anyone.
To that end, I will cast out a few sketchy details and focus
rather, on my own processing of those events. This will be my therapy. I guess I do not care if you find it interesting enough to
read through to the end or not.
Devour the entire meal, or nibble and run. I do not care.
This late summer day began beautifully. The Weather Man promised sunshine and
warmth – and delivered. I was
prepared to the teeth for teaching (there are a few side benefits to waiting
for Hannah to be finished with volleyball practice to leave school). I was down a pound on my nemesis, the
Scale of Hatred and Horror, and I found my car keys right away. All green lights and rainbow signs that
the day would be filled with overflowing joy.
Dead wrong.
My children have been tired all week. I mean, fighting-to-stay-awake
tired. These first full weeks of
school are a trial to tiny bodies and untrained school scholars. They want to be outside running and
whoopin’ and hollarin.’ Well
frankly, so do I. To that end, I
try to keep my finger lightly on their endurance pulse and will often stop
learning to do jumping jacks, or dance to the “Chicken Count” song (“…chicken
eight and chicken nine… Let’s all shake our chicken-hind. Bawk-bawk-bawk-ed-bawk-bawk
–bawk-bawk-bawk…). Yeah, I
know. Those are some brainy lyrics,
but it does get the blood flowing to their brains again (…chicken seven and
chicken eight… let’s all go on a chicken date…)
I guess the signs were all there. The steam has been building in the canner for days. The trifecta of circumstances was
converging. I should have KNOWN it
was inevitable.
I denied a simple request… that’s all. An uncomplicated “no” flipped a switch
in the Magic Tree House like I have never witnessed before. I didn’t see it coming and it smacked me in the face with
such ferocity that it knocked the wind out of me momentarily. Again, I apologize for being vague, but
adhering to rules of professional conduct is demanded here. I will summarize those minutes this
way; it involved calling in other adults and left my first graders gaping in
horror.
It did not end there.
The morning incident was the gateway drug that snowballed a
cataclysmic series of aftershocks, each one disruptive and draining for all of
us. It was not a good day. In fact, it was a terrible day. In the short time I have been teaching,
I have experienced nothing like it.
In fact, I sat down on my hard wooden chair at my really cool old wooden
desk after lunch, and inexplicable felt a sudden urge to cry. I am not a crier. I am not saying I NEVER cry. I am saying that I rarely cry. I am really quite unhappy with myself
when I do blubber. It feels like
emotional weakness to me. I detest
emotional weakness. Dang it, suck
it up, Mrs. Dahl! You’ve got
children all hopped up on applesauce and recess coming in the door in mere
minutes. You can’t afford the
luxury of pity right now. Get it
together!
The afternoon wore on endlessly and painfully. More drama. More chaos.
More of the scenarios every teacher dreads. Alexander and I were both having a “terrible, horrible, no
good, very bad day (Judy Viorst, 1972).
See, here’s the thing.
I am a strong personality.
I am used to people doing as I ask. I rarely feel inferior or subordinate to those in my
orbit. It’s not that I chafe at
authority (I don’t), or cannot take orders (I can), but I have zero problem
stepping up to the plate and being the one in charge. If there is a void of leadership, I will fill it. It is a pet peeve to step into a church
kitchen before a potluck and find fifteen people milling about aimlessly,
stealing baby dills and chatting in small groups. You have nothing to do? Here, let me help you with that dilemma…
So to stand on the periphery of a tiny class on a big prairie
and feel absolutely overwhelmed, frustrated, and helpless is a bit disquieting
for this quasi-hippie teacher, to say the least. Something is very wrong here. No real learning occurred. I was far to busy aiming my six-inch fire hose at brush
fires and a few all-out wildfires all day. About one-thirty p.m., I was wiped out, and I still had two
hours to go!
The day did not get any better as it wore on. I went into survival mode and made a few
pathetic stabs at education, but had waved the flag of surrender hours
before. At 2:45 it was time to get
in a few moments of Social Studies and I looked at the clock on the wall as if
trying to communicate with it telepathically. “Ok, kids…” I heard my own tired voice say. “Get out your Social Studies books…” Oh, hang it. What’s the point?
(Instead), “Children, let’s gather on the reading rug…”
I looked into their tiny faces all miraculously looking back
at me at the same time (a rarity).
“We have had a hard day,” I began.
A few hesitant nods here and there. I knew that we needed to discuss our day… a debriefing of
sorts. I had seen the looks of
shock and confusion earlier. We
needed to talk about that. And we
did. We talked about how we felt
inside at the time, we talked about how one person’s behavior affects
everyone. We talked about being
considerate of other’s feelings.
We talked about the disruption to learning that occurs at such a
time. We talked about safety and
the things that Mrs. Dahl has to do in order to keep everyone safe at such a
time. We talked about lots of
six-year-old stuff. They needed to
hear it all and I needed to gather my fragmented, ragtag bunch of first graders
back into a cohesive unit.
I concluded with, “Today was a bad day. But tomorrow is going to be a good
day.” More head nodding, this time
vigorously. “I will do my best to
make it a good day. Will you help
me?” I went around the circle and
asked each one individually, “Will you do your part to make it a good
day?” Each answered in the
affirmative, although one or two hesitated to commit themselves to such a
daunting task. I promised them I
would think of ways to make it a special, good, meaningful day and that at the
end of our “good” day we would compare the two days and see which one we like
best. They agreed to my plan.
And so, Mrs. Dahl was up with the sun, (I could not stay
awake long enough to finish this last night), baking cupcakes (chocolate) and
popping corn and deciding which DVD they would like best. We all need to deflate today. Oh, we will chug away at the consonant
sounds “f” and “h” and work on base 10 facts, but we will also focus on
learning to coexist peacefully.
Cuz you know what, guys? If
I can win their little hearts the second week into school and make them want to
follow me anywhere academically, socially, and emotionally, it might just make
a difference in their lives.
I heard a terrible statistic during one of my summer
courses. Prisons can make
predictions about how much space they will need in the future based on third
grade reading scores. If this is
true, then my job has moved from important to critical. It can no longer be an eigh-to-five
vocation, it must become a passion for educators everywhere.
I will welcome my students in a few brief moments. I am praying and hoping for a glorious
day. Feel free to say a prayer or
two on our behalf. I’ll let you
know how the day goes.
I have full hope that I will be writing with a smile on my
face…
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