Teaching stories: September 18

Let’s talk….tedium. Because - and this may come as a shock (to nobody) - teaching isn’t always glamorous. Today, I present…Picture Day Doldrums.

Actually, I may have preferred doldrums. It was more like this: - I arrive at school to see many kids in nice shirts and dresses, cowboy boots and curled hair. They look angelic and I my heart warms at the wonder of working with such lovely children. - I start my first class and we hit a rhythm early on and then…oh, then, we leave for the gym. The walk over is uneventful, but then we walk into the gym and the kids start getting - weird. They start - shoving and pushing each other off the benches and running around and screaming and then I have to use my TEACHER VOICE which is easily one octave lower than normal and I puff out my 4’11.5” frame and I’m pretty sure I breathed fire, too. - And on the walk back? Some kids tell one kid to jump on another kid’s back and she does and they both land on the ground and then a different child was mad-offended-angry-bored-doldrummy - actually, I’m not sure - but she runs out of the classroom and away away away while I called an admin to run run run after her. - That was funny.

I won’t bore you, dear reader, with the happenings of my afternoon class except to say - I may have turned a couple of children to stone with my TEACHER LOOK when I turned to see one boy holding another boy like a plank and spinning him round and round.

The good bad news - other teachers had a similar day. When we suffer, we suffer together. That helps.
But all this chaos inspired this idea — let’s have an all-selfie yearbook!!!! Kids take their own pic and text it to the yearbook club (who are Angels themselves) and that’s it! DONE! I mean, yearbook pics in which kids have puppy dog ears and stars coming out of their ears.....come on!

#dowegetpaidenoughforthis?
#yeah,it’sjusticedteainmyinsulatedtumbler,dammit
#that’swhyIstoppedatthemarketforpieonthewayhome