For 185 days (weekends and holidays not included) teachers crawl toward the finish line we in the education profession call summer vacation. Some count them down privately, some count along with their students, and some (like me) try not to think about it, letting the district's record-keeping website surprise her on the occasions when she notices the statement "Today is the ???th day of school". By the 100th day of school, most of us are eyeing the windows. By day 150, our toes are curled over the ledge outside the aforementioned window. Around day 175, we are certain we can not go on, and then in the roll of a teenager's eye, summer vacation arrives like a tropical downpour. The water washes us clean, carrying the grime, dust, and perpetual stench of BO down the drain for the open sea.
This all brings me to today... the first Friday. Today is the first Friday I have had off. Before you get the idea that schools in Massachusetts go on into the dog day's of summer, you should know that I teach summer school, so while other teachers experienced the first Friday weeks ago, this is technically my first Friday for 2010. Actually, there was another Friday after school ended and before summer school began, but that's a story for another day, as it was technically a school event. Anyway, today is the first chance I've had since school ground to a halt to collect my thoughts and get them down in this blog. So, why blog, you might ask? The answer is complicated... I like to write and tell stories, and people often tell me I should write a book about what really happens in a middle school, so that explains this blog attempt in part, but to be fair, I was inspired by the film Julie and Julia. Julie had a full-time job, and she also managed to cook everyday, and blog about it, so if she can do all that, I can at least share some stories during summer vacation.
The tricky part of blogging the life of a middle school teacher is telling the reader the funny, tragic and exasperating stories of real people (mostly kids) without violating the privacy of those people. Changing names won't always protect anonymity, but I'll do my best to share the juice and the pulp, but I can't "tell all". Is there a statute of limitations on this sort of thing? I'm hoping there is, so I'll start with a story from my early days, back when I was teaching 3rd grade.
The day was gray and snow seemed inevitable, yet the playground was still muddy from late fall's relentless rain. The fact that nothing was in fact falling from the sky meant that, even though we were 50 minutes away from the only performance of our "Winter Recital", we had to take the kids outside for recess. Girls were bedecked in velvet and lace, with white tights and Sunday shoes, and boys were mostly in their most presentable outfits, so you can imagine my concern about turning them loose (after what felt like weeks of indoor play time) onto the soggy turf of a former mushroom farm. I told them to "be careful". I'm sure it helped. It had to have helped, right?
Anyway, this was my first real classroom teaching job, and I wanted to be rehired, so I was exquisitely careful about everything I did that year. The Winter Recital was no exception. Given the climate of PCism, I avoided the murky waters of "holiday" standards, fearing that even jaunty version of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer would make me appear to be a Christian fundamentalist. Oh so cleverly, I decided on a recitation of Robert Frost's classic poem "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening", followed by a rousing rendition of "Winter Wonderland", complete with dancing snowflakes.
Oh, the sophomoric foolish of the "freshman" teacher! Thinking I was being so inclusive and open-minded, I had the students "self-select" their parts, leaving me with five precious, perfect tiny ballerinas, four years (at least) into dancing lessons, and one "brave little tank engine that could". Don't get me wrong, the one boy who volunteered to dance, was brave. It takes a certain kind of courage to be a "husky" black kid in a nearly all white school to begin with, but to own your identity with such unmitigated gusto that you can see yourself as a snowflake in a squall of dancing stick figurines, well, you've got a pair. So, the snow flakes were told to wear white under their hand-glittered cut out sandwich board costumes, which they all did. The five girls dressed in white leotards and tiny white skirts. The boy, let's call him Dan, wore a white button down shirt, tucked in snug white trousers. He looked like the Good Humor man. I was, of course, thrilled that he had managed to find an all white outfit (and of such a formal nature!), all ready for the big performance. The kids had practiced, the decorations were in place. And so, we were ready to take the stage... right after recess. Being an atheist, I would attribute what happened on the playground to be an ordinary coincidence, however those who believe in a "higher power" would say that the heavens were joining in with our secular celebration of the season. Just as we lined up to go out to the playground, the flakes began to fall. The first snow, even in Massachusetts, is a reason for exaltation, so you can imagine the level of frenzy for a group of recess-deprived eight-year-olds. The kids went crazy, even as I yelled, "Be careful" and "Don't get dirty" over the din of ecstatic screams. To be fair, the girls in their Sunday shoes, stayed on the basketball court, huddled together trying to keep the snow off their freshly curled hair. The boys, however, scattered into the nether regions of the playground, in search of ballable snow. Now, we had received perhaps half a millimeter of snow at this point, but that did not deter the boys from accessing a full snowy recess experience. They slid in the soggy grass, I suppose thinking they were basically sledding without sleds. As I had mentioned earlier, we had experienced a very damp fall, transforming the bald spots on the back hill into muddy slip-n-slides. It took Dan about three heartbeats to join in with the faux sledding, and as luck would have it, he dove hear first down the widest and wettest mud-slicked run. A scream stuck in my throat, I raced across the rutted turf (in green felt clogs, I might add) thinking I might somehow suspend the properties of time and space, and intervene before Dan turned his Good Humor presence from vanilla to chocolate. I was close enough to see Dan rolled in the mud like a truffle in a bed of cocoa.
There was no way to clean him up. There was no way to redress him, as he had 30 pounds on the next largest kid, and it was, of course, not easy to find white trousers in December. He went on, because, as I mentioned, he was a very brave guy. The parents applauded, the kids bowed, and I was not fired. So, all in all, a satisfactory recital, and a lesson learned. Really, many lessons learned. 1) No recess (no matter what) before a recital. 2) Self-selection isn't for everyone, 3) PCism can go too far. 4) Clogs are not the best choice in footwear for a soggy playground. 5) The show must go on, even if covered in mud.
