turn the key. ignore the belch of smoke produced as the engine turns over. if there is smoke, if there is movement, if there is sound, there is hope. this engine, long buried under piles of sentence diagramming, paragraph transitions, m.l.a. formatting rules, classroom management, pay cuts, and one HUGE disappointment, will be useful once more. all i need are a few more documentaries about the history of britain, several glasses of REAL lemonade (not the synthetic-ACME ooze-yellow sugar-fueled nuclear waste produced by minute maid), a day when it is not apocalyptically hot, and several hours of sleep uninterrupted by the obnoxiously loud and tourette's-like f-bombs shouted between my downstairs neighbor and her spawn. the cleavers, they ain't.
summer vacation and all that it entails are here at last. for the first time since i started teaching, it actually felt like a VACATION--like i was DONE, like i NEEDED a break from...
in previous years, the act of standing in front of 320 eyes (since all 160 students are fortunate enough to have both of them) was exhausting and terrifying EVERY day, but also bore with it the reward of catching the one student who gets it smiling to himself or herself while the others nod their heads with false understanding ("but the emperor is NAKED!!")
in previous years, the conspiratorial nods between those students and me provided the inertia that propelled me to the front of the room despite the obstacles of anxiety, ennuit, and exhaustion.
in previous years, the love and respect i had FOR and FROM my students often presented itself as mother-bear protective rage when someone was foolish enough to go after one of my babies (sidenote: at what point does using that term go from "quirky" and "whimsical" to "seeing john stossel at the table with the dreaded pitcher of iced tea? regardless, while they are in my pedgagogical care, they are my babies). it sometimes presented itself as mother-bird nutrition, either literally, when i "was too full" and shared my lunch with a kid too embarrassed to admit that his mother had spent their food budget on vodka. it sometimes presented itself as days spending three hours (!!!!) after school as a kid read a story to me out loud, word by painful word so that we could break it into paragraphs, break it into sentences, break it into single words so his brain could digest them. he told me after that it was the first story of any kind he had read all the way through (if you're wondering, it was "the most dangerous game" by richard connell. standard ninth grade fare, but a fricken' waterloo for a kid whose first language is not english.)
this year was different. i don't know if it's because last year's students were anomalistic in their love of KNOWLEDGE. learning for the sake of learning...no, learning for the sake of having information in their weapons caches made them voracious readers, sophisticated thinkers, articulate orators and writers, and a grateful and responsive audience...a dream come true for a teacher. i had not one, but two classes of these wonders. this year's students would certainly have some big academic shoes to fill, if they even chose to do so.
...they didn't.
well, that isn't totally fair. MOST of them didn't. i did have a few who made me shake my head in wonder at their brilliance, shake my shoulders in laughter at their clever but sick senses of humor, close my eyes in amazement at their eloquence and powerful writing abilities, and bow my head in gratitude at their unfathomable kindness. those few shared "the smile" with me on many occasions. as it sit here typing, trying desperately to keep the sweat from dripping onto my too-expensive-to-replace-with-my-crappy-and-getting-CRAPPIER-next-year-salary computer (gilroy + june= apocalypse, remember?), some of my students (sorry, former students. summer vacation, after all) are having that silly argument about trees falling and unexperienced sound if there is no audience...you know, arguments about reality, existence, and perception. their arguments are well-thought out and mature, and i am singularly impressed. that, alone, would be enough to soothe my restlessness and waltz me off to bed; however, during the argument, one of the "smilers" took his understanding of logical fallacies (to which i introduced him at the beginning of the school year) and wielded it like a scimitar, slicing effortlessly through his opponent's argument, causing both flimsy, rendered halves to flutter into a useless heap at his digital feet. huzzah! he very suavely replied, "logic just stuck to me."
james bond, eat your heart out. the best part? this kid is transferring to the same school to which I was transferred for next year. things are looking up...
today's word of the day (finally!) is pullulate, in honor of the new ant hills forming on the sidewalk in front of my apartment.
