Reflexes and Reflexions

The day was off to a bad start, which I knew when I started talking to myself, when the students took 15 minutes to take out a notebook, and open to a clean page. When the students uttered more French vulgarities than simple words in English, and when I slapped two of them with two hours of afternoon detention, to be completed the Wednesday following vacation.

The day got worse when I got a hard-to-comprehend phone call in the teachers' lounge from a concerned Head Teacher about a mistake on the report cards currently sitting in the students' mailboxes. Upon asking another teacher to confirm that I had entered everything correctly (a 16/20 + a 0/20 does, indeed, come out to an 8/20) I discovered it is ILLEGAL for teachers in France to give zeros on assignments. I'm sorry, but what kind of country IS THIS?

I tried to psych myself up for my second class of the morning, but as soon as I discovered that my students could not print out their projects in the library as I had planned, and the Internet did not work in our impromptu new classroom, I realized that optimism and positive thinking were probably not going to help me very much in my mid-morning battle: me vs. the world.

The third class was honestly unlucky. Maybe if the day had started differently, I would not have been so irritated by the boy with the pen that has a tape measure in it, who seems convinced he is living in Star Wars land, and that the writing utensil is much more useful as a light sabre; and, maybe, the groups who did not listen as I carefully explained the assignment at least three times, but then proceeded to repeat the same dumb questions over and over again would not have seemed like a big deal; and certainly the ubiquitous cell phones popping in and out of pockets, hidden in pencil cases and just under the table tops would not have seemed like such disrespectful and insupportable irritations... but that is not how it went.

So when the bell rang, mercifully, at 12 o'clock, and I sat down to fill out the detention forms, I felt defeated. Not even having the time to eat the apple I had packed for lunch, I was whisked away in a group of angry teachers to a Grade Meeting that had as much of a negative vibe to it as the class dynamics, and my mood.

It was raining when I finally left, and I felt grateful for that, because at least things were consistent.

The good news is, tomorrow, after only two hours of class, I will be on vacation. For thirteen days, I will not think about school, or students, or grades, or obscure French laws I didn't know about, or lesson plans, or administration, or anything remotely stressful or unpleasant in any way. I will escape it all, go to Paris, take an airplane, visit a medieval city with my red-haired French love, feel lost in the foreignness of an unknown language, an unknown land, fall asleep in a hotel room, have big breakfasts, take lots of pictures, and buy presents.

I am LUCKY, and I know it -- I am learning from my challenges, and am proud of myself every time that I feel like I did this morning, and yet find the strength to stick it out, to wait for the three-toned signal that frees me, like the countdown on a rigorous exercise program, counting the seconds, thinking about the tricks that time play on all of us.

To be here in the first place is proof of my luxuries, my family, my education, my teachers, my friends. My backpack full of flags, my head full of memories, people, and language.

Here's to vacation, and to anyone who know what it feels like to have a morning like mine.

Here here!

Pro's of Half-Day Wednesdays

I.
Click on homepage.
Open e-mail box.
See work e-mail.

CLOSE e-mail box.

II.
Toasty drinks at a cozy café with a good friend on a Wednesday afternoon. Strawberries pink like cold cheeks in winter, the deep red of a really good workout, smelling like the summer.
A peach-colored classroom on the ground floor, with a wall of windows that face a city street. Mid-sentence, in a jumble of language, there is someone standing outside, looking in. He has hair like snow, equilateral glasses, and a yellow umbrella. He stares at us like animals in a zoo. I am in mid-gesture when I see him, palms tilted upward, outward, seeking answers; I stop. He smiles, a jack-o-lantern grin, and taps his temples, then makes a thumbs-up sign. One by one, we start to laugh, and we laugh long after the man has turned on his heel, and continued on as if this were just an ordinary event in a usual day.

III.
An invitation to dinner. A reason not to eat alone.

What is real and just a dream

In my head, I have started writing out my classroom rules, and absent work policies, organizing baskets and files and folders, dreaming of being able to reason with my students and laugh with them, make jokes and tell them stories, see them succeed and be happy for them, run into them at Meijer and have them say "hello" to me instead of ducking their heads and looking away.

I think about everything I have wanted to do as a teacher, the reasons I decided to make education my career. I remember writing out personal notes to every single one of my students when I was teacher assisting, staying up late before my last day. The cool projects my kids did, the amazing surprises I came across, the kindness and the curiosity.

I think about waking up early, and going into my classroom before the sun comes up, a little lunch and a bottle of ice water, posting student work and good quotes on the walls, playing classical music in the morning and standing outside the door to welcome them in.

I think about snow days and meetings, yellow buses and high school letter jackets, fancy dances, football games, the tennis team. Baskets of back-to-school supplies, new clothes, stacks of untouched paper. Parent-teacher conferences in English, parent phone calls in English, detentions and discipline ALL IN ENGLISH.

In my heart, it feels like springtime.

In my real life, I have just found out that because another teacher will be absent tomorrow and I have professional development, my students will not be coming to school (a decision made by the administration) and, thus, will not be doing any of the work I planned for them to have done. Thank you for the generous support, and for helping my students see the value in their education, as well as the utility of learning English. I also appreciate being included in the decision making process.

Etc. etc. These other teachers are amazing. How they have put up with this for so long is a total and complete mystery to me. That they have managed to do this while never holding it against their kids, hating their lives, or themselves, is a flat-out miracle.

My students are such angels. So stupid for spitting in the faces of those who do EVERYTHING just to try and teach them to think.