If you find
yourself in the habit of being trapped in large rooms with about 30 2nd
graders, as I do, you might find out that on the day of a storm, a Friday to be
exact, when the yard is flooding, and the lights are flickering, and you
realize after about one hour out of the six you are allotted to spend with this
lot, that you pulled a crap lotto in this group.
What happens
when the you that you usually are – the funny, tall, fast thinking, great
reading, candy giving, highly motivated, craftily creative fake teacher that
you are – it is not working.
This group,
on this storm day, is the group from hell. A bawdy lot, crass, loud talking,
fast moving, openly yawning sneaky devils who aren’t getting you.
OMG, I think to myself. But 2nd grade –
it’s my THING. They’re so CUTE usually. They’re so easy to ease out of their
chattiness and into the fake way I make learning fun.
But not
here, at Hacklin elementary emphasisonthehack. It’s like this group, it’s been inoculated.
They see me but nope there is a fine invisible film between us. And that’s just
fine with them.
I sink down
into a chair. Crumbling slightly after wrestling through the English lesson the
teacher left out and haggling my way raggedly through the math. OH NO. It’s not
going to work out. You barely like me. I certainly don’t like you. We have to
break up.
Usually I schedule
my break ups happily for the end of the day when really we’re still in love, it’s
too soon to say goodbye, will I ever see you again, they’re saying wistfully,
of course, I answer with reassuring gentle wisdom. We all go out with a smile
and some angst and a bang at the bell ringing when I release them back to their
wild. While they still love me because for six hours I CAN be loveable, I can win
an Oscar and break the sound barrier and fuse neutrons for 6 hours. But what
happens on a day like today, when we are breaking up NOW. Not when I schedule
it. But NOW. Right in front of my face, right after breakfast, 45 minutes in, even
before recess.
It’s mostly
Mathew’s fault. Mathew and I, we’re like having a mental knife fight from the
moment he sets eyes on me. He has one t in his name, which is so wrong. It’s
just lazy, people. He is boisterous, and he doesn’t care who knows it. He
spends a great deal of time making paper airplanes and throwing confetti on
people. You think it’s cute but the kid uses confetti like a thug. Paper
airplanes now, hubcabs off your car tonight.
When I’m
doing vocabulary there are only five words they have to get through, and one is
recuperate. During word number #1, number THE FIRST, when we are barely
STARTED, I see their eyes glaze over. I’m dancing around to keep them
interested but table 2 is ordering nachos and half of table four has collapsed
drunk on boredom. Uh oh, I pull out my ACTING trick and pull two students up to
act out the word recuperate. This gets table 1 listening, because half their
table is up there ON STAGE, and SOMETHING IS HAPPENING. Usually acting gets all
the kids listening, because of the fun. But table 4 is looking at me like they’re
trapped at the museum of modern art with no art on the wall. This is when I
know I’m sliding down an icy slope into the place where they shred substitutes
and sprinkle the remains on top of the salads of actual teachers.
Recuperate
does not recuperate us. It’s learning cholera, it’s epidemic. I consider
letting them play the rest of the day and not doing anything else. It’s not
like I have a supervisor. There are no adults. The little dudes are not going
to remember this ONE DAY in 2nd grade. But when you have a group
that has checked out, if you then give them FREE TIME, they end up underneath
the desks making a fort out of raincoats. I can’t have kids that I don’t know
underneath desks, as much as I’m all for that in general. I’m pretty sure if
another adult walked in, I’d be spanked.
So I just
have to keep my torment to myself. I can’t break up with them in front of them,
although I do manage to say carefully during my one ten minutes of reading
aloud to them, that this is maybe the one class I’ve ever had where we won’t
get to play a game at the end of the day because WE ARE BREAKING UP. Can’t you see
that YOU ARE HORRIBLE no because YOU DON’T LISTEN TO ME because MOMMY IS HAVING
AN ANXIETY ATTACK because 30 IS TOO MANY FOR BAD. There is no happy ending with
this group. There is just quickly changing every subject, yelling at Mathew,
sending kids out of the room, yelling at nobody, feeling volcanic, and feeling
small. We angle toward the end of the day and by the end I do let them play a
game but I am counting the minutes because twenty to two is a really long time
until 2:23 when they get out, and every minute is loud.
The rain
rages on outside and the principal makes an announcement that parents will come
TO the rooms to pick up children, after the bell of freedom, so YES I GET THEM
FOR EVEN LONGER.
Eventually
all the moms come, even the one of the morbidly sneaky Ruth, and I close the door
on this room hopefully forever. But when I’m down in the office handing in my
key shakily as the real world comes lumbering back at me in a whoosh, there is
another teacher there, smiling hopefully at me. Oh hi, she’s saying. I’m getting picked up in the lobby basically.
The office is the bar of my career, and I
am its painted whore. Do you have a card or something? She’s asking.
Of course I
give her my number.
