Week One: Survivor’s story

Four day school weeks are an amazing thing. Of course they mean an additional day’s worth of work scattered amongst the other days of the week, but I am really looking forward to not going in to school tomorrow.

My first week was just less than a raving success. I can’t complain about this position until my students start filling out surveys and comment cards based on my service, the administrator refuses to give me a raise because I failed to sell the credit card to enough of them, or the other teachers get paid more than me while I’m doing their work. In short: this job is great.

Of course there have been some…challenges this week. Topping the chart are:

• My throat burning from teaching all day while whispering for the kids to be quiet.
• My muscles aching from years away from “Capture the Flag”
• The time that I got stung by a hornet at recess. (And then the kids didn’t listen to me when I told them to line up.) (What’s that about insult to injury?)
• When I can’t play on the monkey bars/jungle gym because my blisters have ripped open.
• This whole seven to three-thirty shift thing.
• The entire hour that I spent explaining the difference between subjects and predicates, then the additional hour the next day.
• Convincing the kids that they needed to learn English grammar. (I may have tried to shame them by telling them what the European/Asian children have learned by now.)

But man, are these some fabulous kids! There’s a sixth grader in my class who quotes 1800’s dates and information like he’s reporting on the History Channel. There’s another sixth grader who will quietly and calmly tell me when the reason that one of her classmates isn’t responding to my question is because he’s having a seizure. Today a fabulous fifth grade girl, who is maybe four feet tall, schooled all the “big kids” on the soccer field. Dude, today the entire class acted out, with correct terminology (Sepoys, Enfield Rifles, Bahadur Shah, Jahangir, Viceroy), London’s Great Exhibition of 1851 and the Sepoy Mutiny! I’m telling you, they rock.

Next week, Monday, I start again with my own classes at the local community college. I’m rather excited to be finishing some more of these illusive “credits in applicable fields”.

Here’s to forever continuing education.