Platitudes Aside

In the last four days I have been bombarded by peppy platitudes. As a returning teacher, I have been encouraged to Engage Educate Empower and also to Believe Engage Succeed. I've been urged to strive toward being the Guide on the Side rather than the Sage on the Stage. I've been asked to don the four hats of the effective teacher, Facilitator, Presenter, Coach, and Evaluator, and I have been informed numerous times that PLC (Professional Learning Community) is a verb, not a noun.

That last one? Just dumb and patently false. I get that they want us to know that our active participation in our PLCs is crucial, but don't tell an English teacher to call a noun a verb; I couldn't possibly PLC a damn thing.

You know what is a verb? Teach. And once again, on this sixth grade open house day, as I stood outside my class room greeting so many of our students and their parents and answering their questions when they turned up to see their new school and figure out just where they must go on Tuesday morning, I knew that I was born to do just that.

What Do You Call a Teacher Without a Class?

Tonight was that night when all the new sixth graders are invited to visit our middle school to check the place out and meet their teachers before they start on Tuesday. The event is a good way to address any anxiety kids or their parents might have about transitioning to a new school.

As inconvenient as it seems for teachers to come back at night right in the middle of our planning and preparation week, every year I enjoy the evening. Seeing the kids and meeting their families is always really fun.  I guess it helps me work out my anxiety about starting a new school year, too.

I Detect a Trend...

I came home from our annual sixth grade open house all ready to write. It was a really positive night-- good energy and great kids had me looking forward to next Tuesday, the first day of school. Beyond that, though, I knew just what I wanted to write about: how the preservice week had been fraught with problems and all the attendant stress and negativity, but how all of that fell away, almost like magic, when the kids arrived. Yeah. I was going to write the heck out of that, but the more I thought on it, there was something about it that seemed almost too true, so I searched the archives and I found what I wrote just fifty weeks ago.

Eerily similar, right?

So that had me thinking. It's such a cliche to say that the stuff that happens outside the classroom is what unnecessarily complicates teaching, but anecdotally? Lookie here. Just because it's a cliche, doesn't mean it's not a valid concern. Perhaps the opposite is even true.

Good Night Bad Day

In his latest piece for The New Yorker, David Sedaris makes the observation that when certain misfortunes befall you (in his case complications regarding air travel) it seems like a national tragedy that everyone should know about, and "only when it happens to someone else do you realize what a dull story it is."  That's good advice coming from a master storyteller.

I'm going to risk it anyway and take a few paragraphs to describe how awful our day at school was today. We are still in preservice, working in our classrooms and meeting with colleagues to prepare for the students' first day next Tuesday. As I've mentioned before, our school is at the end of a year-long update which has entailed all sorts of outrageous inconvenience for every staff member in the building for what is, in my opinion, very little improvement. The project was supposed to be finished as of last Monday, but like the vast majority of renovations, the contract ran over.

The punch list is extensive: the a/c has been sporadic, which we have dealt with; yesterday the power went on and off at least half a dozen times, which was kind of a nuisance, especially if anyone was trying to work on the computer, but today, today was the day when they were testing the new fire alarm system, ALL DAY.

What does that mean, you wonder? It means flashing strobe lights and ear splitting alarms at unpredictable intervals five or six times an hour from 9 to 3. The lunch break only made it worse; just when you felt like you were recovering from the traumatic ordeal, it started again without warning. I'm not exaggerating when I say that the experience could have been modified and used as torture. Physically and psychologically it was so draining that I honestly can't believe they allowed the testing to go on in an occupied building. We should have left, but there's too much to be done to get ready for the kids.

And bless their hearts, it was the kids who came to my rescue tonight. We had our open house for sixth graders from 6:30-7:30, and when I left school at 4, returning to that building was the last thing I wanted to do. I had to, though, and it was still with a bit of a headache that I dragged myself into the theater at 6:25, but there must be something magical about eleven year old energy-- by the time I waved good bye to the last family, and for the first time since June, I had my teacher groove on, and  I felt completely revived and excited about the new school year.

Where Are You From?

I never know how to answer that question. I was born in the District of Columbia, moved to south Jersey at four, Saudi Arabia at 13, went to boarding school in Switzerland, college in New York, grad school in Norfolk, and now here I am, back in the DC metro area again. The truth is, I was born here and have lived here since 1989, but I wouldn't say I'm from here. Even so, twenty years is time enough to put down some roots, and that was evident to me tonight.

Teaching in the community where I live and have family has been exceptionally rewarding to me. Over the years, I've taught the children of my friends and neighbors and three of my nephews. Tonight, we had our annual open house for rising sixth graders, and I was moved at the pre-existing connections I felt to so many kids and families. There were parents I hadn't seen in six and eight years bringing their youngest child at last to middle school. Lots of other siblings and cousins and friends of former students went out of their way to tell me that they knew me and they were excited about the coming year. One of my colleagues realized that she and the parent of one of the kids went to our very school together nearly thirty years ago.

The two new teachers on the team both stopped me afterward to say what a remarkable event it had been. We open our doors on this night before school starts in order to allay the anxiety of parents and children who are making a big educational transition with new expectations and requirements, but tonight, for me, it was a testament to the power of simple human connection, even if I'm not from here.