Five Happy Thoughts

Boy, what a week.  It began with, literally, hundreds of essays to grade; having lost so many days from the beginning of the year, I had no choice but to push everything to the last day possible (and even asked for an extension so I could finish marking them over the weekend and still get a little sleep.)  A deep breath and then we launched right into the second quarter: new lesson plans, new texts, new questions.

I laid down the law about absences and trips out of the classroom, both of which students have more control over than they’d like to admit.  (One student asked me first thing if she could use the bathroom; I asked her to wait. Once I’d outlined the new policy limiting everyone to four trips per quarter, it turned out she didn’t have to go after all.)  Discussing these things is awfully tedious for everyone, but when they’re not addressed, loads of tiny interruptions add up to a vaguely chaotic feeling in the classroom, and ultimately it distracts everyone from our real goal: teaching and learning about English and life.

But there were so many bits of happiness sprinkled throughout all this drudgery.  Here are the highlights:

• ONE father called to thank me for tutoring his daughter, who has several rather severe learning disabilities. We’d been studying techniques for test-taking on the SAT, and when her newest scores came in, the guidance counselors were simply shocked she had done so well.  She was accepted to her school of choice within a day, where she’ll be able to play field hockey (her sport of choice) and get an education with the supports she needs.  “I have two more kids,” he said at the end of the conversation, “so you’ll be hearing from me soon.”
• TWO former students flew at me for hugs and gushing greetings.  “Mrs. LOWE!  How ARE you?  I haven’t seen you in so long!”  A third thanked me for all my help preparing her for the SAT; it was even more of a gift to see how much she’d matured in the intervening years, from an awkward and slightly-sullen teenager into a glowing, self-possessed young woman.
• THREE students who were struggling took the time to complete an extra-credit assignment (seeing a play and comparing it with the written work we’d studied in class.)  They enjoyed the experience and their grades rose along with their confidence.  
• FOUR pianists are progressing by leaps and bounds because they get to work together.  It’s amazing to see how much more they learn from each other than from me.
• FIVE minutes after the bell rang, I dashed into class (my first tardiness of the year; I was blindsided by a schedule change and sabotaged by an uncooperative copier.)  When I entered the classroom, breathless and on edge, every student was sitting in her desk with her book open.  “Oh, hello, Mrs. Lowe,” one called out.  “We’ve just been discussing what we think of Hester Prynne.”

So, you see, it wasn’t all bad.  It rarely is.

Quoth the Students

“‘The Raven’ sounds like a Dr. Seuss book.  Only … more depressing.”

“What’s ‘surcease of sorrow’?”

“Mrs. Lowe, you read that so well!  You should be, like, an actress!”

“I don’t know what literary devices Poe uses in the fourth stanza, but there’s a piece of paper on your shoe and it’s been driving me crazy.”

“So, he’s basically crazy, right?  ‘Cause birds can’t talk.”

“You look just like my cousin, Mrs. Lowe … she’s 5.”

“That made absolutely no sense.  Who’s Lenore, anyway?”

“Plutonian … Plutonian … OH!  I KNOW!  Pluto, like the dog?”

Life Imitating Lit

But the words were hardly uttered, before the smile was struck out of his face and succeeded by an expression of such abject terror and despair, as froze the very blood of the two gentlemen below.

Don’t believe what the students say: Gothic mystery novels are so relevant to my life.  For instance, I completely sympathized with the expression of Dr. Jekyll in the passage above yesterday morning, when NOT ONE student from my class remembered to do her homework or bring her textbook.

Mr. Utterson at last turned and looked at his companion.  They were both pale; and there was an answering horror in their eyes.

Oh, and did I mention this was the morning of my first observation?  For my Master’s degree program?  

“God forgive us, God forgive us,” said Mr. Utterson.

But Mr. Enfield only nodded his head very seriously, and walked on once more in silence.

I would have liked to follow suit, but what I did was calmly allow the students to get their books en masse; then borrowed an armful of copies from the workroom for the students who didn’t even have their books at school; then gave them a five-minute reading period before the lively discussion commenced.

And, for what it’s worth, my instructor was impressed at my handling of a difficult, though all-too-familiar, situation.  “How long did you say you’d been teaching?”

“Six years,” I said proudly.

“So you know how it is.”

Yes.  Yes, I sure do.  It takes a lot more than that to freeze my blood.

Keeping a Sense of Humor

Asking questions always relaxes me. In fact, I sometimes think that my secret profession is that I’m a private investigator, a detective. I always enjoy finding out about people. Even if they are in absolute agony, I always find it very interesting. 

Wally Shawn, My Dinner with Andre

One of my favorite questions to ask, after I know someone’s profession, is about their strangest or funniest experiences in their line of work.  Some people (priests, for instance) are off-limits, but most are very willing to share.  This is how I got to find out about the grant applicant who wanted a new grant for a new car after he wrecked the one the first grant purchased.  And the substitute teacher who came home for lunch and fell asleep in front of the woodstove, waking only when the principal called to ask if she was coming back for her afternoon classes.  And the trail guide who had to patiently explain to a rider that the bears in the woods weren’t out of their cages; they actually lived in the forest full-time.  And the customer who wanted a pizza delivered uncut because of her daughter’s religion, which forbade anything that had been “premeditated by another person.” (And actually, the friend who told me that last story is now a priest!)

My classroom and studio are a mine of great stories, as you well know, but here are two other sources of good material.  First, a blog I occasionally read, because too-frequent exposure would probably cause an abdominal rupture from hysterical laughter, is Dr. Grumpy.  He’s an anonymous neurologist who deals with his work stress by posting story after story of ridiculous patient interactions:

Dr. Grumpy: “At your last visit you tried Feelbetter. Has it helped?”

Mrs. Shootme: “No. The first pill made me horribly sick. I had every side effect I read about, so I threw it away.”

Dr. Grumpy: “But, according to our records, you had me call a refill into the pharmacy?”

Mrs. Shootme: “I was afraid you’d get angry if you thought I’d stopped it.”

Second, Bruce Buschel, the aforementioned contributor to You’re the Boss, has posted a laugh-out-loud list of his favorite “helpful comments” from customers of his restaurant, Southfork Kitchen:

Guest: Why don’t you have wild salmon?
Owner: It comes from Alaska.
Guest: But it fits your profile.
Owner: Large carbon footprint.
Guest: Salmon have feet?

Hey, if we can all laugh about it, it can’t be that bad.

Beyond the Call

Between construction delays, two hurricanes and an earthquake, things were off to a slow start this year, and administrators pleaded with us to be flexible in rescheduling events whose dates had already come and gone before classes began in earnest.  One casualty was Back-to-School Night, which was rescheduled twice and finally combined into one massive evening of upperclassmen, underclassmen and teachers.

The fun part of Back-to-School Night is watching the parents rush around, confused and harried, trying to find the classrooms their daughters use every day.  They take the stairs and arrive, huffing and puffing, with just as much anxiety as the students.  “Am I in the right room?  Did the bell already ring?  What did I miss?”  This is supposed to make them empathize with the students, but I think it has the same effect on us — when we see how difficult it is for an adult to keep pace, we’re a little more forgiving of the children of whom we expect so much.

This year, however, my grad school schedule interfered with the event, and I didn’t want to miss the second class after (due to an e-mail problem) I had been completely unprepared for the first one.  My principal was kind enough to excuse me once I told her I was planning to let the families of my students know ahead of time.  

So I wrote a letter and made sixty copies of it to send home with my students.  Their parents read and signed (and some even added a “Thank you” at the bottom, which warmed my heart.)  In compiling the notes, of course, some were missing, so the afternoon of the event I sat down with the school directory and spoke to about a dozen answering machines and one slightly-confused relative.

For the handful whose phone service wasn’t working (full voicemail, no voicemail, dead end) I resorted to e-mail, sending out a note with the same message: I was sorry to miss them, I had posted a copy of my class policies online, and they should feel free to contact me if they had any questions.  All told, the communication took at least as long as the event itself.

So it was lovely, the next morning, to receive an e-mail from one parent who was grateful for the communication, which she said was “beyond the call.”  She added that her daughter, typically a math person, was “actually looking forward to English this year, so you have made a great impression.”  

Sometimes one little note is all it takes.  This one is going in my portfolio for sure.