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.

Public Speaking 101

Thanks to our fearless governor for providing the following stellar examples of what NOT to say at a press conference:

Repeat Yourself

“It is the height of stupidity and the height of selfishness for any citizen to stay in Ocean City and put a burden on and risk the lives of first responders by being foolish, being stupid, or being selfish,” O’Malley said.

Run On … and On

“This is a mandatory evacuation order. It is not something that the mayor of Ocean City or I have ordered lightly. It has not been done in modern times and people need to get off the island of Ocean City and not be a burden to their fellow citizens or to first responders who are going to have plenty of other important work to do.” 

Meanwhile, my wise and selfless in-laws are safely inland, dreading their next trip to the beach.  In Baltimore, we’re preparing for several days of rain, some heavy winds and possible loss of power — nothing like what the coastal population will face.  Our thoughts and prayers are with them.

The Endless Summer

My school raised several million dollars for a major addition to the building, which was to take place over the summer.  Anyone who’s ever observed an ongoing construction project knows that deadlines are seldom met, so when the first day of school got pushed back several times, now holding at 10 days later than the original, our gleeful gratitude far eclipsed our shock.  However, the gift of a week and a half, just when I’m starting to get depressed about all the things I didn’t accomplish this summer, is nothing to sneeze at.  Here’s my plan:

• Clean the house from top to bottom.
• Organize all the junk in the basement.
• Sell one or two more unused pieces of furniture (I’ve had pretty good luck with Craigslist, despite a preponderance of flaky people who simply stop responding when they’re no longer interested.)
• Weed the gardens and harvest remaining produce.
• Go through my piano and vocal music; purge and reorganize.
• Catch up with friends I missed all summer. 

The real surprise? An earthquake that unleashed widespread devastation in the area this afternoon.  We’re slowly digging our way out from all the havoc.

Beginnings and Endings

The temperature on my dashboard reads 98, but the heat index adds another half-dozen degrees, and the infinite combinations of repositioned windows and air vents do nothing to make the car more comfortable.  I lean forward, away from the baking seat, as my fingertips gingerly grasp the wheel.  I am thankful, more than usual, for a blessedly brief commute.

The school is a sauna, and yet Sister Adele smiles cheerily at me from beneath multiple layers of black.  She is always smiling, and she knows my name; we are friends even though so much separates us, even though our private conversation has been limited to a few sentences.  She urges me to stay cool.  The development office is capitalizing on the heat wave, urging contributions to the fund that will provide us with climate-controlled classrooms in the fall.

And the students want to order pizza.  Piping hot pizza, dripping with melty cheese.  I feel as though my face is made from melty cheese this morning.  But it won’t stop: please, Mrs. Lowe?  PLEASE?!  I laugh and remind them that it’s 9:30 in the morning.  Still, they beg, lapsing into injured silence only when they’ve checked all the websites to ensure this really isn’t a possibility.

The first line of Valery’s paper reads, “Mrs. Lowe, before you say anything, I really didn’t like this story’s plot!” Of all the fiction pieces we’ve studied this year, she has chosen to analyze the one that brought me, by far, the most grief: a Cortazar short story in which the protagonist vomits bunnies.  (Why is everyone suddenly staring?!)  It’s brilliant writing, and although not the sort of thing I would seek out to read more of, I think it’s important for them to read as part of the mind-broadening experience that education should be.

She grudgingly admits that the epistolary style of the story drew her in, and that the hypnotically bucolic descriptions of the narrator’s surroundings contrasted nicely with his own deteriorating mental state.  I remind her that I selected the story, not because it’s my favorite, but because I thought it was important for them to read a wide variety of work.

She nods, then looks at her lap and forces the next sentences out with some difficulty.  “I wanted to tell you I got a 10 on the essay last time I took the SAT.  I think this class has really helped me to be a better writer.”  I lock in this moment, and the ensuing high-five, for the next Bad Day, which will come — I know it will.  For today, I am deeply gratified.

The next class has ordered pizza; the promise was locked in last week following a well-orchestrated campaign of badgering, and after a year of forgotten textbooks and homework assignments, every single student has remembered her four dollars to ensure she was fed today.  This small irony joins the greater one — this class, the one I didn’t want because of scheduling, that meant I had to stay later and chaperone a dreaded Study Hall and adjust my lesson plans all year long, is full of students I have grown to love, whose thoughtfulness and observations are inspiring even on the days I’m most tired.  Sometimes God has to force blessings upon us, and I’m glad He was persistent with this one.

My husband arrives with our food — salad and wings for the gluten-free, pizza for the rest — and the girls chorus hello, then fall shyly silent, then laugh at their own childishness and grab plates.  Rob and I hang back, sweating visibly in the haze.  Before long we are all laughing at a re-dramatization of one of my students’ recent escapades involving a baked potato, aluminum foil, a microwave and a broken window.

I drag myself back later that afternoon to sign my contract for next year, and while I wait I chat with three colleagues, about the future and past of this school.  I’ve seen more changes in my six years there than I ever could have imagined the day I walked in the door of a classroom with no computer, no projector, no air and a buckling carpet that tripped any hapless students who wanted a brief respite at the water fountain.  It was a day much like this one, my first day in the classroom: hot, humid and uncomfortable.  But then, it was a strange land, and now, it feels like home.

My principal calls me in, and she tells me they couldn’t give me the classes, load or schedule I wanted.  We are honest with each other about our mutual disappointment and the frustrations of part-time teaching.  I tell her that I can’t imagine the magical hair’s-breadth choreography that squeezes too many students and teachers into too few spaces, year after year, and in the end, I am grateful for this job.  I am grateful for any job at all.  I am learning to be grateful.

I sign my name on the line.  So begins, and ends, another year.

After the Rain(s)

Boy, whomever coined the rhyme about spring weather was right.  We got a load of mulch delivered in late March, and between the storms and a broken wheelbarrow have only distributed half of it.

But the rain does some amazing things, too.  When the snow finally melted, I thought of Garrison Keillor's line, that it looked like a herd of buffalo had wintered in our back yard: it was a muddy, soggy mess.  Scarcely a month later, the colors are astounding.



Yes, the bush covering the window is out of control, but for very important reasons we can't cut it back just yet!