From the Icy Lake into the Hot Tub
Posted by Heather Harris
Warning: This post is only very tangentially related to gardening. Authorial privilege.
I almost burned my house down today. Somehow I managed to go out the door with a teapot at full, whistling blast in the kitchen despite the fact that I had to walk through the kitchen to leave. Luckily, when I got to work and reached for my tea, the warning bells finally went off and I remembered the pot was now boiling dry on my power gas burner, full flames blazing. I'm a moron. And I have no excuse because I could not have possibly been distracted by thinking about work. I have the easiest class of students this year that I have ever dreamed of teaching. I hear they are the worst behaved group to menace the halls of this, my new school, in many many years. I have no idea what they are talking about. I have spent the last and only twelve years of my career teaching in Title 1 schools.
I have seen a misbehaved group of children make a grown man quit mid-day, leaving his colleagues to wonder where he'd gone. I have seen a misbehaved group of children rip a dead bird to pieces. I have seen a misbehaved group of children tear class charts off of walls and dump a pound of glitter in the sink. I have seen many a misbehaved group, and this one doesn't even make the list, much less rank. And yet I look at my teaching partner's face and she looks nearly as distraught as I did the day a severely mistreated student bit me and clawed at my arm, while another one kicked chairs over in the room because math was hard and a third dumped hand-sanitizer over the uni-fix cubes that we were using despite the fact that he had a one-on-one aid with him.
I'm very tempted to say, "Hard?! You haven't seen anything! You should try teaching in a high poverty school and get some perspective!" But that is utterly useless advice. I'm positive that many teachers have worse stories than I do. That does not change the fact that I felt utterly defeated in my own circumstance, and that my teaching partner feels challenged in hers. All it means is that I've jumped from the icy waters of lake poverty into the warm, cozy bubbles of hot tub middle class, and I'm very concerned that jumping back into the lake later will be most unpleasant. Therefore, I must keep myself strong for that inevitable return, but how?
1, I will set things on fire at home so that I have something to worry about at work.
2. I will hike up 500 hundred feet after I drop the kids off at school and run back down the hill despite shin splints.
3. I will push fifty pounds of pumpkins up the hill in the wheelbarrow with the flat tire just for the challenge.
4. I will plan a new addition to the yard that will require shoveling 5,000 tons of gravel and moving large boulders.
5. I will raise four roosters so that my neighbors will hate me and yell at me regularly.
6. I will listen to my husband's stories about his day in a high poverty school and pretend it was my day (not working)
7. I will thank God for this peaceful blessing, go down the river on my paddle board, take in the beauty around me and soak in the glory of the easiest year of teaching in my life (without a wet suit, in January...)
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| This year's pumpkin haul. Not bad for not planting pumpkins... |
I have seen a misbehaved group of children make a grown man quit mid-day, leaving his colleagues to wonder where he'd gone. I have seen a misbehaved group of children rip a dead bird to pieces. I have seen a misbehaved group of children tear class charts off of walls and dump a pound of glitter in the sink. I have seen many a misbehaved group, and this one doesn't even make the list, much less rank. And yet I look at my teaching partner's face and she looks nearly as distraught as I did the day a severely mistreated student bit me and clawed at my arm, while another one kicked chairs over in the room because math was hard and a third dumped hand-sanitizer over the uni-fix cubes that we were using despite the fact that he had a one-on-one aid with him.
I'm very tempted to say, "Hard?! You haven't seen anything! You should try teaching in a high poverty school and get some perspective!" But that is utterly useless advice. I'm positive that many teachers have worse stories than I do. That does not change the fact that I felt utterly defeated in my own circumstance, and that my teaching partner feels challenged in hers. All it means is that I've jumped from the icy waters of lake poverty into the warm, cozy bubbles of hot tub middle class, and I'm very concerned that jumping back into the lake later will be most unpleasant. Therefore, I must keep myself strong for that inevitable return, but how?
1, I will set things on fire at home so that I have something to worry about at work.
2. I will hike up 500 hundred feet after I drop the kids off at school and run back down the hill despite shin splints.
 |
| Rolo, one of the 4 roosters |
4. I will plan a new addition to the yard that will require shoveling 5,000 tons of gravel and moving large boulders.
5. I will raise four roosters so that my neighbors will hate me and yell at me regularly.
6. I will listen to my husband's stories about his day in a high poverty school and pretend it was my day (not working)
7. I will thank God for this peaceful blessing, go down the river on my paddle board, take in the beauty around me and soak in the glory of the easiest year of teaching in my life (without a wet suit, in January...)
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