I'm a little down tonight. I shouldn't be -- school starts tomorrow, I'm pretty much ready to go, and it will be exciting to see all the kids again. I think I'm a little bummed out for a couple of reasons. For one, I see my free time slipping away. I need and crave time alone, time in the outdoors, time to think and write and take pictures -- and it will be much harder to carve that time out of a day as the school year gets underway. And secondly, our school has a certain frenetic quality with which I am increasingly at odds. Over the past few years, I have done some work on being attentive and in the moment, trying to be more appreciative of whatever is. That state of mind is hard to maintain in a fast-paced school environment.
Tomorrow, for instance. The powers-that-be decided a couple of weeks ago that, instead of a regular day, we would have abbreviated orientation periods in the morning for the purpose of handinjg out books and syllabi and then, at least for the middle school kids, games and discussions in the afternoon. All grand ideas -- except that you can accomplish very little in 15-minute increments with bouncy 14-and 15-year olds who don't know you, are bursting with first-day energy, and are full of apprehension about the demands of the new year.
In each 15-minute period I am supposed to:
*settle down a group of kids, probably half of whom will be late;
*find out who each one of them is;
*collect summer assignments;
*hand out books;
*get them to write their names in their books;
*record who has which book;
*hand out and explain the syllabus;
*remind them that yes, there is a short reading assignment for the next day;
*calm their fears about said reading assignent;
*let them know that I have demanding expectations but am not an ogre; and
*answer at least three questions from each one of them (no- that's not in the offical list; I just know what to expect).
All I really want to do is set a tone of calm attentiveness -- not possible, given what we've been instructed to accomplish. Calm attentiveness may be one of my priorities, but I don't think it's widely shared.
So....back to the last national party convention, when I was in Michigan; back to my early walks in a world not seen by my seminar colleagues; back to the morning when I found myself standing in a field that seemed a sea of spider webs. Spiders live very much in the moment.
Walked today: 3 miles.
5 comments:
Welll...good luck, anyway! Lisa :-]
I was a h.s. teacher in my 20's, and I do remember those end-of-summer blues. Teachers NEED their summer vacations! Those short first day orientation periods seem to be becoming the norm around here, too.
I hope it went well and that the "dread" part has subsided a bit. :)
Oh wow, oh wow, oh wow! (that photo truly deserved three "oh wow's") Fantastic photo.
Thoughts on spiders: they do seem to live in the moment, but they also paralyze then eat pretty much anything smaller than them that ends up in their web. Middle school teacher? On second thought, visualizing spiders might just get you through a bad moment or two... :-)
did you take this astounding photo? if so, all my hats are always off to you. it's so beautiful. i love spider webs. there is an enormous mainly yellow spider currently constructing a very complicated web in the laurel bushes near where i park my car. i'm totally fascinated by the project.
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