Month: June 2021

Reflection-ish

The three of us sit around a small table near the windows in the back corner of Peter’s French classroom. It’s the middle of the school year, so the afternoon light is dim. Peter, my “cooperating teacher”, and Bev, my Masters supervisor, and I have each filled in a questionnaire about my strengths and areas for growth after my first semester of student teaching. So far, we’ve all agreed on the ratings and the whole meeting has been lovely, but now we’ve discovered an area of where Peter and Bev agree and I am the outlier: reflection.

Peter and Bev have rated me as not especially reflective; I’ve given myself the top rating. No-nonsense Bev is almost incredulous. “I just don’t see it,” she shakes her head. Even Peter, always calm and quiet, looks perplexed. My own expression must mirror his. I struggle for words. I am always, always reflecting. How do I explain? Maybe always reflecting doesn’t count. Maybe I’m doing it wrong. 

We talk for a few minutes, compromise on a midway point for the question, and move on. 25 years later, I’m still reflecting on that moment.

What I’m not reflecting on is this school year. I’ve tried. Believe me, I’ve tried. 

Even as I write this I realize that I taught my last class one week ago today. Is that even possible? I have to check the calendar to be sure. Yes. One week ago. Surely that was a lifetime ago? Or at least a few weeks? I knew that time was spooling out unevenly during the school year, but I had honestly hoped that it might straighten out once the chaos of classes ended. Perhaps, I tell myself, this is merely summer time, delightfully different than school-time…but no. I know it’s not. My thoughts spin.

Reflect! I tell myself sternly. It’s important to reflect. I try the exercise Kate Messner suggested for Teachers Write this week: I go outside and breathe deeply. I close my eyes and try to remember a time when I felt peaceful and whole. Just when I am about to give up, the loud voices from my neighbours’ backyard fade and the oppressive heat lifts just a little.

I am on a cliff on the Aran Islands. I am alone. Though I am nervous about it, I have inched my way to the edge and now only the slate gray ocean exists beneath my dangling feet, only the limestone cliff walls fill my peripheral vision. I have never been so completely alone. I breathe with the sea. I breathe in the sea and the wind that slides up beside me. I am alone alone alone. I think of nothing for as long as I can and I watch the water.

Many thanks to TwoWritingTeachers.org without whom I might be tempted to skip writing altogether.

Something stinks

Pause for a minute and take stock: we’re 14 months into a global pandemic. While my birth country, the US, has decided the pandemic is largely over, my current home, Canada, has taken a more cautious approach: here in Ontario we are under “stay at home” orders. After weeks of socializing almost exclusively with our immediate family, we have all become slightly feral. The stay at home orders end on June 2, and while many are rejoicing at the small freedoms we will begin to re-experience, teachers, students and parents are still biting our nails. In its infinite wisdom, the provincial government has neglected to decide if the re-opening of the province also means the re-opening of schools. They are, apparently, thinking about it. Nevermind that the re-opening is happening on Thursday. They will come to a decision when they are good and ready.

At any rate, it’s not like they can make this school year any more convoluted than it already has been. Not only have we been teaching in hybrid “quadmesters” (the word “quarters” just doesn’t capture the essence of this school year – and some schools have “octomesters”), but also no two quadmesters have unfolded in the same way: we’ve had fully hybrid, hybrid until the last month, fully virtual…. Quad 4 has been entirely virtual up until now, but with three weeks left in the year we may be randomly shifted back to in-person hybrid. Or maybe not. No one knows. It’s a mystery.

All of this may explain Saturday morning. I was sitting in the kitchen playing a word game when something outside caught my eye. There, just beyond the sliding glass door, a skunk was destroying my hostas.

I. was. livid.

I didn’t even pause. I jumped up, ran to the door, and flung it open. I tore onto the back porch, clad in my fuzzy pink bathrobe and old sneakers, unwashed, hair unkempt, and cried out with all the fury of a teacher nearly at the end of a school year, nearly at the end of a pandemic, nearly at the end of her rope: “DON’T YOU DARE!” I shook my fist. “DON’T EVEN THINK ABOUT IT!”

The shocked skunk looked up from its meal.

“YOU LEAVE THOSE HOSTAS ALONE! THAT’S ENOUGH!”

She stared at me. I stared at her. I gradually began to realize that my actions might have been, well, rash. There I stood, a slightly crazed, decidedly disheveled, middle-aged school teacher in a pink bathrobe yelling across the lawn at a rodent on a Saturday morning. Still, we stared. Then she turned around.

Well, let me tell you, I took one look at that skunk’s butt and ran back inside. Behind the safety of the sliding glass door, I seethed. Our cat, Hera, joined me. Together, we glared.

The skunk, clearly worried that the humans of *this* house might be rabid, delicately picked her way out of the yard and left.

The lesson? Do not mess with a tired teacher at the end of an exhausting school year during a global pandemic. The teacher will win.

a trail of half-eaten hostas
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