Twice 16

Last week I turned 32.  The math teacher in me sees numbers in terms of patterns, factors and multiples and for that reason I keep thinking, “that’s twice 16.”  Half my life ago I turned 16.  I’m not sure 32 could possibly feel any farther from 16.  In reading class, we ask our students how a character changes throughout the novel.  In the novel of my life, how have I NOT changed since 16?  Just the thought of it leaves me shaking my head and thinking, “if only I had known then what I know now.”  There is so much I wish I could go back and tell my sixteen-year-old self, now that I’m twice as wise. 

There are so many things I would say…

• Watch out- those morning Mountain Dews are addictive. 
• Stop wasting your money on those bad highlights.  You look ridiculous. 
• There’s no need to be ashamed that you’d rather listen to Reba than TLC. She’ll still be on your playlist when you’re thirty, along with Goo Goo Dolls.   But you can go ahead and nix TLC.
• Don’t take for granted one second of living across the hall from your sister- you’ll miss it in ways you can’t yet imagine. 
• It really does not matter whether or not you have a boyfriend- in a few years, you’ll find out God already has a man picked out for you and he certainly isn’t sitting across the room in English class. 
• Trust your gut without exception or apology- it won’t steer you wrong.
• Don’t worry so much (or at all for that matter) about what other people think. 
• You know those few people you can truly be yourself around?  They’re the ones that matter.  Anyone who makes you feel like you have to be someone you’re not just isn’t worth your time. 

And last, but perhaps most importantly: “Don’t take yourself so seriously.” You know that perfect life plan you’ve got planned out in detail?  Ball it up and throw it away.  You are not in charge.  That’s the part where 16-year-old me would have stopped listening, because that wouldn’t have made any sense at all.  Turns out you need at least double the life experience of a teenager to even come close to realizing this truth. 

Oh, how I thought I was in control- of everything!  My classes, my friends, my parents, my plans, my future, my LIFE; I just knew that I was in the driver’s seat and as long as I kept a firm grip on that wheel, things would continue to go my way.  As it turns out, I’m not the driver and I’m not even sure I’m a front seat passenger; some days, it feels more like a dark ride in the trunk.  But you know what?  The ride is a lot more enjoyable now that I’ve realized I’m not fully in charge of the speed or even every turn.  I wish somehow I’d been able to learn to sit back and enjoy the ride a few years back. 

Of course, that’s not how life works.  You have to endure your teen years to get to your long-awaited twenties… then comes the pleasant surprise that your thirties are even better than your twenties.  I’m counting on the fact that this is a trend, and not just a fluke.  I saw the question posed on social media the other day, “Would you rather fast forward ten years or rewind ten years?” and I simply thought, “Neither.”  Right here is fine… and I’m thankful it hasn’t taken me twice this life experience to realize it. 

Half my life ago I was 16.  I was pretty, smart, and funny and on a good day, I MAY have believed one out of three.  Makes me wonder how I’ll look back on these days when I’m 64.  What kind of advice would that version of myself give for today?  I’m willing to bet the theme would be the same, “Don’t take yourself so seriously.” So for this year, I’m making a promise to my twice-as-old self: “I’ll surely try.”

One Day Closer

We’re coming up on the 100^th day of school.  A couple of Fridays ago, I posted a quote on Instagram that read, “Every day is one day closer to summer.”  Don’t get me wrong- I love my job as much as a person could possibly love their job.  But it was one of those days.  By the time you’re closing in on a hundred days together, they know how to push your buttons.  And more often than not, they can’t resist pushing them. 

It’s that time of year when a classroom starts to feel more like the backseat of a minivan.  They’re relentless: “He touched me.”  “She looked at me funny.” “Somebody stole my pencil.” “Do we really have to do the whole page?” “Why can’t we pick our partners?” “Are we going outside today?”  Our answers are just as predictable: “You’re fine.” “Look at someone else.” “No, you just lost it.” “Yes, and I’ll give you another page if you ask again.” “I let you pick last time and it didn’t go well.” “No, the wind chill is 17 degrees outside.” 

Tomorrow I get my second new student in the past ten days, which will make 29 little people I’m responsible for from 8:00 til 3:00 each day.  To say that it’s constant is an understatement.  Recently, during a spelling test, I used the sentence “I go to the bathroom several times a day,” as an example for the word “bathroom.”  One of my students replied, “I’ve never seen you go to the bathroom.”  Touché. 

It’s easy to get overwhelmed, to feel more impatience than love, and to focus on the less endearing qualities of those twenty-some little people during these bleak days of winter.  (We only had one snow day in January…how did that happen?)  But the truth is, somewhere over the course of these nearly one hundred days, they’ve worked their way into my heart and become “mine” in such a way that doesn’t happen overnight.  There’s something about reaching this midway point of the year that suddenly makes it feel like they’re slipping through my fingers only just as I’ve gotten a handle on who they really are. 

I didn’t realize how much so until the first of my two new students arrived a few days ago.  Suddenly, there was this new person standing in front of me and all I could think was… “Did I get her nametag laminated?” “Do I have a math workbook for her?” “When am I going to evaluate her spelling and reading?” “How is she getting home today?” “Who might want to be her friend?” “Is she going to be a behavior problem?” And at some point, I simply thought, “I don’t know her at all.”  Then, it struck me how much I had taken for granted how well I do know those 27 other little people at this point of the school year… how I can anticipate their next move (good or bad), how I can tell from their face when they walk in the door on Monday morning what kind of weekend it was at home, and how I’ve learned to love each of them for who they are deep inside, even on those days when I have to dig a little deeper to get to the good parts.  

That day I posted on Instagram about every day being one closer to summer was the first day this new student was with us.  It was one of those days when everything that could go wrong did go wrong, and I went home that afternoon feeling like she surely must have felt like she landed in a moron of a teacher’s classroom.  I felt like I spent the whole day fussing at students and messing up lessons, and I wondered if I’d be able to redeem myself the next week in her eyes.  Exactly a week later, I received an email from her mother with the following closing sentence: “She loves her class and thinks you’re so wonderful.”  I’ll admit it made me stop and smile- maybe I’m doing something right with this roomful of little people after all.

So, tomorrow, when the next new student arrives, I’m going to try to remember to stop and smile again… and to introduce him to this couple of dozen little people who I’m proud to call “mine.”  Because even in these long winter days of indoor recess, tattling, and button-pushing, I’m pretty lucky to have them.  Lest I forget...   

Rainy Mondays

When it comes to the list of things we teachers love to hate, rainy Mondays are at the top.  Of course there’s that first thirty minutes of the day when they come in dazed and confused, cold and wet, shoes squeaking and umbrellas dripping, leaving a trail to their desk that someone else is bound to slip in soon.  Those first thirty minutes aren’t so bad… They’re as tired as you are, as cranky as you are, and there’s this overwhelming sense in the room that perhaps if we’re all quiet, we can pretend we’re still in bed and this is just a bad dream. 

If you’re lucky, that eerie quiet and stillness might even last through the first hour or so.  That’s all dependent on whether or not someone slipped in the previously mentioned puddle, causing the whole class to erupt in giggles and suddenly wake out of their rainy Monday morning stupor.  But if you manage to sop up the puddles by skating around the floor with one foot on a paper towel while you collect the never-ending pile of Monday morning paperwork, lunch money, and transportation notes, you might manage to steal an hour or two of peace before the hysteria sets in.

But no matter what, the rainy Monday hysteria will have set in by 10 am.  As soon as they realize they’re trapped in those four walls for the entire day, the silliness and senseless questions will begin.  Every time you stop to breathe, they’ll start to chat, and every time it starts to rain harder, someone will announce it, causing everyone to stop what they’re doing and stare as if they’ve never seen rain.  Heaven forbid we hear a clap of thunder; who isn’t afraid of a storm if it gets them out of concentrating on their work?  And just to be sure, despite the monsoon outside and even if there has been an occasional clap of thunder, AT LEAST half a dozen kids will ask throughout the day if we’re going outside.  Today I actually had another student answer this question even more sarcastically than I would have myself.

You can’t dim the lights to calm them down, because there’s no sunlight to justify the appearance that we’re still accomplishing something.  And if you do manage to keep them calm somehow, that will change when it comes time to walk down the hall, to specials, to lunch, to wherever.  Apparently rain is even more amazing when it’s spotted outside larger doors and windows in the hallway, and we all have to point it out to our friends and sometimes we even stop and stare.  Not to mention the twenty-some pairs of squeaky shoes and the fact that some of us decide to count the line-walking as our exercise for the day and start spinning and skipping as we go.

There comes a point in the midst of a rainy Monday when you realize you’ve gone into survival mode and the day has become an out-of-body experience.  You continue on with the lesson plans and the teaching, but in your mind, you’re already at home on the couch, under a blanket, by the fire, making plans to make Tuesday more productive (with a little help from a sunny forecast).  Thank God it’s that time, and thank God we’ve survived another rainy Monday!  And, most of all, thank God that I love my job, even on a rainy Monday.  Still yet... here's to hoping the next one is cold enough for a snow day instead! :)