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Teacher Magic

Teacher Magic

by | Mar 18, 2013 | Out and About

Teacher magic

Last Thursday I went back to school for the first time in a long time. A former teaching colleague had asked me to represent the world of professional writing at the local high school’s career fair and then speak to some English classes after that. Due to a scheduling snafu that can be blamed on my calenderally-challenged brain, I arrived an hour and a half late for the two hour career fair.

That’s a story for another post–except for one thing.

Flustered by my late arrival, I totally forgot Thursday was the last day of school before spring break and a short day at that, due to parent-teacher conferences. If that realization had dawned earlier, maybe I wouldn’t have been so discouraged by the lack of response from the first two groups of students. To say they weren’t impressed by the life of a writer would be an understatement. They were a hard crowd, and I flopped. Miserably. During the passing time before the last class arrived, I finally remembered. The kids are just marking time until spring break.

So when the class settled in, I asked, “How many of you are counting the minutes until spring break?”

Every hand went up.

“Well,” I leaned toward them with a conspiratorial whisper, “If you’ll just pretend you’re interested in what I say, I’ll let you in on a little secret.”

They leaned toward me.

“Every teacher in this building is counting the minutes, too.”

They laughed.

I glanced at the clock on the wall. “Do you know exactly when in the sweep of the second hand, the dismissal bell will ring?”

They nodded.

“Would somebody in the back of the room wave one minute before it rings, so I can finish and you can get out of here right away?”

Everyone in the back row gave a thumbs up…and we were off.
They asked questions, one after another.
Good questions.
Perceptive questions.
They laughed at my jokes.
They cracked a few jokes, too.
They talked about their writing likes and dislikes.
Their eyes sparkled.
Their faces glowed.
The magic was so strong,
we were all surprised when the dismissal bell rang.
Most students headed straight for the door.
But several stopped to say thank you.

I left the building with tired feet, a renewed appreciation for teachers, and a memory of why teaching had been my chosen profession for 25 years. It feels good to connect with students again, to hear them share their ideas, to see their potential, and to urge them to follow their dreams and use their imaginations.

When a teacher gets her mojo back, she can work magic in young lives.

photo credit: www.freedigitalphotos.net

Family History

Family History

by | Mar 7, 2008 | Family

This week has been a strange one. One reason is that our daughter is home for spring break. A lot of my time has been concentrated on her rather than on my writing and the change in routine is making me a little crazy. Another reason is this unrelenting cold weather.

I’m bound by an oath not to complain about the weather so I won’t. Instead, I’ll make a few casual observations. First, my brother and his wife married twenty-one years ago today. As we showered them with rice outside the church in Clear Lake on a sunny Saturday afternoon, the well wishers were in shirtsleeves.

Second, my dad died eleven years ago this week. So that many years ago today, our family spent the afternoon at the funeral home. My daughter and her two cousins (ages 8, 8, and 4 at the time) stood outside the funeral home in their light, spring Easter dresses greeting mourners with the following information. “Go this door if you want food or need the bathroom. Go through that door if you want to see the body.”

The girls were a big hit. So was the food and the bathroom and the body. The weather was a big hit, too, especially for the grave diggers. I’m sure they appreciated the fact that the frost was already out of the ground in 1997 since they ended up digging two graves for Dad. On their first try, they dug in the wrong spot and found the ancestor, buried in an unmarked grave, in the exact spot our elderly relatives said he was. Nice to know our family history is accurate.

Because of our family history, I know this March has been uncommonly cold, except for the short lived spring break up this past Sunday afternoon. Even my Alaskan husband, who turns fifty-two tomorrow and has gotten used to grilling something tasty on his birthday, thinks the winter has been too long. But we’re a tough, Iowa family.  We’ll survive. So far this winter we’ve weathered numerous ice and snow storms, the housing debacle and the 2008 caucuses. We can survive a few more challenges while we wait for spring.

Losing an hour of sleep to Daylight Savings Time? Piece of cake. Hiding Easter eggs in the snow with the holiday so early this March? Not a problem. But don’t get any grandiose ideas about scheduling Easter sunrise services outdoors this spring.

Our family’s tough, but we’re not stupid. And we’ve got the history to prove it.