Teaching and Learning

I had a teacher anxiety dream the other night. It's not enough with the teacher dreams -- now, they're becoming specific. I have to take off March 20 to go to a meeting at the District Office the next town over. This will be the first full day I've left my students with a substitute, and I'm scared. I dreamed that my sixth period kids were so bad, that when I came back to the school it had been turned into a "reform school"! There was chain link fencing and concertina wire, bars on the windows and a metal detector. All because my students behaved terribly and I wasn't there. Nothing like having a bit of the old Napoleon complex, eh?

We survived the storms here last week. At 9 a.m., all the classes in portables were pulled into the lunchroom. At 10:30 a.m., when the tornado warning was issued, we hit the hallways and hunkered down for over two hours. Some of the teachers set up a rolling chow line and fed the seventh and eighth graders chicken nuggets, fries, meatloaf and lima beans from service carts. The hallway by the gym was nigh impassable, a long, hot corridor of funk created by all the kids who'd been yanked in from P.E. There were rumors of tornadoes. We sat in the cinder block hallways and waited for the all-clear. We were blessed. The kids in Enterprise, a few hundred miles to the north, weren't so fortunate.

So, I'm finally turning the corner into the last nine weeks of the school year. I thought it would never happen, now it's a blur I'm blindly rushing into. I've decided my sixth graders will do some myth and folk tale, and my seventh graders will do the teleplay for "Brian's Song" in the literature book. I figure the guys will get into the football, and the gals will dig the story. There's now a running tally on my board that one kid or another updates every day: 48 days of school left! Nothing to do now but hang on for the ride.

My husband and I were talking about urges a few days ago. He said he had the strongest urge for a cigarette when he was working in the new house that afternoon. I asked him what he did. He said he wanted to go up to the truck stop and buy a package of cigarettes, instead he rode out the storm of yearning. I confessed I've felt the urge, too. I still feel like I'm in the grieving process. I know there are five stages, and I wonder if I've fully moved through "anger" yet. The problem is, I told him, you can't just have one cigarette. "I know it," he said, but didn't like admitting it. It's like being an alcoholic. One cigarette and you're off the wagon. It's not hard falling off, but it's mighty hard climbing back on.

We've been eating a lot of candy. Good thing we didn't give that up for Lent. My husband prefers hard, creamy, fruity candy. I'm a hog for jellybeans. I think I now love jellybeans more than I ever loved cigarettes. "You know that nothing is going to take the place of that cigarette," I said, "but, you still try and fill the hole." That's just plain stupid. That's addiction, a chattering monkey on your back.

Still, I suppose that giving up something that you've grown too attached to has its lessons. The process is shamefully humbling. Staying away from nicotine is one thing. How could I ever take care of the really important things like tending to my own soul? Best to just throw myself into a heap at the feet of someone who's capable, more than capable, and not try to rise on my own.

The little "gourmet" jellybeans are the best. The buttered popcorn flavor is a miracle.