The time has come to fill out report cards again. The first time I did this, I was haunted by memories of my own childhood. This time as I fill out report cards, I’m anticipate getting to the card of the turd who called me “bald head”. I applaud his bravado, but I may write something about his lack of effort in his insult. . I wondered, as a child, if the teachers felt a sense of responsibility about the trauma some of us received after we handed the report card to our parents.
The kids settled into school pretty quickly from their winter break. It took me longer to acclimate to the routine of having to put pants on before noon. None of my students left the village during break, so there were no stories to be told. They just marched into the classroom and quietly laid their heads on their desks. I anticipated being a referee to their excitement of being back. Instead I had to try to keep them from falling asleep.
One of the students asked me the question everyone was waiting for: “What did you bring us?” As a teacher, it is my duty to help all of them learn about life. These young, impressionable minds need to see what life holds for them. So I confidently stood before them and said, “Nothing”. They didn’t take it as well as I’d hoped. Actually, they all kind of turned on me. I tried to calm them down by explaining that I needed all of my suitcase space for cheese, butter, and meat. They didn’t care. Then I tried the tactic of turning it around on them. I asked them “What did you get me?” It didn’t work. I started to panic, because all I saw were 14 wolverines glaring at me, waiting for one more lame excuse. I inhaled, smiled and bravely said, “We’re going to have popcorn!” They were fooled by the diversion and I lived to teach another day.
We lost one of our teachers over the winter break. Well, we didn’t lose him; he just went to Montana and never came back. This is something that is common out here. First year teachers will sometimes decide it isn’t worth it and decide to stay home instead of returning. One of our teachers has been here for 6 years and he said this is the 5th teacher here to quit during the school year. It doesn’t take long to climb up the seniority ladder here.
Well, back to the report cards. I do feel some responsibility about consequences from what I write on the report cards. Whatever is written on the card is a reflection of how I did my job the last quarter. If the student didn’t do very well, I have to take some of the responsibility for that. So I’ll work harder on developing creativity in the classroom, because “bald-head” is just too obvious. When I was called “Stink-butt” by a kindergartener, I know their teacher swelled with pride. I just hope Stink-butt wasn’t too obvious.
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