There is something weird going on inside The Magic Tree House. Strange little aliens that look surprisingly similar to My Darlings walk through my door in the morning and create absolute havoc for the entire day. I recognize these children but I do not know who they are. They are distracted, they are noisy, and they act as though they hear not a decibel coming from my mouth.
I am living a scene from Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Somewhere near the town’s limits, there are enormous pods growing cute little first graders that will deceive their quasi-hippie teacher into letting them inside her sanctuary.
They wore me out today.
The day started off badly. Let’s start there and get the whole ugly tale laid bare on the table.
We have a photocopier in the workroom that was manufactured by one of America’s arch enemies, I am quite sure. This thing was sabotaged to work only twenty percent of the time, and sit idle waiting for the repairman to arrive the other eighty percent. It has been kicked, cursed, and threatened to be dismantled (slowly and painfully). There is not an employee in that school that has not fantasized about loading it into the back of a pickup and dropping it off the Ivory Coast. It is nearly useless. The worst part is, we are locked into a contractual lease agreement that won’t be expired until 2057, or somewhere in that range. The repairman is there so often we mistake him for full-time faculty. No wonder he looked puzzled when we tried to hit him up for Jeans Day money.
Back to this morning.
I arrived early enough to steal into the workroom and make copies before the daily flurry of last minute preparation. The line to use The Beast is usually quite long. I grabbed my stack of math worksheets and had run a few copies through when the darn thing started making gasping noises and alarms began to sound, like a mayday on a nuclear submarine. “No,” I thought desperately. No, no, no!! Not AGAIN!” I ran to look at the touch screen. A cryptic warning was flashing on the screen advising me to “Call a service person immediately!” There was scary red wrench in the corner. I knew this terrible vision all too well. The two previous days the exact same thing had happened to me. Yes, that’s right. I, Vonda Dahl, had single-handedly shut down all productivity for the entire school three days running. I had visions of a shunning on an Amish level running through my head. I dropped my cursed arms and groaned to no one, “Not again…”
That was before school had even started. It got worse.
My students were wired for trouble from the moment they sailed in off the bus. I was now doing the unthinkable. I was toying with the idea of leveling threats on a scale previously unwitnessed by first graders of any generation. What those threats were going to be, I had not a clue. That was a minor detail to be worked out later.
I could feel my frustration rising and my patience evaporating. I have never seen these children behave like this before. I spent this day feeling as though I own zero classroom management skills. This was not a great day of self-satisfaction and warm fuzzy reflection.
It never did get any better.
To make matters worse, my reading group dissolved into chaos for an entirely different reason. I like to utilize materials from an amazing website called Florida Center for Reading Research. This site utilizes brain-based reading research and provides free printable materials and activities for every elementary grade level. I had prepared an activity called Digraph Delight. It just SOUNDS delightful, does it not? It goes like this; each pair or group gets three circles with letters or pairs of letters on them. The students spin wheel #1 for the first sound of the word. Then they spin wheel #2 for the vowel that will give them the middle sound. Finally, wheel #3 will give them the ending sound. They are to write down the word created and decide if it is, indeed, a real word.
“I will demonstrate how you do it,” I offered. I got down on the floor with the rest and spun wheel #1. “Sh” was my initial sound. A spin of wheel #2 gave me an “i.” You have got to be kidding,” I thought to myself. “Please don’t be a t… please don’t be a t,” I silently begged it. Spinnnnnnn….. Yeah, you guessed it. Of course the spinner landed on the t. OF COURSE IT DID. “Okay, kids. Yes, technically, this IS a real word, but it is not school-appropriate so we will not use it.” But the genie was out of the bottle. As I sent them off to do the activity on their own, each group managed to ask innocently, “Mrs. Dahl, is sh-i-t a real word?” sigh…
The one bright spot of the day came when another teacher wandered over during our music break (the word “break” is used very loosely here) and spent a few minutes vomiting her frustrations to me. I then returned the favor and vomited mine to her. When the Pod Spawns returned in frenetic fever, she and I were both messy, but strangely rejuvenated. Group therapy does miracles.
I would love to report that there was a golden moment today that redeemed all the difficult ones. There wasn’t. It was a hard day, end of story. But life is like that, I guess. Truly living does not mean that everything comes easily, or that we acquire all of our hearts desires, or that we are never touched by sorrow or disease. I think true living means that we find defining perspective in the midst of those things.
I read a story aloud today. It is a Yiddish folktale of a man, his wife, their six children, and a set of grandparents that live in a one-room cottage. The husband and wife feel cramped and frustrated in their tiny living quarters, so the husband goes to see the local Wise Man who advises Rueben and Sara to bring the farm animals inside to live with them as well. They question his logic, but do as he asks. After a few days of adding a goat, chickens, and a cow into their one-room home, they are nearly insane with frustration. “This is worse!” they declare to the Wise One. “We should not be living this way.” “You are right,” he concedes and urges them to remove the animals back to the outdoors. Immediately, peace and contentment settle on Rueben and his family and life seems bearable again.
A cute tale that conveys a deeper truth; things can always be worse. Not matter how frustrating or overwhelming today’s circumstances are, there is someone, somewhere far worse off than you. Part B of that Eternal Truth is, tomorrow will be better.
I think the root cause of my first grade mania is a shift in the group dynamic caused by two new students. These new faces are not difficult or troublemakers in any sense. No, it is just adjusting from a comfortable, predictable group, to something being created all anew. We are not what we once were. We are morphing into something else, and sometimes that takes a bit of time and a few growing pains. Our Walking Stick insects shed their exoskeletons to make room for their growing bodies. I think we are perhaps doing the same thing metaphorically. We will adapt and grow and find that epicenter of peaceful interaction once again, but it may take a few days or weeks.
“Help me to be patient with the process, Lord. Help me to be patient with the children. And help me to relax in the journey.”
I hope getting there doesn’t require turning a cow loose in The Magic Tree House.
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