Last Monday, I embarked on my final semester of college at Anderson-Shiro Junior/Senior High School. To use the word that seems to follow “embarked on” often, it is harrowing.
Each day in December was a brick laid in haste. My shaky house built on presumptions collapsed in the form of 2008-sixth-grade-anxiety days before teaching. Do my students enjoy reading? Will I make connections with the seventh graders? How can I teach both reading and writing for the STAAR in April? How did I even become qualified to do this? The agony of my mental torment. . . my constant state of acid reflux in anticipation for the next 70 weekdays. . . overboiled, limp spaghetti. If I set the time under a microscope, 70 full school days from January 7 is April 26. I finished five days in the span of 168 hours. I measure this with a sticky-note pad of days I rip off. But it’s simply not 70 days. It’s 42,000 minutes of joy, discouragement, full attention, sensitive readers, class clowns, high school cheerleaders, carpooling with coworkers, laboring and loving and pressing onward for Christ. This week, students worked on mechanics and grammar through this online quiz. One question poised confused most students: “What does it mean to defer a dream?” I explained to one student that deferring means putting off something. . . and then I ran and printed off “Harlem” (1951), by Langston Hughes, for her to read. What happens to a dream deferred? Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun? Or fester like a sore-- And then run? Does it stink like rotten meat? Or crust and sugar over-- like a syrupy sweet? Maybe it just sags like a heavy load. Or does it explode? I refuse to put off this semester with sticky notes and complaining and apathy. Even so, I traded my anxiety for joy. I legitimately and utterly and thoroughly love my students. I love my cooperating teacher and staff. I love driving into every eastern sunrise. And I will legitimately and utterly and thoroughly love this semester.
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