Everyone Has Their Toes Out

Today one of my slower, sweeter students walked in early. She cast her eyes around the classroom, and then glanced appreciatively at my feet.

“Everyone has their toes out,” she observed.

Yes, my toes are out. And my legs in sundresses, aggressively displaying that I am five miles into my half-marathon training and more muscled than is quite feminine in our day and age. And my smile, because the past few weeks have been so good. I told a friend that life’s been too good to blog about, and she responded, “people want to hear about the good stuff, too.” Do you? Do you really?

You want to hear that I spent two days at a SIOP workshop where I learned fantastic strategies for engaging my English Language Learners, that I tried one of them today and the kids were all over the drool-and-pass (my name for it)? That the obvious nugget of wisdom dictating that graphic organizers must get turned back into text hit me with a crack of joy?

You want to hear that I invited teacher friends over for Shabbat dinner and chilling with these people was the loveliest Shabbat ever, even though they kept asking me what food was? Challah and matzah ball soup they knew. Falafel they had to ask about, and babaganoush gave them pause.

You want to hear that a student nominated me for a best-teacher contest at the local mall and I won? That I gave my best doodler and my most inveterate story-writer a sketchbook and a journal after class, and the glows of their enthusiasm stayed with me all day? That my kids spent all Friday deeply immersed in their essays on the atomic bomb, weirdly intent in ever single class?

You want to hear that I spent motzash playing bananagrams with friends at Ben & Jerry’s, that I bumped into my favorite security guard while jogging the McAlpine Greenway, that I’m reading my last George Eliot novel for the first time, that the TFA 2013 corps is creepily forwarding to me the contact information of every Jew or maybe-Jew in the 2014 corps so I can call them and welcome them to Charlotte?

You want to hear that I survived my last TFA session of the year, despite an agenda that listed:

·      Ice Breaker (5 min)

·      Reflection on failure in general (20 min)

·      Reflection on personal failure (55 min)

·      Closure (Reflection on reflection, obs. Mine: TFA fails well.)

And in which I managed not to projectile expel my disgust with TFA catchphrases too violently, though eventually the repetition of “honesty and vulnerability… pushy reflection… fullness to the conversation… move us and our leadership forward…” without any regard for connecting sense moved me to a vocalized mockery.

You want to hear that I attended my first Charlotte Teacher’s Institute seminar on human agency and met a delicious old, ancient, antediluvian math teacher (the only male in the seminar) who tickled every bone in my body with his assumption that because I said things that were intelligent, I’m neither a Humanities teacher nor a Democrat?

  

You want to hear that today I shared my grandfather’s testimony with another class learning about the Holocaust and they stared, open-mouthed, silent, unbelievably fascinated while I spoke, wrapping the magic of something I care about around them and nodding in tune when I laid on them the responsibility to never forget and never let it happen again, anywhere to anyone?

You don’t want to hear the lazy birdsong outside my window, the ice cubes clinking in my sweet tea, the soft susurration graded papers make as they slip onto my carpet, the text alert from a happy parent, the slow click of the clock telling me that it’s 6:00 and I’m done, done, done with every single thing that had to be accomplished today. Now for a jog and a swim and a slow rendezvous with George Eliot on the porch. You see? Too good to blog about.