March

March is the horse latitudes of teaching. It is the time of year when the winds of progress stall out and there seems to be no end in sight as we bob along in the ocean of academic endeavors. Something or someone might need to be thrown overboard before our voyage can continue toward landfall. Oh, March, how you try my patience!

It is the time of year when I would love a dollar for every time a student looks at me and tells me his uncompleted assignment is “on my desk at home.” This coming from a student who hasn’t picked up a pencil most of the year during class work time. I am now supposed to believe that said student was overcome with self-discipline when he arrived at home. I’m also supposed to believe that the student somehow ignored the siren song of video games and chose to work at his fictitious desk so he could complete his assignments. Just give me another dollar for every time I dug through a student’s binder, miraculously finding a missing assignment, only to hear, “Hmm, I wonder how that got in there?”  Sigh.

It is the time of year when teachers can collapse into despair (or violence) when the copy machine flashes “paper jam” again. It always happens when one is in a hurry and there is a writhing snake of students on their way to one’s classroom. Choices are made in the heat of the moment and some of them are not pretty. Usually, plan B is launched and the copier is left to scream its message of doom to the next teacher who is in frantic need of a few copies. More chocolate, please.

It is the time of year when developing a new seating chart takes the wisdom of Solomon. Bucky can’t sit next to Sissy because they will talk all the way through class. Sissy can’t sit next Lucy because they are “not getting along.” Bucky can’t be across the table from Juno because Juno has a crush on Bucky and they will be making googly eyes at each other. (This lasts until the next text message in middle school). Zippy has to sit at a table by himself due to “attention issues”.  Juno is passive aggressive so she can’t be placed near the gentle students or she will rein quiet terror in the lives of others. Hard decisions are made. Sometimes it is best to seat non-workers with non-workers so that at least one of them is forced to do something during the next lab. “Special” seats are set up for those who can’t play nice in the sandbox. And, dare I say it, sometimes it’s time for a choose-your-own-partner activity so that the sweet ones can enjoy productivity together and the not so sweet can self-combust on their own.

It is also the time of year when I notice that my “babies” are growing up. They come to me with a fairly low reading on the mature-o-meter. As the year progresses, many of them start sliding over a few notches on the maturity scale. I see a student who doesn’t like to read, grab the sports section of the newspaper I put on the counter behind his desk. He actually turns the page because he wants to find out about his favorite sports team and not just because he knows he is supposed to turn a page every once in awhile so I think he might be reading.

I also get to see a student come bounding into my room with a picture she took of a hawk that had landed in her backyard. She needed help identifying the bird and wanted to use one of my field guides. Other students gather around the photo and spontaneously start sharing their backyard bird stories. Sweet music to my ears.

Yes, dear March, you try my patience. But, I know that the prevailing winds of refreshment are on their way. And they are called Summer.