Saturday, March 21, 2015
Baton
Spring is track and field season, or so they say. I have never had the skill or competitive inclination to run in oval patterns, jump over mini-fences, free fall from poles or hoist big stones. I am content to participate in less vigorous activities and eat cookies.
Spring is also the season of teacher fatigue. After grinding away through three quarters of hope, mercy and prodding, reality sets in with a deafening thud. Students continue to hand in late assignments, if at all. Class clowns find their audiences ever ready for another show. Copy machines squelch out obscene messages such as "paper jam". E-mail inboxes fill up with lists of students who are traveling thither and yon. The number 2 pencil of standardized testing is replaced with computers, earbuds, passwords and fickle internet connections. And, perhaps the most challenging of all is the realization that there are a few students who might not win the school game this round.
They are the students who go home with us in our heads. They take up mental space as we drive to and from work. They force us to play the "What If" game. What if I moved her closer to my desk, or if I worked with him during lunch or if I called his mother again or if we started a new behavior contract. If, if, if. The perplexing swirl of uncertainty grates away at the bedrock of progress and makes us weary with doubt.
Maybe, it is better to take off the teacher glasses and put on a coach's hat in the spring. The school year is really a lot like a relay race. Students are handed off to us by their guardians and their previous year's teachers. We read the rule books and practice our hand offs, we know how all of this should work. We grab the baton with gusto and begin the run. Run, breathe, run, breathe. Make it happen.
Then the variables set in. Unforeseen slippery spots appear on the track. Headwinds buck our progress. Opposing teams get into our heads. Fingers feel numb to the baton. Legs feel like jello. Self talk turns incriminating. The finish line is nowhere to be found. Give it up, give it up. Gut it out, gut it out. What's it going to be?
Teachers gut it out. We know this race called a school year. Some variables can be controlled and others are out of our reach. We are handed batons of regulation size and we are handed batons that are too heavy or too slippery or too large. We start around the track, believing we can win and resist the urge to look back and ask for a new baton. Win or lose, we chug forward.
And when the time comes to hand off the baton to the next team player, we know that we had a part in whatever the scoreboard eventually displays. Maybe it isn't our turn to have the best career stats. Or maybe the variables will get the best of us on occasion. But, by gumby, we show up and we run. We run with the belief that races can be won and that no baton is ours to keep forever. Pass it on and take a breath.
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