Y is for Yokel

I'm trying to keep my choices for the A to Z words as non-mainstream as possible. My whole plan was to try to renew interest in unused and archaic words so when it came time to pick out a Y word I was kind-of stuck. Many of the slang I found that started with Y is still in use: Yo!, You know?, Yikes!, Yeah, and Yahoo! And, well...those are boring. But I also wanted to be able to relate the word I chose to some story or experience.

And I really can't with this one. Mostly.

You see way back when I taught, there was a teacher I worked with who would call the kids yokels. I always felt uncomfortable with it. Not because the person said it but because they said it to the students. Now, I'm fairly certain that the kids didn't know the exact meaning, but an insult is an insult and they understood that.

I've also heard it refer to locals in a college town, like the one I grew up in and the one I live in now, but there the term was a local yokel.

Although I'm certain that yokel has a place in our vocabulary it is probably the most insulty of the slang words I've picked out and as much as I am a fan for bringing back out of date words, this is one I think I'll pass on.

Yokel is a noun from the early 1800s which means a clumsy, unsophisticated person from the country.

Example: When Luke landed on Degobah, he thought Yoda was a yokel at first.

200

My two hundredth post. It doesn’t seem like a lot. Not really. I meant to write something witty and silly. I thought about listing 200 facts about myself but decided that I was way to boring to have 200 facts. I thought about…well…honestly, the 200 hundred facts was as far as I got before I just kind of shrugged my shoulders, sighed and decided to play Sims instead.

The thing is I don’t know what is wrong with me right now. I’m not in a funk. At least, based on my last funk I’m not in one. I’m not sad or depressed or moody. I feel normal and fine. I just…

Sigh.

Maybe it is because it is the end of the year. The end of a school year, that is. And for the past twelve years I have been living a school schedule. I went from Flagler to teaching. I’ve spent more of my life in a classroom than I have anywhere else and I’m surprised to say I really miss it.

I miss my classroom. I miss my teacher friends. I miss sitting with a group of students and helping them grasp a concept they were struggling with. I miss training days. I miss watching a group of unruly 13 year olds become more poised and mature. I miss 8^th grade graduation. I miss my end-of-the-year breakfasts I started. I miss the schedule, the bells, the fire drills.

I certainly don’t miss testing days that stretched endlessly, minutes ticking by slower than sloth. I certainly don’t miss the high stakes and the pressure put upon teachers by the administrations, district and state. I really, really don’t miss the mountains of paperwork.

The end of the school year has always been celebrated. A rite, if you will, moving from one year to the next, one stage to the next, one level…The end of the year is like a level up. New knowledge, books, attitude and adventure wait. For the teacher, it is the anticipation of a new year, new lessons, new projects, new kids.

Maybe that’s what I miss.

Maybe it is as simple as that. Or as complicated.

Maybe it is a funk.

J is for Juggling

I learned how to juggle out of jealousy. My brother Karl knew how to juggle but the tipping point came when my sister came home from a church function with a new talent. She could juggle! It was a stilted, hesitant beginners juggling, but she could juggle. That was two of my siblings with a talent that I wanted! Patiently, Kirsten taught me the basics she had learned and soon I was advancing to behind the back and under the leg tricks.

In college, I found a magic shop that had a juggling section and I bought myself a set of juggling clubs. On the weekends I would bike to the beach and practice with the clubs in the soft sand. Every time I missed a catch or didn’t turn fast enough the club would plop down into the sand with a quiet plunk. Occasionally, I would gather a small crowd of beach-goers who would watch and cheer me on.

When I first started teaching I threw an extra set of juggling balls into a box for my classroom. I thought maybe in moments of boredom (really in the classroom?!?! HA!) or to make some kind of connection with the kids I might use them. The balls got tossed into my desk drawer and mostly forgotten until one day, in an attempt to fill a few minutes at the end of class, I took them out.

“Hey, guys,” I called, “We finished up early, so yay you! But we still have just a few minutes. If you can chill out and sit still I’ll show you something.” With lunch looming the next period and all of their work done, it was like asking a pack rabid dogs to please stop biting my face off.

I took out the balls and started juggling. A few kids around my desk stopped talking and looked to see what I was doing.

“Check out Ms. M- guys!” John* called out his deep voice booming over the talkative students.

My 8^th graders that year were a fantastic bunch. Highly personable, intelligent and funny, they liked to joke around and pull pranks. I didn’t mind throwing a joke their way either. The entire class became enraptured with my juggling. I showed them a few tricks. And they peppered me with questions.

“How’d you learn that?” Mary asked.

“At school,” I said.

“You went to Clown School?” Tommy asked his voice rising in excitement.

With a small smile, I nodded. I couldn’t help myself. He seemed so excited about the prospect that his teacher went to Clown School.

“Hey, guys! Ms. M- went to Clown School!” Tommy another boy now crowding around my desk called out.

“Why are you teaching us then?” Tony laughed, “Why aren’t you in the circus or something?”

“Well,” I said trying so very hard not to burst out laughing, “I dropped out of Clown School. You guys know how clumsy I can be when I wear heals, right?”

A few kids laughed and nodded.

“Well, I kept tripping when I wore those big shoes.” I sighed.

“You’re making that up!”

“No! Really! Have you seen clown shoes before?” I asked earnestly. “And besides, I really hated applying all that make-up! I could never get it right.” I shook my head with feigned sadness.

“That’s right,” Shauna said, “Ms. M- never wears make-up. She told me she didn’t like anything near her eyes!”

I nodded. “That’s true.”

The bell rang and kids grabbed their bags, tucked their chairs in and herded towards the door.

“You really dropped out of clown school,” Colin asked quietly as he walked out with me.

“Sure did,” I smiled at him as I ushered him out of the door.

After lunch the next class shuffled in and we got to work. About fifteen minutes into class the Colin burst into my room.

“Ms. M- you lied!” he called me out.

“What?” I asked innocently. “I didn’t lie!”

“We asked Ms. S- about what you said! You said you dropped out of Clown School! Ms. S- said they kicked you out!” He stood in the front of my class, hands on his hips, frowning at me. “Why’d you get kicked out?”

I looked at the floor for a second to regain my composure.

“I don’t like to talk about it,” I told him.

“HA!” Colin laughed. “You got kicked out of Clown School!”

It became a tradition for my co-workers to continue the story and build upon it. Each year, from that year on students would ask me about my time in Clown School and my reply was always the same.

“I don’t like to talk about it.”

But I always juggled for them when they asked.

*All student names have been changed.

All Of A Sudden

School has started and my Summer of Bumdom has come to a sudden halt.

All of a sudden, I have to do things again…Make lunches, iron clothes, do laundry in a timely manner, make sure the children are clean, check homework, sign planners, write lesson plans…my days have gone back to unending.

All of a sudden, there aren’t enough hours in the day and every little thing seems to manifest into a much larger problem than one would image. Minor insignificant things like food consumption become monumentous*.

All of a sudden, getting out of bed and eating breakfast, once a leisurely activity involving giggles and morning tickles, has morphed into a bleary-eyed stumble down stairs and into walls kind of affair. Making lunches demands forethought and planning at an hour far too early for either. Let us not even discuss the chaos that is dinner!

All of a sudden time becomes important and I am once again telling time by PBS morning cartoons. Between the Lions becomes “Please do not take 30 minutes to eat half a cup of cereal” time. Maya & Miguel becomes “go get dressed right now or else” time. Arthur becomes “Do you have everything together cause we’ve got to go right now” time.

All of a sudden, everything is a big rush.

All of a sudden, I realize once again how precious every little moment is…reading Cyra a story at bedtime, tucking Ashleigh in after she’s already asleep because she is “too grown-up” for tucking in, playing a card game after dinner…

It is these moments, of course, that all of a sudden, I remember mean more than what they are.


*Yeah, I made up a word, but that’s okay because I have a degree.

Untitled - March 22

Death is never an easy thing to deal with, but I imagine that it is easier to accept when a person has lived a full life or spent a long time fighting an illness. But the death of a young person…I can’t even imagine it. And yet today, I faced it.

One of my former students was shot in a drive-by on Saturday. Out for a drive with her sister and cousin…In the wrong place at the wrong time…

She was 16.

She was one of the truly nice students I have had the pleasure of teaching over the years. She was a sweet girl, friendly and outgoing.

To her family, my heart and thoughts go out to you.

Testing the Teacher

The Sixth Crazy!

I’m a pretty easy-going teacher. For all of my complaints, my kids are not criminals and in most cases, not delinquents. I could be in a worse school. And my advanced kids are typically good kids, albeit sassy smart-asses, but good. On Thursday, I had my 5th period advanced class working on an article about Elizabethan England, part of their mini-unit on Shakespeare. Now, Shakespeare is not really in the curriculum for 8th grade, but it is in 9th. My feeling is that if they get a little background knowledge on Shakespeare, they will be better prepared for the full Shakespeare unit in 9th grade.

So, they were reading this article when one of the kids, Z, asks why I am making them read. I say "well, I told you I’m preparing you for next year. And besides, you might see this on my end of quarter final." Well, that prompted a bunch of the kids into this, “You wouldn’t test us” mode. Now, I don’t give many test. Most of my curriculum is about writing so their big grades are writing projects, but an occasional test is not unheard of. Anyway, this conversation quickly degraded into a group of four boys, betting that I wouldn’t give them a test the next day. I said ok, you want a test, you got it. Then they proceeded to up the ante by stating that I wouldn't give them 50 questions. This prompted another to state that 50 would be too easy. In no time they talked themselves into a 150 question test with an essay.

Sound unfair? It was, but I said, okay, you want a test, you got it. They didn’t believe that I would do it, so now I had something to prove. First, don’t mess with me. Second, I keep my word. I was up until about 1 am writing this wicked fill in the blank/short answer test. Unfortunately I did not have enough material to get to 150 questions. I got to 110.

I went in yesterday, made copies and awaited 5th period. They all filed into class. They had heard rumors from their other teachers that I did indeed have a test for them. The first few in asked if I really did have a test. I held up the stack.

“Testing mode,” I told them and obediently they turned their desks from groups to rows and sat down. They took out pens and pencils. They waited.

“Ok guys, here’s the deal: I do not have a 150 question test for you.” My ringleaders smirked. I waited a second. “I was only able to come up with a 110 questions.” Mouths dropped. “I didn’t want to end up just repeating questions, and I was up pretty late so, well, there you go.” I continued the instructions, including the instructions for the essay question.

Eyes got wide. Smirks fell. Hands tentatively went into the air. I called on A.

“What if we don’t finish?”

“Well, I guess that would be a problem for you, huh?” I smiled. “Do the best you can. You may start as soon as you get the test.” I handed out the test and as the kids flipped though the seven pages, they kept glancing at me as if waiting for me to get to the punch line.

When I said nothing more, they heaved a collective sigh and began working. All except Z. When he got his test, he clearly, boldly, loudly (how many more adverbs can I add here?) said, “I’m not doing this,” put his name on it and turned it over and sat there glaring at me as if he were a matador staring down a bull. But a Taurus has nothing on a Leo in terms of stubborness.

Ok, I thought, you want to play hardball…we’ll play. I set the timer for twenty minutes. Meanwhile, all the other students were working as quickly as they could to get as many finished as they could. Twenty minutes went by the only way it could during a test, crawling like a lame animal for shelter for the teacher, and flying by like an supersonic jet for the students.

When the timer went off a number of the kids looked at me horrified. I said, “Ok, for those of you who had the foresight to bring your notebook with you, as you are supposed to do each day, you may take it out and use your notes to complete the test.” Z glared even more. Guess who didn’t have his notebook?

The test continued. Z glared. It was a matter of principle now. Who would break first? Who would prove the point?

Twenty more minutes went by. I called time and collected the tests. After I had all the tests I addressed the kids.

“Now, how many of you think it was unfair for me to test you all when this whole thing was started by Z, D, D, and T?” All hands went into the air including the four troublemakers! I said, “You’re right. It really wasn’t fair; however, I made my point, right?” Heads nodded. “Good. Now, for those of you who attempted this test, even though it was unfair, for each correct answer you will receive extra credit on your end of quarter exam.” Smiles, except for one. “Now, I’m going to grade these, record your points and give them back for you to correct and use for a study guide for the end of quarter final. And if you turn this back in, corrected, on the day of the final you will receive additional points.”

The bell rang and students looked at me to dismiss them. I let them go, reminding them about the second part to their test to be completed at home and turned in on Monday: a brief summary of one of Shakespeare’s plays.

Later on, while I was outside with my 3rd period class doing art fest stuff, Z came up to me and apologized for "being a jerk." His words, not mine.

Exeunt stage left, pursued by homework.