Meg's Musings

Resuming

It always takes me a little time to get back into the swing of school. I have to regrow a leather skin around my heart. Let the compassion remain, separate myself from their experiences.

Only six days in and I'm wiped. Part of that could be because this is the first time I haven't been "on" since 6:30 this morning.

I even gave a test today. Which means I have to grade it. Which I am not doing because when I grade when I am tired I am aware I am less likely to give kids the benefit of the doubt. So I will grade during my prep period. Sigh.

We're also doing auditions. I hate auditions. I want to cast everybody and it can't be done. So I feel like a schmoo and want to cry with the kids who don't get a part. Or don't get the right part.

It's also all the social stuff. When you have 135 kids running through your room in a day, each with their own set of matched personal baggage and full range of imbalanced hormones, somebody is going to be upset. I can deal with the normal stuff; the student calling me a bitch under his breath, so sure I won't hear, or the one who refuses to control her mouth and therefore has an assigned seat she doesn't like and keeps loudly threatening to skip class--does she think I won't call her parents if she goes absent after a heads-up like that? These things hardly bother me any more--it's the nature of the beast and I like them anyway.

But the crises that go with working in a high school confuse and cut me to the point of tears. What do I say to a kid whose parent has disowned her and is now homeless when she asks who she should have sign her permission slip? What do I do when a kid tells me he doesn't have his homework because he can't read? How do I bridge the gap between myself and the kid who was in English with Robbie Bolanowski when he mentions he'd like me to help him compile video about him? How do I hide that my stomach drops to the floor when another teacher casually mentions two of my theatre kids were in a car that got T-boned?

Thank God he told me they were okay in the same breath.

These are the musings that haunt me a little. How do you answer questions that are always rhetorical?

posted by Me @ 22:47