My kids are antsy. I can see their little toes tapping and eyes twitching. You’d think they were all about to pee their pants, but no, it is not their bladders that are about to burst, it is their heads out of pure excitement. The bell pierces our ears at 9 a.m. – RECESS. They all start to sprint out of their seats, but I have trained them better than that. Excruciatingly slowly, I allow the girls to line up, then the boys (to try to crush the machismo seed before it will inevitably blossom into a catcalling/sexist monster), and then they are free to scream and act like animals for 40 minutes. UNLESS you have committed a “no no,” and have to spend your recess with me.
This of course is their worst nightmare. They are tormented by the idea of their peers bounding through the courtyard in slow motion, while they sit in their desks staring at my beautiful face and wishing they had stopped talking when I had asked, or resisted that last spit ball. Despite the fact that I don’t get to chat with my teacher friends for the recess period, hearing them repent for what they have done is oh so satisfying. Sadistic? No. Entertaining? Yes. Speaking of sadistic, if I’m feeling really underappreciated, I like to bring the kids who are b-a-d bad outside so that they may watch their friends frolic in delight. They sit by me, and are not to talk to anyone, “just watch what you’re missing.” I like to call this “Kamp Kaleigh.”
While I’m watching my sinners squirm, I like to think about if my teachers from the past enjoyed giving out detentions and other punishments if it was deserved. Since I’m pretty sure I’m not mentally unstable or akin to Jeffrey Dahmer, I like to think the answer is yes.
I was only held in for recess twice, and both times were painful. The more tolerable of the two was in third grade when I couldn’t pass my 7’s multiplication test. The heartbreaking punishment happened in kindergarten after a misunderstanding during naptime.
At Portsmouth Catholic Elementary School we were allowed to play with our Quiet Boxes during naptime. A Quiet Box was a magical shoebox capsule, which held any quiet toy we wanted to play with – as long as we did it silently and in our personal space. This was PCES’s first mistake (The second being hiring a middle-aged, sour ex-nun for its principal). Let’s be real. Expecting five and six-year-olds to remain silent for 40 minutes while playing with toys is like asking Kanye West to stay in his seat at an awards show. It.Will.Never.Happen.
Being the Tom-boy that I was, my box was filled with Luke Skywalker action figures and matchbox cars. On that fateful day, one of my cars lost its wheel and I could not find where it rolled off to. I finally spotted it, lying lonely next to Chelsea Flemming. Everyone knows you cannot roll cars unless you have all the wheels, so I NATURALLY wanted it back. After a successful Morse Code session, Chelsea quietly rolled the wheel in my direction. Just as I was reaching for my missing piece, a mammoth-sized white tenni smashed it into the ground. That was that. I spent the next two hours bawling my eyes out next to the teacher’s bowl-cut assistant. And so I ask you, what’s wrong with wanting all the wheels?
As my kids die from heat exhaustion, I begin V.H.S. (Vocabulary,Handwriting,Spelling). In my class though, it’s pretty much V.S. Cursive is archaic, haven’t you people heard of computers! Admit it, you always hated those kids who ACTUALLY tried to be the best in handwriting class…unless you are that kid. Getting my kids to pronounce our new words is time consuming and very hilarious. If someone walked by our room they would think it was 30 Hispanic whales trying to communicate…
ssssssccccrruuuuuuubbbbbbeeeeeeedddddddd
After a few hearty laughs about how ridiculous we sound, I hit them with horrific news: Time for English. Not much to say about this class, we’ve all been there and probably hated it. Turns out, if you’re a non-native English speaker, you hate it more. I don’t blame them, last week I spent 30 minutes practicing how to indent a paragraph and a large majority of them still indent the second line of the paragraph…I am truly confused.
What I find myself even more confused about every day is math. I understand math about as much as Sarah Palin understands the respective geographic locations of Alaska and Russia. I was overexcited to find out I would be teaching fourth grade until I remembered I cried during a fourth-grade fraction test, and part of the reason I opted to become a communication major was the alluring six-credit maximum for math. I am coming around to those crazy numbers because the kids love it. It’s their easiest subject because there are no English words, just beautiful universal numbers.
Plus, if I don’t know the answer to a question, I pull the old “Class, can anyone help Raul?”
Works like a charm.
The third third is coming soon.
Thursday, September 23, 2010
Sunday, September 5, 2010
The First Third: Frauds, Facebook, Frogs
Depending on the day of the week my angels and I begin our day with some form of impromptu P.E., art or music class. As I am not qualified to teach any of these, these 40 minutes usually consist of a lot of nervous eye shifting and mumbling on my part. Luckily nine-year-olds still think it’s more satisfying to eat the glue than to create a masterpiece.
Watching these kids eat glue, I am reminded of a defining moment of my middle schooling, which became my first insight into the power of media and the repulsiveness of squealers. In fifth grade, one of my friends (we’ll call her Heather) dumped a few ounces of glue on a less-than-popular girl’s (we’ll call her Leigh) chair, who expectedly and hilariously sat in it, and then expectedly and hilariously cried. Now, I did not take any part in this prank, but I did snicker uncontrollably causing Heather to assume she was the funniest person in class (which she wasn’t. This title was held by one Tony Riley). The point is, Heather bragged about this for weeks, months, a whole year, but then in sixth grade she was invited with nine other students from my school to be part of a local-programming shitty-quality talk show cleverly titled, Kid Talk, where a host with gelled hair and a polo shirt asked select students about trials and tribulations of being a pre-teen so they could connect with other angsty pre-teens who were skipping school at 12 p.m. on a Wednesday just so they could catch the fun on air. That show really needed a better producer.
ANYWAYS, Heather was asked by our gelled host, “Tell us about a time you were peer-pressured to do something you were uncomfortable with and how you handled the situation.” And Heather, without skipping a mother f*cking beat says, “Well, once my friend Kaleigh told me to dump glue on our friend Leigh’s chair. I said I wouldn’t because that wouldn’t be nice, so she took the bottle and did it herself.” Well, as I watched this unfold with my classmates on a recorded VHS the day after it aired, my mouth literally hung open. I frantically glanced around making eye contact with everyone in my class who seemed to conveniently forget that Heather was bragging about this deed LITERALLY two days previous during recess. Even Heather herself was shameless enough to look me in the eyes and give me a “how could you be so childish” glare. Leigh never talked to me again after that and I vowed to never become a journalist even though I would eventually receive a degree in mass communication…. People will do and say anything when sat in front of a camera or a recorder, and do it with conviction.
But I digress. After first period I have 40 minutes of a “planning period,” which basically means Facebooking and teaching myself 4th grade science. The kids love science, even though they don’t understand a single paragraph in the book. It must be the pictures and the strange disillusion they all have that they will be dissecting frogs at the end of this year. I’m sorry, but the previous teacher who told them this lie should be banned from education. I can’t even find decent floss in Honduras, how do they think I’m going to produce 30 frogs floating in formaldehyde? Telling these little doe-eyed chiquitos that we are going to do no such thing is the second time I’ve broken their hearts – the first is when I told them no, you will not be receiving candy every time you finish an assignment. Seriously, who is teaching these kids?
Science is refreshingly fun though. The day I was explaining the incredible concept of the chromosome was the first time I had the complete attention of everyone, which is saying a lot. Anyone who has taught knows that never happens unless you’re holding a dead preserved frog.
The second third will come soon...
Watching these kids eat glue, I am reminded of a defining moment of my middle schooling, which became my first insight into the power of media and the repulsiveness of squealers. In fifth grade, one of my friends (we’ll call her Heather) dumped a few ounces of glue on a less-than-popular girl’s (we’ll call her Leigh) chair, who expectedly and hilariously sat in it, and then expectedly and hilariously cried. Now, I did not take any part in this prank, but I did snicker uncontrollably causing Heather to assume she was the funniest person in class (which she wasn’t. This title was held by one Tony Riley). The point is, Heather bragged about this for weeks, months, a whole year, but then in sixth grade she was invited with nine other students from my school to be part of a local-programming shitty-quality talk show cleverly titled, Kid Talk, where a host with gelled hair and a polo shirt asked select students about trials and tribulations of being a pre-teen so they could connect with other angsty pre-teens who were skipping school at 12 p.m. on a Wednesday just so they could catch the fun on air. That show really needed a better producer.
ANYWAYS, Heather was asked by our gelled host, “Tell us about a time you were peer-pressured to do something you were uncomfortable with and how you handled the situation.” And Heather, without skipping a mother f*cking beat says, “Well, once my friend Kaleigh told me to dump glue on our friend Leigh’s chair. I said I wouldn’t because that wouldn’t be nice, so she took the bottle and did it herself.” Well, as I watched this unfold with my classmates on a recorded VHS the day after it aired, my mouth literally hung open. I frantically glanced around making eye contact with everyone in my class who seemed to conveniently forget that Heather was bragging about this deed LITERALLY two days previous during recess. Even Heather herself was shameless enough to look me in the eyes and give me a “how could you be so childish” glare. Leigh never talked to me again after that and I vowed to never become a journalist even though I would eventually receive a degree in mass communication…. People will do and say anything when sat in front of a camera or a recorder, and do it with conviction.
But I digress. After first period I have 40 minutes of a “planning period,” which basically means Facebooking and teaching myself 4th grade science. The kids love science, even though they don’t understand a single paragraph in the book. It must be the pictures and the strange disillusion they all have that they will be dissecting frogs at the end of this year. I’m sorry, but the previous teacher who told them this lie should be banned from education. I can’t even find decent floss in Honduras, how do they think I’m going to produce 30 frogs floating in formaldehyde? Telling these little doe-eyed chiquitos that we are going to do no such thing is the second time I’ve broken their hearts – the first is when I told them no, you will not be receiving candy every time you finish an assignment. Seriously, who is teaching these kids?
Science is refreshingly fun though. The day I was explaining the incredible concept of the chromosome was the first time I had the complete attention of everyone, which is saying a lot. Anyone who has taught knows that never happens unless you’re holding a dead preserved frog.
The second third will come soon...
Thursday, September 2, 2010
A Day in the Life of Ms. O'Donnell
My day begins as I go to slam the snooze button on my alarm for the third time that morning at 5:30 am. About this time my responsibility kicks in and I peel myself out of bed and inch like a Honduran slug down my stairs to make some coffee - "Cafe Rey," to be exact, which I generously dump in a sock like contraption that dangles inside a can of boiling water. I will never complain about prepping a coffee machine again. After scrounging around for leftovers and soaking my apple in Chlorox water, I make a mad dash out the door. No need for a shower - I look and feel as if I just crushed the Boston Marathon record time about 30 minutes later.
In Honduras, everything has its place. The first corner I pass every morning, I am greeted with a "Que le vaya bien!" by an elderly couple enjoying the "fresco" atmosphere in only their underwear. Walking up the cobblestone fourth avenue I can glance through the iron and cement house fronts into their simple and tiled homes - kids swinging around in hammocks, abuelas beating tortillas, young mothers hushing their babies. I'm almost swiped by mopeds and taxis as I weave through all of the bipedal commuters on thin sidewalks. I tip toe past the leashed boxer/doeberman mix, who I'm very confident will break free one of these days. Leaping over permanent puddles, I hurdle past the old man in the white cowboy hat carefuly and efficiently peeling breakfast oranges. One more turn past the grimey and oily autoshop littered with smirking hombres, and I have arrived at last....DAY-STAR SCHOOL.
Despite my body odor bursting through my deodorant like Orcs tearing through the walls of Gondor, I tell myself it will be a fantastic day with a big plastic smile, and wait patiently for my hellians...oops, I mean children, to arrive.
To be continued....
In Honduras, everything has its place. The first corner I pass every morning, I am greeted with a "Que le vaya bien!" by an elderly couple enjoying the "fresco" atmosphere in only their underwear. Walking up the cobblestone fourth avenue I can glance through the iron and cement house fronts into their simple and tiled homes - kids swinging around in hammocks, abuelas beating tortillas, young mothers hushing their babies. I'm almost swiped by mopeds and taxis as I weave through all of the bipedal commuters on thin sidewalks. I tip toe past the leashed boxer/doeberman mix, who I'm very confident will break free one of these days. Leaping over permanent puddles, I hurdle past the old man in the white cowboy hat carefuly and efficiently peeling breakfast oranges. One more turn past the grimey and oily autoshop littered with smirking hombres, and I have arrived at last....DAY-STAR SCHOOL.
Despite my body odor bursting through my deodorant like Orcs tearing through the walls of Gondor, I tell myself it will be a fantastic day with a big plastic smile, and wait patiently for my hellians...oops, I mean children, to arrive.
To be continued....
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