Holy crap already.
Eleven days out of school (and many weeks before I have to
go back), and I've already had The
Nightmare.
If you're a teacher, you know exactly what The Nightmare is: You're back at
school, in your classroom (or someone's classroom), unprepared, without
curriculum, and you don't have any rosters of your classes. In The
Nightmare, I am teaching my regular classes, English, plus a math class
that has some of my previous students in it.
Teaching two subjects (done it before) and two different grades at the
same time (done that before, too). But
still.
Gave me a freaking headache.
I don't know why this aggravates me. I've walked blind into classrooms lots of
times and pulled curriculum out of my ass with no problem whatsoever. I've scrapped entire lesson plans that seemed
to be crashing and burning and done something completely different and
unplanned. I've also had lightbulb
moments where I expect a lesson to go one way, and I "180" it into
uncharted territory just for fun. Somehow,
some way I always manage to pull it off.
This isn't something that should be giving me The Nightmare.
Teachers usually get The
Nightmare a few days before school starts.
For me, that will (should) be the first day of September or so. For some teachers it happens earlier, in
August when sane people should still be on vacation.
Which brings me to another thing that fries my ass.
Why the hell are
people going back to school in August?
Seriously. Who in their right
mind does this? Folks, this happened
when I was a kid going to school in New Hampshire -- We still had so many snow
days that we had to go to school until the end of June and on occasional
Saturdays. Some of my fondest memories
are of Saturday school. Sure, we had to
be there, but since it wasn't a "regular school day," we made puppets
and had shows and threw parties. It was
grand!
Look, I don't want to start the school year before Labor
Day. Period. This bullshit about getting out earlier in
June is just that: Bullshit. It's too bloody hot to start school under
those conditions, whereas ending it in 90+ degree heat is fine because the kids
shut down after the mandated state testing, anyway. And it just gives the superintendents more
opportunity to have fake snow days, like the "hurricane" day we got
because the winds topped 30 mph, which they do on a normal day, anyway. Or calling a snow day the night before when
it hasn't started snowing yet … and it never does. It is complete and utter bullshit.
Now … now I'm getting The
Nightmare around the Fourth of July.
Sonofabitch.
Way to ruin my damn summer.
It's not like I don't know what I'm doing the first day of school; I'm
doing the same damn song and dance I do every year. As a matter of fact, this is probably the
least amount of school work I've had to do out of any summer I've ever had
off. I'm usually rewriting curriculum or
prepping new readings or re-inventing the wheel. But this summer I am concentrating on me --
reading what I want to read; writing my ass off for pleasure instead of unpaid
hours for the school district.
In other words, this should be The Nightmareless Summer, if anything at all.
Perhaps that's why The
Nightmare struck so early this time.
Perhaps it knows it is truly defeated, and it's attempting to manifest
itself deep into my brain and cause me undue agida. Well, I am getting the very last laugh this
time, Nightmare, because the only
thing you did (other than give me a very short-lived headache) is create
wonderful fodder for my writing and become a mere entry in the blog that will
long outlive you and your scare tactics.
What's that line from Desperado ---
"You wanna play? Let's
play."
