Apparently I am as
distractible as my students.
It’s not my fault; I blame
it on the windows. It has been months
since I had windows at work, and, before that, I was inside the construction
zone watching the new gym being built.
But now … now I have windows.
Real glass windows that open.
Well, they sort of open and they sort of close (as long as I ride on
them ala Spiderman with my feet firmly on the bottom sashes).
Sometimes I wander over to
the windows during class and gaze outside.
From my room I can see one of the sixth grade wings of classrooms, the
leach field with the sewer cover, the back parking lot, and a little area of
green grass. Today when I look outside,
I see younger science students wandering around with clipboards doing some kind
of field research.
This is not the strange
part, though. The strange part comes
from the boy in the neon green shirt.
While I am wrapping up the
class right before lunch, I happen to be near the windows again. I look outside and see yet another science
class scouring for soil samples. I am
just about to tear my gaze away when a boy in a neon green shirt starts
dancing.
That’s right: Dancing.
His arms circle in front
of himself in one direction while his hips swivel around in the other
direction. He punctuates these mad
gyrations with some head bopping as if he hears music to which no one else is privy. He dances like this for about twenty seconds
before I lose it. I start laughing so
hard that kids in my class jump out of their seats and rush to the windows.
I track down the science
teacher after lunch and relate the story.
She knows, she assures me, and she told him, you know – The Dancer -- to cut it out.
Truly it is distracting being able to see outside again, to watch the
geese take off, watch one of the janitors mow the grass, and watch the football
team walk down the hill past our wing in the building when they’re on their way
to practice after school.
But green shirt dude? He is forgiven… and kudos to him for his
free-form rendition of whatever song was playing through his head at the
time. And I should be forgiven, too, for
clearly this distraction is not my fault; the fact that every single one of my
students has jockeyed for position at the windows is not my fault.
That science student is
the one, the only, the original Sixth Grade Dancing Fool, and it is a performance worthy of observation ... and a giggle or two.
