I told people I liked teaching because I liked helping people, and that was true. But there was a more selfish reason I liked it, too.
It was impossible to be in the classroom, fully focused on my kids, and still be worried about my own problems. Teaching made my personal issues fade into the background. It quieted the voice in the back of my mind that endlessly narrated all the ways I didn’t measure up.
It was, frankly, a relief, and I craved the chance to get out of my own head for six hours a day.
I closed the door after my last student entered and turned back to the class with a smile on my face. A smile that faded when I realized Anne was standing right next to me, accompanied, as always, by her clipboard.
“Is that your standard morning procedure?” she asked, her voice once again cool and dispassionate. “To allow your students to roam through the halls unattended until they reach your classroom?”
“Unattended? Roam through—Anne, we have a schedule for which teachers are on door duty in the mornings. You have to know that, for God’s—Pete’s sake. I’m out front on Tuesdays and Thursdays. And they’re not unattended, either, there are always two teachers who—”
She turned away before I could finish reminding her of the procedure she’d approved at the beginning of the year. I inhaled deeply, reminded myself that she was the one holding all the power, and exhaled. I just had to get through today.
Luckily, my kids knew the routine by this point in the year, so they’d already turned in their homework and begun working on silent reading or the writing prompts I’d left on the board. After that, we all gathered in a circle on the carpet at the front of the room to do our morning meeting.
Some people might have thought third graders were too old for that, and would rebel against being treated like little kids. And sure, nine-year-olds could be a little sassy, but I found that when you modeled respect and listening, they blossomed under the attention, and treated each other with the same care.
I liked giving everyone a chance to share something good that had happened to them, and to talk about our goals for the day as a group. Our morning block was reading and writing, so we worked through whole-group reading and talked about what to do when encountering new vocabulary words.
I had to redirect one of my more rambunctious kids, Dustin Leeds, a few times, but we’d worked out a hand signal to use so I didn’t have to break the flow of the lesson. Dustin had struggled a lot with reading when the year began, and we’d spent time working on what to do when he got upset. He’d actually suggested the hand-signal himself, tapping his left shoulder with his index finger, and he smiled and nodded when I used it.
After the lesson, my students broke into stations at different tables and I sat with a smaller group of kids doing more hands-on reading work. Clara Freeman and Jamie Nguyen were each in groups playing vocabulary games. They both loved being the boss of things, so they’d taken charge of reading the directions. Dustin was in a silent reading group, and I smiled as I saw him use his finger to track the words as he read.
I glanced up from time to time as my small group worked through a reading passage, finding the meanings of underlined words using context clues. Dustin got up once to get an eraser, and a second time to blow his nose, but each time he sat back down, he tapped his own shoulder and picked his book back up determinedly. He’d come really far this year.
Halfway through the rotation, Jamie Nguyen got up from her table and walked over to the pencil sharpener. After a moment, Dustin followed her. I watched them for a bit. Dustin didn’t need a pencil for silent reading, but we’d talked about how to take little breaks when he got frustrated, so I figured that was what he was doing.
I paused as the two of them began to talk, but then I heard Dustin say, ‘show you the word in the book,’ and I smiled. He was asking Jamie for help, and if there was one thing Jamie liked more than bossing people around, it was helping them. Dustin started back towards his table and Jamie followed.
I turned back to my group, but looked up again after a minute. Neither Dustin nor Jamie had reached the table, and sure enough, I found them over by the windows, looking at the plants we had growing on the windowsill.
For our science unit on ecosystems, we were learning how different plants grow best in different environments. Since I was also on the committee working to save McIntyre Beach, I’d decided to focus on environments local to the island of Summersea. We were going on a field trip to the beach itself next week, and in the meantime, we were experimenting to see what kinds of conditions different plants preferred.
Still, we were working on reading now, not science, so I raised my voice just enough to carry across the room and said, “Is everyone where they’re supposed to be right now?”
Dustin’s head whipped around and Jamie flushed.
“Sorry,” Dustin said. He pushed himself away from the windows, but his hand caught one of the flower pots and sent it crashing to the floor behind him. It was plastic, so nothing broke, but everyone—Anne included, of course—looked up to see what had caused the commotion.
“Okay,” I said, standing up quickly but keeping my voice calm. “Looks like we had an accident. I’d like everyone to stay in their seats while I take a look.”
I couldn’t stop them from craning their necks, but I hoped I could keep most of them from trampling in the dirt. Dirt which was actually more like mud at this point, since we’d watered the plants yesterday.
Dustin looked two seconds from tears as I reached him. “I’m sorry, Mr. Jackson. I didn’t mean to.”
“It’s okay, it was an accident.” I tried to sound soothing. “And what do we do when we have accidents?”
Dustin sniffled. “Try to find a lesson for the future?”
“Exactly.” I smiled encouragingly as I bent to turn the flower pot right side up. “So, can you two think of any lessons we can learn from this?”
“Not to get out of our chairs,” Jamie suggested.
“That could be one lesson,” I agreed. “But sometimes we have to get up. I wonder if there’s a lesson we can learn for those times.”
Dustin still looked upset, so I continued, “I bet we could learn to be a little more aware of our environment, and to move a little more carefully. It’s not bad to be curious about the plants—scientists are always curious—but scientists are also careful.”
“Did I ruin the experiment?” Dustin asked.
“Not at all.” I said it firmly, still hoping I could prevent a full-blown melt-down. “It was unexpected, but unexpected things happen all the time in science. In fact, I think we can learn something from this.”
I turned back to the rest of the class, who were, unsurprisingly, halfway out of their seats watching our conversation.
“I wonder if everyone would be able to be quiet and careful and join us over here. Do you think you could do that?”
Clearly we weren’t going to get a lot of reading done for a while, so we might as well pivot into science. It still took a minute, but after a discussion about the roots of the plants—which were now clearly visible as they lay on the floor—I got everything cleaned up and the class back on track. I even forgot that Anne was there for a while, until the bell rang and I heard her chair scrape in the back of the classroom.