It’s spring and it’s come to this: dancing a jig

I hate spring. I admit it. I hate the wind. I hate the mushy, melty snow. I hate the dragging feet and the whiny voices. I hate the light that makes me want to stay up late into the night. I hate that I hate it all too because I am a teacher, and I should find something to love in every season. I should find something in every little thing to celebrate and hold up before the wonder-filled eyes of my students and proclaim it as awe inspiring and amazing. But I can’t.

Some call it spring break blues, some, spring fever. I just call it fourth quarter. Fourth quarter, that time of year when I peek at the curriculum with one eye shut, and hold it at a distance, silently whispering incantations to the goddess of education to bless me with stellar test performances next month.

In my classroom, I burn coffee in her honor, begging her to deliver me from overdue papers, uncomfortable report card comments and stricter than usual discipline procedures. I plead with her to simply just make it easy for me to get and keep their attention. But she never really answers. Then again, what fun would that be? Where’s the challenge in that? Getting their attention is half the fun, and far more entertaining than any fickle, invisible goddess. I actually did some kind of quasi Irish jig on top of a bench for my students today.

I am just as wily as they are and I am more than willing to do what it takes to get the job done and to pull their focus away from the window and into the lesson, even if that means making a bit of a spectacle of myself.

I know that every job is unique and every job has sets of challenges. The job of an educator is certainly a horse of a different color. As a fifth-grade teacher I combat everything from video-game-inspired writing to rampant waves of giggles and embarrassment over the upcoming human growth and development video (this Friday by the way…sigh). And I find that it’s when things get this real, when we get this strung out, like a sugar hangover the day after Halloween, that my students and I revel most in the bonds we’ve carefully crafted over the past eight months.

So I don’t think I’ll burn anymore coffee in the honor of the education goddess anymore. Let my students gaze out the window longingly. Let them whine a little and sigh when they have to write topic sentences. Let them flop into their chairs and wriggle around just a little too much. And let me do the same. Let me pull shenanigans and crack jokes while I pass out timed tests and collect essays. Let me dance silly jigs on the bench, to quiet them down and make them laugh. Because the bottom line is that we’ve all worked very hard and though there is still so very much more to do, we’re going to make it. We are nothing if not a team.

A glorious, distracted, happy and magnificent team; and that is all the awe-inspiring and amazing we need.

Vanessa Powell is a National Board Certified, fifth-grade teacher at Snowshoe Elementary School. Her Chalk Talk column appears every four weeks