Teaching sometimes can be like juggling

A spider repelled from the classroom ceiling this week during a reading assessment, while the wind was blowing and there was indoor recess.

It’s tricky to know what to do with a spinning, repelling spider in the middle of a reading assessment in a group of 60 kids, most of whom are working hard at being on task. That little spider, which I gently folded into a paper towel and removed from the classroom influenced by a few quietly whispered voices, “Don’t kill it Mrs. Powell!” is really a metaphor for the everyday antics that teachers around our country perform every day.

Teaching is a lot like juggling. It really is. And while I’m pretty sure all grade levels have their own set of evils, I’m relatively certain that multi-tasking reaches circus-like performance levels in the average elementary classroom.

At least it feels that way sometimes.

From the moment I walk into the school building each day, my mind begins to race with the pieces and parts that must be put in place to make the classroom run like the well-oiled little machine it is. There are copies to be made, student desks to be moved, parent phone calls to return, e-mails that need answering and floors that need tidying up. Books need to be pulled out, daily materials placed on student desks and daily specials schedules that need to be changed.

The bell always seems to ring far too soon and then there are the kids to greet just outside the classroom door. Some come trudging in with huge turtle-like backpacks weighing them down. Others spring in, jack-in-the-box style, ready to take on the day.

They all get a morning hello and some practically throw themselves at you with hugs and stories of what happened last night. Showing concentrated listening while walking with a cup of coffee in one hand, a note from another child’s parent about taking a different bus in the other, smiling at the students heading to other classrooms and nodding all the while to show you are listening to the one who is talking to you is no small task. I challenge any circus ring leader to do better than an elementary school teacher.

In the past few weeks of school we’ve had an earthquake, a wind storm, indoor recess, a full moon and our first round of intensive benchmark computer testing of the year.

What, more?

How about a power outage in the middle of language.

“Hey, come on kids, we’re Alaskans, we can do this…now, turn to page…”

My eyes are always roaming, looking for the ‘frequent bathroom break magician’ or the ‘chair tipping acrobats’. I’ve gotten good at balancing origami frogs and tiny cars carved from erasers and assembled with paperclips and glue on top of my teacher’s manual as I walk through the class teaching social studies.

True to their form though, just when I least expect it, the kids will stop me dead in the middle of my multi-tasking.

They’ll slow me enough to make me forget the numerous tasks and duties, expectations and responsibilities.

This week it was Kennedy who did it. She stood in the spotlight and a hush fell over the crowd as she proclaimed cantaloupe to be one of the major animal food sources of the Plains Indians.

In my head, all I could hear was, “Oh give me a home, where the buffalo roam and the deer and the cantaloupe play.” The classroom burst into laughter and through my own giggling I pointed out to Kennedy that although they sounded similar, it was antelope, not cantaloupe that were a major animal food source of the Plains Indians.

These are the moments teachers lives for; these magical, memorable moments. The circus music dies down, the multi-tasking ceases to be quite so all encompassing, and the routines pay off. The classroom community is found.

For a few minutes between announcements, repelling spiders, windstorms and indoor recess, a child teaches us not to take being adults so seriously and to stop rushing around so much, but instead to focus on the real show right in front of us. And that my friend is the greatest show on earth.

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