Dear Overlooked Teacher,
You did it again, didn't you?
You stayed way later than you should have. You told yourself it would only take thirty minutes. It took three hours. Three hours later, you stuffed your faded dreams and a stack of ungraded papers in your monogrammed canvas bag and headed to your car, a black Prius.
The parking lot was empty, wasn't it?
When you got home, you felt like a zombie, you ate cold pizza, and stayed up late, way too late. You told yourself to open the bag, grade at least one class period's papers. You never did.
You were too distracted trying to find a cool activity on theme to use in tomorrow's lesson. You never found one.
Finally, you detoxed with social media- a few silly memes made you laugh, especially the one with the cat drinking a can of beer.
You kissed your son goodnight. While closing the door, you played a highlight reel in your head of all the ways you are failing as a mother, namely not spending more quality time with him while he is small.
The next morning in the shower, inspiration hit you. You had the perfect idea for a lesson on theme, even without help from Teachers Pay Teachers. All you needed to make it happen was a spool of thread, a penny, a magnifying glass, a roll of butcher paper, and a fatted calf- preferably a female one (but you didn't really have time to be picky).
To pull off the "theme dream," you showed up early (30 minutes early to be exact). You set up a theme chart for each group, taped a penny to each thought bubble, placed a magnifying glass on each table, tried to remember the purpose of the thread and strategically placed the fatted calf in the front of the room as you anticipated your students' befuddled looks- anything to get their attention.
During class, all kids stayed together in one group because keeping up with that quarantine seating chart is a Stephen King film in the making. They tried to write in the bubbles like you asked, but nobody noticed the fatted calf. Go figure.
Between classes you wiped down desks with sanitizer and wondered if you should spray a little shot in your mask just to take the edge off. Thankfully, logic prevailed.
After wiping down desks, you hoped to give your bladder a break. The line for the bathroom was too long. It could wait until lunch. Maybe.
Three more periods with the pennies, thread, and magnifying glasses.
During fifth period, somebody broke a magnifying glass. There was no blood, but by then, you were over the lesson and vowed to never again implement a lesson on the fly.
By sixth period, your lack of sleep from the previous night kicked in and the crankiness of feeling devalued and overlooked was palpable.
You promised yourself to leave right when the bell rang just like everyone else.
And you could have, if you hadn't found shards of glass from the magnifying glass in the floor and if the pennies hadn't slid all over the desks and if the last group had rolled up the spools of thread and taken down the butcher paper. Oh how you wished you had remembered to get two boys to cram the fatted calf into your Prius before the bell rang.
But as it stands, here you are. Another day of an empty parking lot, stuffing your dreams into a small space wondering, "How did I get here? Why am I doing this?"
Then off in the distance, like a mirage in the desert, you see two boys sprinting toward you. "Miss...Miss.. Let us help you." And so you do..let them help you..and before you know it, before you even realize it.
You stayed late again, didn't you?
-CDB