My students tell me I should title my autobiography (a primary source) "How is this my life? A Field Guide to Teaching Middle School on Purpose"
They tell me Chapter One should be "What did I do to deserve this?" and Chapter Two should be "What do you want?"
I am totally ok with this. The students who tell me this have scores of 95%+ in my class.
So I come home in two weeks for Christmas.
I got back to Bullhead from thanksgiving two weeks ago,
roughly. Thanksgiving was great. I love being able to be home and to make a
general nuisance of myself in the kitchen. I even cleaned the bathroom. Yeah,
being home was nice.
There are a lot of things that really make this place
incredible. Red sunrises through my classroom window, making me wonder about
Northeastern Maritime Tradition and Superstition. These absolutely stunning
sunrises reflected in fleeting clouds before the sun crests the top of the
Arizona mountains. It’s pretty great. Being at work so early has the benefit of
allowing some time to reflect on my lesson plans, their effectiveness and the
strategies I can employ to make my class more fun, more effective, and more
relevant to my students. Sunsets, mostly orange and pink, that silhouette the
Nevada mountains and highlight them like a slash across one of my students’
papers. Good friends. Great coworkers.
In a lot of ways, I am truly blessed here.
But it’s difficult, too. Being away is still a daily
struggle for me. Knowing some of the people I care most about are struggling
with things while I’m 2500 miles away is difficult. Not that I think I can
solve these problems, but it would be nice to be able to share them, toss back
a beer or two and talk and just be around.
Feel more effective.
Feel more relevant to the lives of the people I care most
about.
Eric was able to swing by my little apartment in mid-November…that
was nice. It’s always good to see him, good to catch up, good to let him know I
plan to play squatter in his home for some of the short summer. Looking forward
to tossing back a few at Christmas time, by the way.
Colleen will be coming out here with me when I return home
after the holiday. I feel both excited and very nervous. I want to see her
happy…and though this is a TBD (the party goes till ??) amount of time, I am
pulling for her to find the employment she so deeply desires. Weird position to
be in…to want to spend more time with her, but also be pulling for her to land
a job in Nowhere, Arkansas (or any other reasonably named backwoods place in
the middle of nowhere).
Such is my life, and I kind of love it that way.
Incidentally, I recently bought a fake Christmas Tree. While
I am not proud of this, I didn’t want to throw away a real tree before Christmas
(as I’ll be coming home) and didn’t want to come home to five million needles
on the floor…(cue jokes about Needles, California, which is not far from me). I had sent my mom and my sister a picture of
my sad little undecorated tree, and independently of one another they sent me
ornaments.
Blew me away, a little bit. I love stories, and I have more
than a few ornaments, now, that will always have a story attached to them, and
a little bit of love.
Appreciated. Much, much appreciated.
