muggy morning

Our boy has a fever. He is whiney and exhausted, but wants to play. I spent a lot of time this past week working on my end-of-year reports, which in many ways feels like a fever of the mind. I burned through the year, refining, cutting away what was inessential, looking for the kernels of gold amongst the dross that I could share with the parents of my students. It mean in turn.

And now that work is done, and the school year, the hardest I have ever had, is finally laid to rest. This was the school year that turned me inside out in new ways. Last year, I taught a first grade class of four little girls. They were sweet and charming and tractable. It took no time at all to transition from one activity to another. They were eager to learn, and the chattiness of four children is completely manageable with simple conversation and gentle reminders. I worked with three individuals.

This year, I moved to a large, established Waldorf school in the city. I had a class of 15 which grew to 17 and shrank back to 16. And it didn't work -- almost nothing that I had in my back pocket worked. Changing volume or pitch to get the children's attention? Nope. Playing clapping games or doing tongue twisters while we waited? Nuh-uh. Yelling, which became less and less a last resort, and more and more my usual tone of voice? No way.

And then, mid-year, I was really ill. I came back from winter break, and suddenly I was having intense abdominal pain. It took several days and lots of tests to finally get someone to pay enough attention to figure it out. My appendix was calcified. It needed to come out. Soon. I missed two weeks of school, all told, and I went back too soon. I was worn out, coming off pain medication, and trying to pull a class back together after the holidays, plus two disjointed weeks with a substitute teacher.

And they sent in an outside evaluator, one who didn't mince words. One who asked me, "Are you sure you're in the right place?"

I crumbled. I wept. I was enraged -- who was this person, to question my vocation? To be so frank and unsympathetic? How dare she? How could they send someone like that into my classroom, knowing I was getting over surgery and everything?

It took a long time, and a lot of mentoring and coaching, and a lot of humility, for me to move past that point. I had to admit that my eleven years of experience meant nothing to these children. That they needed more from me, and that they needed me to do something differently. I was trying to teach them like I'd taught other children, in another school, at another time, in different numbers.

In retrospect, I liken it to saying to a guest,"My other guests have liked this meal, so I'll serve it to you, even though I can see you don't like it. Other guests liked playing croquet, so that's what we'll do, even though you've told me you prefer chess."

Rudolf Steiner, in one of his lectures to the teachers at the first Waldorf school said (I'm paraphrasing here. Please forgive me), at the end of a year, you will feel that you know how to teach the grade you've just finished. And then it's time to teach a different grade. You should be entering the classroom with fear and trembling.

Now that this school year is done, I can see what I ought to have done differently. I'm making changes to my planning, to how I will establish my classroom rules and expectations, and to how I talk about and think about the children I teach. I know I cannot keep blindly doing what worked before -- I have to stay awake, to notice when things aren't working, and do something differently.

But for now, it is time to let go, to say, that is done. To learn and move on. Next week, I fly to Pennsylvania to spend three days at the Essential Grade Two conference with Eugene Schwartz. When I come home, there are other Big Things afoot, but there will also be lots of time to laze, to breathe, to recover from the fever of burning through the work of this past year, and to discover what lies ahead for me, for my family, for my class.