I introduced her to my other 29 (we had everyone there for a change, one tardy and no one left early) kids in my own certain jovial way. I teased them about their last names, their lack of height, or the air-balling three-pointers. Everyone got a laugh, we lined up loudly, had to sit and then retried with success. She seemed comfortable enough, at one point I looked down to see her fiddling with my ID badge and keys. Maybe God approves of what I'm doing in the class. Maybe he wants someone in that class to find a friendship with another kid, or maybe I'm needed to provide some sort of reasoned fixture beyond their norm. Of course, God doesn't need me for anything, but I can ask and pray to do His will. What else could be said rather than a complaint?
All our classes are pretty full. It reminds me of one of my years at my previous school. I remember having anywhere between 30-32. We sat in a large U-shape, with me at it's core. We had an East side and a West side, and I screamed and directed and taught (some) and ate lunch with just about everyone. I still have their pictures on my wall. I remember the one whose brother ended up assaulting their junior high substitute (or was it the other way around?) years later. Another who everyone told me would be the death of me, ended up being my hardest worker, even when she and her friends began flicking staples and tacks at one another on a day I was absent (she must have read my junior high diary, damn her!). I remember sitting in a meeting, watching a hard-working mom cry because her daughter was basically not "low enough" to qualify for services.
I too moved around a lot. Most of mine were before the year started, so any teachers I knew the first day never scrambled around the room looking for extra supplies, folders and notebooks. I was just another kid, nothing special beyond my sarcastic jokes and occasional forays into greatness (I do remember busting a 100 on a Scantron math test, for a junior high teacher who also ended up calling home to my parents on a previous sarcastic argument I had with her. I learned never to argue with a black woman ever again.). I would fall in line somewhere between the dweebs and half-breeds, the pretty girls' best friend and the one fat dude whose mom didn't know how to dress (thanks for my mom, she knew what looked best, like green, starched Polo shirts or Air Jordans that were left on front porches to be stolen by rabid pizza deliverymen).
In junior high, I joined football teams for friends, enjoyed the fame of being the only Hispanic kid in a trail mix of whites faces (okay, well, there were three or four of us, and if you didn't know Spanish like me you were basically white).
I can relate to those kids. The ones who want to sit under their teacher's chins and dangle their keys. Or the kid that sees a familiar face and wants to cut a joke. My former teachers would probably laugh at me if they realized the things that itch me are the same things that I had done to them years ago (who gives detention for gum? I do, now!). I know the mind of the sports kid, the creative kids, the dweebs and the so-cool-I'm-going-to-call-you-a-culo kid. I'm learning the divas and the strong-willed girls (oh, my Lisa in kid form). I wonder if I'm reaching the shy girl, the babyish boy, the kid who is always sick and looks sleepy.
I have a bulletin board for the affirmations. Drawings, tracings, cute Rembrandts from the colored pencils of my kids, all devoted to their best teacher of the moment. And in this moment, I'll take it.
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