School again today, some of these teaching days are SO exhausting, wonderful, but physically and mentally draining.
You rush about, making sure everyone is doing something, keeping kids on track, ensuring that they are not wasting water when they wash the lino-blocks, sitting two crazy rushing-around-the-room boys down and talking severely to them, as my dad used to call it.
Checking that the quietest girls also get attention. Utilizing the skills of someone who has finished all his prints, giving him the job of helping everyone print their image on a long roll of paper, so we can put up a frieze of 8th grade block-print portraits at the top of the wall in the art room, or elsewhere in the school.
Dealing with the needs of two different groups, the upper school students who have come in for their extra hour, and the seventh-grade class, half of which is crazy in the period before home time, the other half all dreamy with the end of the day, the end of the week.
Trying to make the right amount of papier-maché successfully, and making a vain attempt not to breathe the fluffy white air stirred up by my kneading of the stuff, which does not feel as though it is very good for lungs.
Taking into account every word of every child, helping someone believe that their sculpture is perfect, stopping nasty conversation before it gets going, in french or in english, grading drawing books, remembering to give out homework assignments, trying to find "just about 30 or so images" for the Middle school director to beautify the bulletin boards for tomorrow, the Open Day, when prospective students come with their parents to check out the school.
Noticing a sad-looking kid and telling her she is doing a good job, and how is she feeling today, she looks a bit down. And giving her a little hug, because you know her family's situation.
Having deep conversations about the deaths of mothers, marine biology, gangsta language, how someone is doing who left the school a few years ago, what are the plans for the weekend, plans for a field trip, Nicolas Sarkozy.
Then the end of the teaching day, cleaning up before the janitorial staff come through to mop and sweep, locking the door of the store-room, putting the key away in the secret hiding-place known only to the lower-school art teacher and myself, then discovering something else that has to be put away, and repeating all my previous actions, then finally out the door, down the stairs to the cold little car, and the long, long drive home in the dark, lit by thousands of car-lights, streetlights, and then at last our little road, with no lights, all the stars visible, the familiar tall-tree-lined road, and our little hill, with the warm lights of the house, and inside, the people that I love, my husband, my sons, and the black dog that will come bounding, but no little Lily-cat to greet me anymore.
A portrait of Matthew and Tim. It looks better in real life, the drawing, I mean. Tim is not really Asian and Matthew does not really have half a biscuit stuck on the side of his head.
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