teacher

Jinxing Bad

/ boz bozeman / 4 Comments

My last two years of teaching were incredibly tough for me. For consecutive years, I had classes that were so challenging that it undermined my confidence in being a teacher. I genuinely questioned if I could continue. 

Good news! My classes are AMAZING this year. Maybe I’ll go into detail some other time, but this post isn’t about that. It’s about jinxing.  

I keep hesitating to describe my classes this year as good. This hesitancy comes from a fear that I will jinx it. As if somehow if I say it out loud, or write about it, then the good kids will turn bad, and my good year will turn sour. 

That’s when it occurred to me: why don’t we ever talk about jinxing bad things? We’re so sure we can ruin something good, why not try to jinx something bad?

Imagine! It would be like a superpower! Last year, I could have said, “Boy, my class is really bad! Hope I jinx it!” And then, just like that, I would walk into school the next day and my tough class would all be academic angels and behave perfectly.

If only. It wouldn’t work. But the good news is that it doesn’t work to jinx good things either. 

At least I hope not.  

Back to School Haiku

/ boz bozeman / 8 Comments

Teachers measure years a little differently. Our year goes from September to June. On the 26th, my new year begins. Unlike the traditional New Years Day, I don’t need to make a list of changes or resolutions. Those will come in the form of the 70 plus new students I will get to know and teach over the school year. 

Ads for school shopping
Remind me I have a job
That fresh minds await

The feelings at this time of year are always mixed. I love summer, and its mix of productive tasks, like writing and landscaping, along with relaxing and recreation. Soon, my focus will change to the trials and the joy of teaching seventh graders as they navigate the challenges of childhood coming to an end and adulthood beckoning. Though this will be my thirtieth year, even with all my experience each year starts with the nervous excitement of new beginnings.

Visit TankaTuesday to join the challenge of writing syllabic poetry.

The Laughers

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Giggling begins. It starts with one student, but it spreads like a yawn. The laughers lose control, their bodies shaking and the sound taking on the edge of mania. Some put their heads down on their arms, shoulders pulsing even as they muffle the sound.  

I remember teenage emotions. The laughter, the heartache, the love, the tears. How much emotional intensity is due to newness, the personal inexperience with life, with feelings?  

Experience is a wonderful teacher, but it also wears down the extremes. Though I’m glad I no longer feel the intensity of hurt that came with the disappointments and tragedies of youth, experience also takes away some of that perfect joy.  

I still feel the edges of it sometimes. The laughter will linger, approaching that barrier, but there is too much control now. Is it about learning to let go, or remembering how to? 

Teaching young people does keep you young, partly because it reminds you of what being young is like. But while most experiences build our capacities, observing youth reminds you of how much is taken away by the years.  

The Death of Snow Days?

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I began this poem in December of 2020:

Covid year took away so much 

It even took away nothing. 

Gave “No School” the virus 

Changed snow days to work days.

This is all I wrote the first time that a snow day was replaced by a remote teaching day. At the time, I thought snow days were over for good. Since then, Connecticut has ruled that remote learning cannot replace snow days. 

I wasn’t feeling bad for myself, really. I got to sleep in, I was home, didn’t have to make two 45-minute commutes. And though I didn’t have the day off, I also knew we wouldn’t have to make up any days at the end of the school year. I can delay my gratification. 

I really felt bad for the kids. Snow days are the most exciting things when you are little. A day off from school, a chance to go outside and play in the snow. (And yes, a lot of kids still like to be outside.) To do … whatever. Or nothing. A taste of freedom. 

In those strange, upside-down pandemic days, I thought this would be taken away forever. As I sit here on a snow day, flakes falling outside, (working on grades because most teachers take advantage of any time that you can correct without new work coming in) I am happy. Throughout Connecticut, kids are building snowmen, hurling snowballs, running and shrieking and giggling. And that’s what I would have missed the most if snow days were gone for good.  

This is what you shall do

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I read Whitman’s poem last night. Really a worthwhile read. 

This is what you shall do:
Love the earth and sun and the animals,
Despise riches, give alms to everyone that asks,
Stand up for the stupid and crazy,
Devote your income and labors to others,
Hate tyrants, argue not concerning God,
Have patience and indulgence toward the people,
Take off your hat to nothing known or unknown,
Or to any man or number of men,
Go freely with powerful uneducated persons,
And with the young and with the mothers of families,
Read these leaves in the open air,
Every season of every year of your life,
Reexamine all you have been told,
At school at church or in any book,
Dismiss whatever insults your own soul,
And your very flesh shall be a great poem,
And have the richest fluency not only in its words,
But in the silent lines of its lips and face,
And between the lashes of your eyes,
And in every motion and joint of your body.