The Crap is Always Sweeter

Not to get too sappy, but there is nothing like driving back to the Midwest, and nothing smells better than cow shit. Why cow shit? Easy. I grew up with it--not that I grew up on a farm or anything, but the smell was never very far off. In Jersey, at least where I live, towns are asses to elbows, and livestock is not the driving economic commodity, so it's rare to smell manure unless you're putting down some mulch, but even that is not nearly the same. So when I get to smell pure unadulterated cow manure instead of exhaust, it's a real pleasure, especially when it's a sure sign post that I am getting closer to the people I love and miss, very few of whom actually smell like cow shit.

Absolutely Smashing

I actually do work. After I finished exams today, I was hanging out, doodling on the board, and when I gave the head I was drawing eyes, it looked spookily familiar, so I finished it, and much like the picture in my last post, it was pretty accurate. Now, granted, I'm not dealing with the most difficult subjects, but I gotta say, it's not a bad Billy Corgan, especially for using a broad-tipped dry-erase marker.

And a Pinch to Grow an Inch

The other day, my students in my class of thirty were a little loud, so I just stood in the front of the room and raised my hand with four hardly extended fingers in the air, and the students immediately became perplexed and silent. It turns out that everything I need to know about classroom management, I learned in fourth grade.

I explained to my students that in fourth grade, Ms. Preuter would hold up her hand in the lunch room or assembly, and if you got up to four fingers, you had best shut it. I then proceeded to tell them all about her. I explained how she would spank us in front of the class on our birthdays and give us candy. They thought it was the strangest thing they had every heard; I remember loving it. I explained how we earned points throughout the year to spend in her point store at the end of the year, and how I saw the challenger explode in her room over and over in 1986.

If you were in kindergarten through third grade, she seemed like the scariest, meanest thing on the planet, and I remember dreading getting into her class. I remember how grown up the fourth graders were to put up with such a tyrant; I used to think that when I got to the fourth grade I was really going to have to get my affairs in order and be diligent if I were going to survive. It was a milestone.

I remember how wonderful and caring of a teacher she actually was. There was nothing to be afraid of, unless you screwed up. When you're ten, you have the ability to create and imagine things like monsters in your closet or for your homeroom teacher, and even though I had Ms. Watkins, who was equally wonderful, my afternoons with Ms. Preuter were nothing like I had imagined and I still haven't gotten my affairs in order, but she was a wonderful teacher, and while my students couldn't fully appreciate the accuracy of my impromptu sketch, I figured some of my readers might.