hypothetical destination, say, who is this walking man
by Chris ~ April 8th, 2005. Filed under: teaching.
Friday afternoon, just shy of three-thirty. My room is now empty and quite save for the buzz of the computer or the random yell down the hall.
What a week.
A lot of job stuff has been going on. Went to the Teacher fair in Portland last Wednesday, met with a lot of districts, but stuck to the smaller area schools–although from the sounds of it, if I had talked to Los Angeles school district I could have a contract for next year. While it would be equally far away from both Jessica and my parents… it’s too far away… and too LA. Yesterday, I re-interviewed for my current job since I am only technically on a temporary contract. I really like working at Cottage Grove and I hope the planets align themselves to make it so I can stay here.
Which brings me to another thing of last week. I am a jerk. Or a meany if you prefer, but I’ll stick with the label of jerk. In my infinite (or infinitesimal?) wisdom, I thought that it would be fun to play an April Fool’s joke on my sixth period Language Arts class. My scheme was to have one of my students to start rumors that I had accepted a job in Eugene and that I would be starting there the following Monday. Word got around and, inevitably, I was ask, “Is it true, Mr. Wells? You’re quitting.” To which I gave a very heartfelt lie saying that I would be leaving and that they would have a brand new teacher on Monday–which would have been three new teachers in three terms for these kids. Well, they bought it. There was a shocked silence over the room while I was fighting back my urge to smile. Finally, the hushed nature of the room started to produce another sound: crying. In my little simian brain, it never occurred to me that someone would be saddened by this news. Fifteen minutes later, and a little deflated, I broke the news to the class that I was, indeed, going to be here on Monday. I went over to the student was crying and talked to her. She said some very nice things about me and how I made things better for her compared to the previous teacher, as well as how she was getting used to me. All of these nice things that she said, made me feel horrible. But, in the end, everything worked out for the better, although, the kids still like to throw it back at me that I made someone cry.
Well, you can’t win them all.
Hopefully this weekend will be some serious Capstone working time, and if we’re lucky, the wedding invitations will come in. Other than, it’s the same ol’ stuff on a different day.
