School years tend to take on themes. At this point it feels as though I have lived through the Year Of--- in just about every topic. There was the Year Kids Kept Climbing Out the Window (and coming back in through the door, oddly enough. Not a real escape but rather an alternate expression of indecision.) That same year I thought for a moment an especially energetic young guy might actually win the scuffle with the panic button people. It was my first official teaching post and I realized in one brief, breathless moment I might need a panic button for my panic button. Or I could just win the kids over. It was the same year I taught poetry by Tupac and introduced students to authors who looked and sounded like them - curriculum design inspired by student need. We put court in session- a reader's theater that was all too real for most of them- and held passionate debates about Walter Dean Myer's Monster We read Maya Aneglou and Toni Morrison and broke the taboo against all their private angst. Cutting was a thing then, too, so we turned to Patricia McCormack and followed her character Callie through her own cutting experience. It turned out to be the Year of Opening My Eyes to the Power of Literature.
Other years followed.The Year of the Garden, The Year My Prinicpal Got Divorced (it was only afterward I found out that all the hell I'd been living through that year had an underlying cause...) There was my first year in Africa when I had the Class Who Loved to Read and Write as Much as Me- it was like we were made for each other. There really couldn't have been a better welcome to world of international teaching. Of course, a few years later there came the Year of the Class Who Made Me Want to Run for the Hills shortly followed by the Year When My Colleague Actually Did Make Me Flee.
For awhile, I thought this year might turn out to be the Year of the Parents. By mid-October I'd already had several intense parent meetings and a heated exchange with a mother bear. Luckily, I have my own mother bear and it kicked in to protect a student who was the real focus of her anger.
After some reflection, I don't think this year is going to be about parents however. It seems to be shaping up to be about me. And I don't mean I am taking over. This is one thing I have been noticing more and more and finding weirder and weirder--- the tendancy for teachers to use their classroom position to go on and on about themselves. To share stories of their lives that moves well beyond instructional purpose and hugs the border of narcissistic domain. I'm not doing that.
But I do feel free this year. The amount of singing and dancing going on in my science and math classes is probably a shade beyond normal. It might be something to do with age, or place, or maybe it is just this particular class that inspires something in me. But whenever I feel a dance or a song coming on I just go with it. I usually don't go too far with it- just a sample before I turn it over to them and say make this into something. Get back to me and we'll make a video.
They've already taken the X-Y Coordinate dance and choreographed a number to go along with Nae-nae (a little too catchy for me and it ends up in my head for days! "Now watch me X..x...x Watch me Y. And watch me X...x...x...you get it....) Our 15 minute daily calendar warm up has turned into a full theater production complete with costumes, props and an Emcee host. It's wild. But it has them begging to do calendar, which is really just a review of skills like finding factors, solving equations, reviewing multiplication and decoding prime factorization.
So I'm going with it. We're doing everything and anything that seems exciting, worthwhile, silly, spontaneous, and interesting. Because the math needs spicing up and the science is just engaging enough to hold all of our attention, and---why not? I am finally comfortable in my skin and if the waning and waxing of the moon makes me imagine a modern dance move or a karate kid "wax on-wax off"- then why not share it- and the accent to go with?
I do recognize a bit of this is coming from a place that is searching for more. I am underwhelmed with the ordinariness of Abidjan and looking for something inspiring. I miss my kids at Stand Proud and I miss my nightly English classes with La Jeunesse. I miss doing something like making art with a real artist and dancing in a truope of young divas (even if I wondered what the heck I was doing there the whole time.) I miss pulling up to a carrefour and having a quick exchange with a pack of street kids. I miss seeing their faces and checking in on them and having them know me. I miss feeling connected.
So I've become a bit reckless and I dance in class occasionally, and sing in my off tune voice once in awhile and pull out all my theater tricks to enhance our school day hours together. We've recently smashed a cell phone or two in our search to uncover the workings inside. I've found an opening in the curriculum that allows me to take them down the path of Congo's minerals and the resulting conflict and devastation to a people. I feel passionate again for a moment. The Year of the Teacher. I'm going with it.
