My Favorite Conundrum

“Children make your life important.”

  — Erma Bombeck, American humorist

Students. They get grumpy, I try to be the bigger person. They fall asleep in class, I'm grateful there's a mask to hide my yawning. I call them the wrong name on accident, they call me by the older teacher's in retaliation. I forget to leave enough time for games at the end of class, they roll their eyes when I use sentences like "The dragon licked the knight.". 

They get frustrated with in-class work, and we all feel hopeless when I don't understand the English words they're trying to use. Erasers get chucked across the room, and answers for tests get said out loud. Someone is always either taking off their mask, or chewing on it. 

And all at the same time, when I come over to help the little who's dozing off during class, he leans against me and holds my hand while I walk him through the assignment. The boy chewing his mask grins at me as his mask falls down, and I can't help but chuckle as he pulls it back into place. The test answers are only leaked once, and it was probably the dumbest question ever written and they kids are only 6 so I take the one loss as not so bad. The girl who always guesses on where the fill-in-the-blank answers are didn't give up when I asked her to try, and managed to find the right answers all on her own. 

Chuckling comes from my least fluent students as I go through a whirl of ridiculous postures until we find the right combination that suddenly leads to that "aha" moment. It's having them give me a super sour candy as a joke, then offering me the whole bag when they realize I actually liked it. 

It's watching them dash out of the classroom as they leave at the end of the day, and hearing the tossed back "bye Shayla Teacher!" and giggles as I respond, "don't do anything that'll get you on the news!". Or when they're too busy escaping and don't say goodbye at all, leaving me with just the view of their backpacks as they drift around the corner towards the stairs, the mixed clapping of bare feet and slippers ringing down the hall. 

I smile as I turn the lights off and shut down the computers. Shuffling through the remotes that dot the windowsills along the classrooms I finally find the right one that turns off the AC units, and then I go up the stairs to the Teacher's Room. By the time I'm out the door the kids are packed into the bus, and I wave to them as they go past. 

And sometimes, I miss them. Miss my little friends who smile and tease, who write their letters backwards to see if I notice, and who love duck duck goose. They make this adventure the best thing ever, and I'm sincerely grateful for them. 

-Shayla