The Overhead

‘All the art of life lies in the fine art of holding on and letting go.’ – Havelock Ellis 

 That’s the quote that is basically the motto of this week.  We’re moving at school.  I realized this week just HOW nostalgic and old school I really am.  At least in regard to teaching.  One of my students from long ago said it just like that to me, at the end of a conversation in the hall.   ‘You’re kind of nostalgic, aren’t you?’  I guess it makes sense….I can remember lots of things and I AM charmed by history. 

But I can also see that something very good and very new is right in front of me.  New whiteboards, a view of trees and snow, sunlight (aka an outdoor window for the first time in 5 years), freshly painted walls.  The place is just waiting for new memories.  I understand just how huge this is….people don’t get new classrooms every day. 

 

But I’m not taking everything with me.  Yesterday, I wheeled my little overhead cart down the hallway to the place where the rest of the overheads sat.  No one was around, so I looked at them for a while.  It made me sad.  They’re obsolete.  Of course they are…we’re in a world of iPads, and soon I’m getting one.  But the overhead has childhood charm to it. 

In 3^rd grade, you could write on the overhead during math lessons.  I was always very conflicted about this, because I knew that if I was called on, I would love love love to use the overhead markers.  I wanted to be like the teacher, and change the colors to show different steps and explain a concept.  But I would also be required to march through a math problem. Not a forte.  Ever. 

 

I used to sit there and wonder about these people in my classmates.  Was THAT kid really enjoying the overhead as much as I would?  (This ongoing litany in my head probably didn’t help my math grade.)  An obsession with office supplies, laid out just so, is now indicative to me of some part of the teaching life.  But in 1993, this was something I did not know.  I even went through a phase where I would try to make overhead projectors at home before setting up lessons for school.  (It never worked.)

 

This was the year that students started asking me why I had the overhead in the classroom at all.  I knew this was coming.   I USED to use it for all kinds of things.  But my answers this year were lame.  I knew it.  They knew it too.   

So all week I’ve had this weird thing at war inside of me, because of course the transparencies slow you down.  But it brought me back.  To the first year of my teaching life.  When I was little and didn’t know how to assert myself at the copier, and when I would break everything getting those stupid transparencies stuck in the bypass.  Honestly it’s why I know how to fix everything now. 

During the first year, because of my treacherous record, one of my coworkers tried to get everyone to convince me I had broken the copier.  The only reason I knew that was not true was because their timing was off.  I hadn’t broken it twice on Wednesday, not Tuesday.  Joke’s on YOU, guys.

And then today I looked through the posters I had collected over five year’s time, and wondered why I was uninspired by them.  They made sense.  Why not put them up?  Because of change.   I walked out to my car with Leigh, and she just said it. 

Start over. 

So I am not going to be the teacher with the cozy lamp lit room anymore.  I will have sunshine streaming through.  Lamps will just be for cloudy days.  And I’m not going to have as much pink in the room.  Or the overhead.  (Hello, 21^st century.)  Or as much crap.  Teachers have way too much crap.  I am ALL about ‘Less is more’.   And have been for a while.   

Case in point….today I taught in my old sparse little classroom with a small stack of papers and a textbook.  Nothing on the walls.  No books on the shelves, no lamps.  The kids laughed about this, but it’s telling a bigger story.  About education, and what people need, and putting the work on the students.  Talking about ideas.   You know, society stuff.  Less talking.  More listening.  Less of the material goods, more of the breathing room.  (We talk about things like that all of the time.  It’s probably another motto.)

Aside from all of this talk of change….   Here was the comic relief of the day.  During lunch today, six girls walked up to me, stood in a straight line, and all at once raised their hands to show me what they had drawn on their hands.    I had JUST seen this on Pinterest last night.  I am talking about THIS…. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cbh0XwOM4cw

(Why is this video set to this music???)

TRY THIS.  It is shockingly fun.  It’s like putting a piece of tape on your nose and pretending to be a pig.  (Yes, this has happened before with Mom and Jenna.  Yes, it was hilarious.)  The jumping man made me laugh every time.  And then I’d realize that I was standing in the hallway laughing at my hand.  Annnnd…..it’s almost Spring Break.