What Fills the Room

Well, everything has been moved. And I have a new classroom.

And I guess I just have to say that I forgot about ‘my people’ and how they fill the room. Earlier in the week, when I was sitting there by myself, lamenting about life (sans overhead), I did not remember that eventually the kids would come into the room and we would talk about history. That, despite the chaos, happened today. High schoolers took care of the things that needed change and repair in the old room, and I just walked down the hall with my students and kept them occupied in this new little wing. Which is actually already being referred to as the West Wing. I can handle that. We played trivia, and in one class, all 12 students huddled around my computer and finished a movie about John Wilkes Booth. It was kind of endearingly ‘old school St. Croix Prep’.

And then, at the proper time, the students moved into new lockers. And this was the missing piece. Classrooms feel blissfully empty for about two seconds without students in them. You breathe in and out and hear their voices far away in the lunch room or coming up the stairs, and it’s good to have that solitude before they show up again. But every time, every time, I am really happy that they come. And I left school today feeling really grateful to have a job where I really liked to be around these people.

Yes, it’s the rosy glow of the move, I am sure. But it’s also that I have a calling in life, and it works for me, and I work really hard at it, and it’s what I’ve always been meant to do. 



Today, you wouldn’t imagine that it would be easy. But it WAS easy. Kids moved everything….my desks just traipsed down the hall into the room, and they got set up and it began to seem real and alive and like I could be there. I don’t have the posters up yet, and the cork board has nothing on it. In due time, it will. But it’s bright and shiny and clean and I am very glad to have a place like that for teaching.

I got an e-mail today with a picture in it of the firs year we were at this site. It was my first year. They took us out to this big field and told us we would have a school there someday. There we were, staring at this blueprint in the hot August sun. And I remember standing there, in the weeds, wondering why for the first time in my life since childhood I was developing hay fever. And I wondered how I had gotten to that one place where people told me ‘this is where our school will be’ AND THEN IT HAPPENED. The number of people in the picture was small. But I remember it there. And back then I was wondering if I was old enough to be a teacher, for real, someone’s teacher. And if anyone had a Kleenex. And what I had gotten myself into. But it turns out, a very good thing. I work with good people. And we got a lot done today. And they work really hard. And now it Spring Break. So yep. Our work here, for a time, is done.

Cheers to a break.