EMBARRASSINGLY HUMAN

There is a kind of strength in the fact kids are ‘only’ human, a beauty in the requirements of working with them that force you to not treat them robotically because it simply won’t work. 

I was at an elementary school where the teacher was disciplining a kindergarten child for standing in the outside line-up too far ahead. He had put his backpack in front of everybody else’s and it was not his turn to be leader.  After the required lesson that he had to go back to his regular place in line she knelt down to fasten his coat since the zipper was not done up fully and it was cold out.

I am in a kindergarten class where the 4-5 year olds are in small centres, some doing coloring projects, others making large block structures, a few over in the play house area, mothering dolls.  I notice as the shift changes that a little puddle has appeared on one girl’s chair.  I quickly clean it to avoid her embarrassment. Then I Notice she is wiping off her water bottle and has gone to get a tissue.

Kids in kindergarten are all toilet-trained of course but they also experiment with delaying the stop of play to use the washroom. Many wait till the last moment and approach me with the nervous dance of the bladder, asking if they can leave the room.

The weather is sweltering and the windows don’t open. The grade 9’s have just returned from their phys ed run and have apparently passed far enough through puberty that their sweat now smells. 

Avoiding noticing body odors becomes part of the job and though little kids nearly never smell bad, they do often smell of whatever food they ate last.  Kindergartners are pretty oblivious to the smell when one of them passes gas and I kind of think this is not too common for them anyway. But when junior high kids ‘ let one go’ there is near-hysteria and certainly disgust mixed with laughter. It’s quite hard to keep teaching when the students are distracted but it is my job to uh, soldier on.

A small child interrupts my weighty discussion about adding to inform me his tooth is loose, has just come out, or worse, is lost .  I have even reached in and with clean tissue helped kids in the diagnosis and  wrapped a tooth in paper towel and helped deposit it into a child’s pocket  for the trip to the tooth fairy back home.

Little kids have their birthdays noticed on large posters in the classroom and they bring in cupcakes or cookies for the class that day. Sometimes, but hardly always, the sub is given one of these but if there is only one left, for ‘the teacher’ I do put it back for the regular teacher, well, sometimes I do.

The mom or dad role features prominently with young kids but even as they get older.  One girl during a long-distance run around the field in the summer suddenly stopped and others ran to me telling me she thought she was having a heart attack. I doubted she was, but of course rushed to help and noticed her color was good, her heart rate was fast but mainly she was very scared. We took her to the office, they checked it out and shortly after she returned to run some more.

The first day I taught a boy in grade 7 came up to me telling me he felt sick and I was taken aback since that was not a scenario I had actually considered for that day. As I looked around my binder of forms to see what was to be done next, he walked out into the hall, over to the drinking fountain and threw up.  He was much more practical than I was..

We have told kids about germs and to wash after toileting but of course they don’t always do this.  In one school in September each little child has on their desk a little container of hand sanitizer. I mean I really approve except  this stuff also is poison.

In this kindergarten class the kids each have brought their snack though that always strikes me odd. They are away from home only about 3 hours so why do they also  need to eat?  But this is the new tradition and they carry around their backpacks, plastic containers, juice boxes, and I see a real sampling of food. In the Mandarin school the goodies are often not recognizable to me but look intriguing. Some kids in other schools have brought washed grapes, tinned applesauce, cheese strips, crackers and cheese dip, carrot sticks, whole apples, bananas.  And some have brought little cookies though kind of on the sly since some schools discourage anything with sugar.  One child approaches me in tears because he forgot his snack.  School rules forbid sharing food between kids because of allergy alerts and general over the topic panic so I can’t ask a friend to share.  I delve into the teacher’s backup supply in the cupboard, and it is, alas very dry crackers.

This snacking shows kids in a quite new light.  I admire deeply the kindergarten teacher who has the kids all line up and wash their hands before the snack and who washes down every single table after, who has laminated placemats for each child and who has a brilliant routine for them after where they trot over to the sink, empty unused juiceboxes and line them up for recycling. I don’t know how she got them to all do this but she does it every year and it is stunning. Other classes don’t even remind the kids to wash.

The kids do approach me for their lunch needs too. Could I ‘open’ the banana? open the applesauce tin? Do I have an extra spoon?  Could I ‘open’ the  plastic cheese pack, meat pack or rip apart fruit pack?  Of course.  Or well I can try. I am a cleanliness freak of sorts and I have to wash the scissors before I cut packages in case the scissors were recently used for glue.  At my own home I would tear open bananas with my teeth but of course for the kids I use other implements more sanitary.

The kids are often required to eat the snack in five minutes. I mean five when you count opening the containers, eating the food and then cleaning up. I am amazed at how they accept this limitation and of course often the snacks are not consumed fully. There is a lot of stuff stored back into the pack to take home later and I am always surprised actually that parents have packed a huge apple that the child probably won’t finish.  I am also touched by the containers of carefully prepared grapes, no stems on them, all washed, probably at 7AM.

The Spanish class is learning lyrics for a current hit and we listen to it while reading the text. I help translate the words and notice they are kind of graphic about the body yearning for the other.  I mean I’m not blushing but the kids sure are reading along well.

The grade 1 girl announces to me that she can sing. I say that’s  nice and then get back to my work but she wants to sing for me.  OK so I tell her she can at the end of the day sing for the class but not, she is shy. She wants to sing to me in private. At a free moment I take her in the hall to hear her and she does sing, and the little voice dares to sing what maybe some now mock “Jesus Loves Me”.

The grade one class is happy to see the regular teacher walk back in the room after her meeting. A few rush up to hug her and a few more, to not be left out, also rush up. Within seconds she is surrounded by lots of little hugging kids and is kind of overwhelmed but happy.

The grade 10s have been asked to learn words for members of the family in Italian and to make posters of photos of their family to illustrate these words.  Poster after poster now line the walls and I walk by them idly noticing how very many have a picture of the dog as a vital family member.

The kids are waiting for the parents to come pick them up after kindergarten. Some line up to go on the bus, others are picked up by the daycare nearby but a few are to wait till the parent appears. I am to wait with them for security reasons and I see little kids gazing off joyfully recognizing moms or dads arriving with strollers, waving, kids rushing up to share their news. And yet once or twice a child has stood there, looked out to the street at passing cars and not found his parent. One time it was at a school in the southwest on a cold wintry day and I tried to be consoling saying maybe traffic was heavy and they’d be there soon. But the child was looking more and more scared, and more and more vulnerable, facing what might be a big person crisis, and only being a small child.  The routine in such circumstance is, after a reasonable wait, we are to walk the child back to the office and phone their home.  It is a long walk for the child and very lonely. I don’t know if parents realize how very long that walk is.

The parents in September are usually asked in the elementary schools to offer to volunteer. .There are usually a lot of offers and for the first few weeks the parents come in and help cut crafts, organize lists, even help supervise outings.  But as the year goes on the volunteering tapers off. One day the parent volunteer was clearly named on my instruction sheet and the kids were looking forward to her appearance because she was going to read a chapter of her favorite book for literacy week.  We waited, her son looked more and more distressed. After about an hour it was pretty clear she was not coming. I think I heard him say “Maybe she had to go to court” She was apparently a lawyer and I understand how those things might happen. But he was embarrassed and hurt.  I tried to cover.

The kids are asked to help raise money for charities and to bring in pennies. It’s a project they can really get into and because I am there for  a few consecutive days even I bring in some pennies for the classroom jar. On the last day the happy results are announced, the number of pennies, though in dollars it is still a very small amount for the entire school. But the kids feel the joy of accomplishment nonetheless. The principal has the brilliant idea of translating the amount of money into a more concrete image and she points out the pennies weigh the same as the school librarian.

The kids are asked to raise funds for Doctors without Borders and they are keen to do this though it becomes clear to me a bit later in the morning that the purpose is still pretty vague to them. When the PA announcements comes that the school has now raised $130 for Doctors without Borders, one little grade two girl says with delight “Now maybe those doctors can get some borders”

The little kids take home messages from the school, each in his own coil notebook or ‘agenda’. The routine is usually that the child writes the dictated message for what must be done today, the parent sees and signs it and the child returns the book each morning with any written comments or concerns by the parents. It’s kind of a carrier pigeon or pony express system with the child as the pigeon or pony.  Little kids have to insert in the pocket at the front the many many school handouts asking for forms to be signed, fees to be paid, pictures to be looked at and theoretically every morning those pockets are empty since the parents did see the paper. 

That is of course all theory. Many kids forget to show the parent the papers, forget to have the parent look at the note, forget to have the parent read the note or worse yet, lose the agenda itself.  But once in a while I notice in this messaging system some comments by the teacher that concern me “Jason had trouble again today keeping on task” or notes back from the parent  about who is picking the child up today, what work the child is not understanding or what forms did not make it home.  Once in a while I have seen some notes in the agenda that seem way more personal.  The dad who has every day for the past several, apparently, signed “Way to go Billy!” and “I’m proud of you Billy”.

The students have piled their agendas on the front table for me to sign and I notice the agenda of one grade 8 student is particularly ornate hearts and decorations and a very colorful engraving’ Steve’. I was looking around the class to return it to Steve but it turned out it belonged to Angie.

The kids in grade 11 enter the room and I notice one boy with spiked hair just stands there. I ask him again to sit down and he confides panicked, that he can’t get his backpack off because his hair is spiked really high and to remove the backpack would wreck his hair.

It is ‘bad hair’ day which similar to pyjama day requires kids to look less than attractive and more casual.  I am always surprised if kids take part in such events since to do so requires some humility. These events either are taken up by nearly everybody or are dismal failures because the few who did take part now are in abject shame.  At this bad hair day many kids had taken part and one grade 7 girl had her hair spiked amazingly high probably with that liquid cement. It was grotesque but she endured the teasing nobly for seven entire periods. But I did notice at the end of the day she pushed it back down and put it in a ponytail, at last.

I am middle aged and have my own personal internal furnace some days. I am not always of the same opinion as the kids about what is comfortable room temperature but I try to reach a compromise.  I have however no disagreement with their views sometimes, like the time the school furnace was malfunctioning and we all had to wear coats, or the time the room was so sweltering in the sun –drenched summer that I adjourned us all to the hallway to get a drink half way through each class.

Recently a boy in grade 2 was limping around as we walked down the hall to phys ed and I noticed his feet were not fully in his shoes. Since I don’t know the kids I am not sure if I should comment because maybe he even has a foot deformity but eventually I did ask if he was having trouble with his shoes.  He said yes, that they were too small. He was the same boy the parent had come to my door earlier telling me someone had stolen his winter coat and that was why he was only wearing a heavy sweater.

The grade 7 class walks in and they are of course, normal but  I do notice two close friends, two little boys, are an interesting friendship – one very small and the other particularly large.  They sit and we do the lesson and then at class change all the kids stand up to leave except the one larger boy. He is so heavy that he has become stuck in his desk and is mortified.

The students in this grade 4 class have apparently been told they are to be comfortable in their desks and to this end they can, if they wish, bring cushions to sit on. I have never seen such an array of cushions, some pink, some soft and fluffy with animal themes, some small pieces of rug.  In one class the teacher sits on one of those large round exercise balls when at her desk and I notice a few students also use them instead of chairs.

The kids are scheduled to go outdoors for recess even though the temperature is minus ten and it is snowing. The recess interval lasts 30 minutes and for the 18 kindergarten kids this means they all will put on leggings, coats, hats, mitts and boots and go out, then return and take all those things off, in 30 minutes. But what it really means is that since few of them can actually put on their own boots, tie their own laces, zip their own coats, or put on their own mittens reliably, the teacher will be doing this for the next 30 minutes straight.

One time a grade 10 girl said she was afraid she was having an asthma attack. My mom-ness kicked in and I listened at her back to see if I could hear wheezing and then had her accompanied to the office to see the nurse. 

On the other hand, some of the crises I am presented with may not be.  Once the cat’s away the mice will play, the in thing for many little kids is to get a free bandaid. If they can produce evidence of an injury however invisible to my naked eye, they want to have one of the bandaids the teacher has in her top drawer right there, the one, they aren’t allowed to touch. My general principle is to go for blood, to require evidence of injury to provide this bandaid. But sometimes the child’s distress level is so high that I give him one anyway.

We are running around the field for the Terry Fox Run, a nice tradition on an autumn day and the kids are all passing me but at least I am taking part.  One small girl, not one of my students today I don’t think, stops to walk with me. She says, out of the blue ‘My mother’s having a baby” and then she revs up and runs ahead. It was to her an important news item to share.

The kids have been taught principles of stranger-danger and to be wary of anyone who wants to drive them away to look for a lost cat, who claims that the mother sent him to get them, etc. And yet usually they trust me, a stranger. I seem to fit a category they have in the mind of teacher whom they trust, or even grandma.  It’s quite an honor really but when they tell me their personal stories, ask me if it’s warm enough to not wear a coat at recess, when they tell me they were sick in the night, or they got a new shirt, I feel very protective of their innocence.  It’s ironic.  It is the strength of children and even of babies that I noticed long ago.  Sometimes just because they are so obviously needing help, their weakness makes us stronger. Their weakness makes us shift into mother-mode and their trust in us, their ability to laugh and enjoy life even when there’s a blizzard outside, shows how deep that trust is.

One time at a junior high school one of the students was called to the office to get a package.  I was to send him down and yet the mother in me also kicked in.  A package? From whom?: He was the son of a prominent local politician and the thought vaguely occurred that he should be very careful opening it.

EMBARRASSINGLY HUMAN – part two- teachers

We teachers are an odd lot. For one thing most of us liked school or we would not dream of darkening its doorways for life like this. But having liked school means we tend to be the uncool, the nerds, or maybe the goody-two shoes, certainly less likely  to be the ones who will identify with the rebellious. 

And yet, we have our moments.  One time I was teaching in a large urban high school and feeling every one of my 55 years as the keen wrinkle-less faces of hundreds of teens rushed by me in the halls. And then I noticed the English teacher for one class was tall, willowy, very modern in high boots and black sweater.  My son, in grade 10 was with me at a school concert for his little sisters and as we sat in the audience he was fascinated to watch the deaf translator as she very animated smiled and gesticulated the messages on stage. She was so beautiful, so into her role that my son said’ It practically makes you want to be deaf”

In the movie “Breakfast Club” which I was recently asked to show to a grade 10 class, the teacher supervising Saturday detention is an authority figure but also flawed. At one point when he returns from the washroom he is trailing, inadvertently on his shoe, toilet paper.  Audiences find this hilarious and I must admit when I went to school it never even occurred to me that teachers needed washrooms at all.  I kind of think today’s students also, at least when young, do not realize we don’t come with the building. One small child asked me once if teachers slept at the school. A high school student out of the blue looked at me once quizzically and asked” Do they pay you to come here?” He really did not know.

I am subbing because the male teacher I am replacing is at hospital with his wife who is in labor. At noon we get the message from the office that the baby has arrived, it is a healthy boy and weighs 7 pounds and 8 ounces. I put this information on the blackboard and suggest if the kids want, to write a short greeting to the new dad when he returns tomorrow.  There are no takers at all for a few minutes and then a few girls stand up and write in little floral script “Congratulations”. One boy however gets up from the back and walks to the front of the room and prints in very large letters across the board’ GOOD WORK!” 

As a child I  had thought staff rooms were out of bounds territory that I might be electrocuted for every trespassing so I never did.  Nowadays however I notice staff rooms are what they really are – tables, chairs, a fridge, sometimes a small stove, and usually a whole bank of mailbox shelving.  There are posters about job vacancies, in service courses and current reminders. But there are also touches of the human, sympathy card thanks, new baby announcements scribbled across a white board, retirement notices and invitations to their parties.  There are also washrooms. In one school of a staff of 18, 17 are women and yet the one male gets his own washroom. Maybe it’s makeup time for the hockey world where it was a very big deal to get women their own washroom.  One of the teachers tells me that women at that school consider the men’s washroom also accessible, in case of emergency.

Deaf and hard of hearing students often have personal interpreters with them nowadays, while others have a hearing aide system connected to a microphone the teacher wraps around her neck.  I have used that system several times and there is no big skill required. You just turn it on and it amplifies your voice for the student. It also however amplifies any sounds near you so I try to be considerate, when I think of it. One time however between classes I went off to the washroom, used the facility and while washing my hands after noticed my mike was still on.

There is a saying that as a person ages their beauty steals inward and that wrinkles show where smiles have been. At one high school I was at just this week I saw another kind of beauty, a senior teacher, male, who has grey hair, a soft-spoken demeanor, who is everybody’s grandpa so to speak and who lives up very well to that image ‘he had a face like a blessing’.

The grade one teacher is a mother and her baby is pictured on her desk. She is also pregnant, very pregnant with her second child and her students are very excited about her new baby too.  In some ways it will also be their baby.  In a grade 9 class I sub at the teacher has taken mat leave.  I am only there a few days but she has apparently dropped back overnight to leave some new lesson plans.  On the blackboard there are tiny tiny footprints going all the way up. 

Another time the teacher comes to the high school class to show us all her new baby and the big tough kids are suddenly different people before my eyes.  A few of the girls want to hold the baby, predictably but one of the very large brawny boys does too. He holds it comfortably and says “We have one of these at home”. I see right there in a time warp that this boy will one day be a great dad.

In one of the classes the teacher I am in for has been diagnosed with severe allergies and the staff washroom has specially labeled lotions and creams clearly marked for her.  She is a lovely lady who on other days I have met when subbing for others and yet her tiny figure has had to endure a lot of environmental challenges apparently. She is particularly kind, and the kids in her room are very kind back.

There is another teacher whose demeanour just amazes me too. He is French, from France, middle aged and of impeccable poise. He opens doors for women and calls us all “Madame” and though very happily married, he makes everybody feel just a bit more exotic. He makes teaching seem like a respected profession.

If the teacher’s lesson plans mention workbooks or texts but I can’t find what she is talking about, I sometimes have to look around bookshelves near or on her desk.  If she has not left a pen or pencil I have to open a drawer and when I do I notice candies, a bottle of Tylenol, sometimes even handbooks of advice for teachers,. The teacher’s desk and behind it are often places she personalizes with mementoes, and the kids can see these – and so do I.  Photos of her baby, her wedding, a funeral brochure of a colleague posted for some reason on the wall.  In this place of ringing bells and public address announcements she has also another self, and this quiet space reminder.  The agenda clearly in front of me notes not only meetings today but often doctor’s appointments and other commitments, classes she is attending. Her mail has notices I don’t read but that also are her life- cafeteria bills. One teacher has a whole wall of her past, her singing career, photos of herself as a young star with a local performing group, and photos now of her own children and their adult careers.  Another teacher has surrounded his room with hockey memorabilia. Another has on her walls sketches of her own artwork.
The odd thing is where teachers share their personal selves in this way, the tone is usually very cozy, home-like. One grade 4 teacher from France had on the wall a photo of her childhood grade 4 class back in France, all these little kids sitting straight at wooden desks, one of them her.   An unspoken message kids easily get.

Another teacher I admire did the same at his high school. Even when some teachers were wearing shorts on summer days, and jogging suits as jocks will, and sure let them, he insisted on wearing a suit. He wore a suit jacket every day except Friday which for him was casual day and he wore a sweater and why did he do that? He said it was to show respect for the kids.  He passed away exactly one year after retirement, of a sudden  heart attack, and I went to his funeral. It was packed, not just with teachers, which is normal, but with hundreds and hundreds of students – all in black. To show respect. 

We teachers are also only human.  I have been called in to sub for some pretty human crises, like when the man’s wife was giving birth, when the teacher’s plane was delayed in Vancouver and she couldn’t get back in time, when the teacher was having dental surgery, when the teacher’s brother was dying.  I have been called in for longer assignments when the teacher’s dad was dying and to cover for a stress leave when the teacher’s teenage daughter was giving her grief.  I noticed in one note on the desk years ago that the teacher I was in for had a court date about his divorce.

We’re only human.

The students often want to know what is wrong and why the teacher is away.  The little kids are genuinely worried about her, and probably about if and when she’ll return their lives to normal. But the older kids are concerned on a different level. They are often genuinely concerned about the teacher.

In one school the principal was diagnosed with very serious cancer and she had left consulting the doctor till way late in the school year, till the end of June, which is quite typical of overly devoted teachers. The news was very bad, treatments started immediately and the whole school the next September was very aware of her absence and why. That fall when they did the annual cancer fundraiser of the Terry Fox run, kids were asked to put on the display wall who they were running for. Many put in the names of their grandma, grandpa, aunt or even their parent but a large large number said they were running for the principal.

It killed me. I mean what can a small child do to cure cancer? And yet with that determination and the fundraising dream and that assurance that they would be part of the cure, what could they not do?

Another time the call for me came mid-morning which is unusual. I drove up to the school and saw an ambulance and was surprised at that fact, then realized I had been called because of that ambulance. The teacher was having a severe migraine and had lost vision in both eyes. She would be OK but I noticed the kids were very concerned about her.

One time I had been sweeping our back porch with a large wooden broom and by some odd fluke it had caught in the carpet there and, unbalanced, had pushed back into my face.  By some totally bizarre fluke it hit my eye and gave me a very black eye for the next few days. It was an odd thing because my poor husband, who was even out of town at the time, cringed to notice that people might think he was somehow responsible. No version of my story , however detailed sounded believable on one level since people who are abused probably create a version very similar. I kept subbing anyway and most kids were too cool or maybe just too self-absorbed to comment. But one grade 3 girl came up to me and asked’ What happened to your eye?” “Are you OK?”  It took a special courage to ask and I admire the character.

Another time when little kids and I are holding hands in a circle, they will occasionally comment with concern on how dry my hands are.  Not to criticize, but to genuinely express concern.  It’s  moments like that that remind me again that the world is going to be OK.  People care about people.

And sometimes, irony of ironies, I who am called in to pinch hit sometimes myself have problems. 

The day I returned to teaching after my father’s funeral was an eerie day. I had never lost a parent before and all the air around me seemed in a kind of haze.  Since I am a sub I had nobody there who actually knew me well and nobody really to talk to.  I confided to the librarian that my dad had just died and she was very understanding. I told another teacher though and her reaction as she sailed by was “Bummer!”

One very memorable day I was called by ambulance workers to tell me my mother had been taken to hospital and how soon could I come?  Another time I got a call from a nurse telling me my mother’s condition was deteriorating and she was dying.

The grade 12 French  class had learned their teacher would suddenly be away for several weeks and I would be the replacement.  I felt they deserved an explanation and could handle it. After all we were studying the French novel by Camus where life, death and existential ideas are closely analyzed. I told them he was not expected to live .  She had said he was at home, that he was dealing well with the news, that he loved cars and when he got the word, he did not want to rest. I told the kids this and that he had gone out to the garage to work on his car.  I heard one tall boy in the back say quietly “Right on!”

This mortality and vulnerability extends also to me of course.  When I climb the three flights of stairs to one classroom in a building 99 years old, I have a flurry of dizziness.  I too won’t always be around. I’m OK with that really. Some of the best conversations I’ve had with students were impromptu ones as we were reading together. 

I was teaching in an attached portable classroom to a large class of high school kids and, having just gotten over a head cold, was perfectly fine, until I started talking.  It was then that occasionally I’d have a throat scratchiness and coughing attack, for which if I had anticipated it I would have brought a bottle of water. But this day I had not and as I interrupted myself briefly to cough, an d cough more, one student just suggested “You should get a drink. There’s a fountain down the hall”.

I am teaching in a grade 5 class that last week had a school field trip. During it one of the asked the teacher to come and see something on the other side of a rock and as she crossed over to look  at it, she fell and cut her left.  She continued the day and nobody thought much of it but later that night her leg began to swell up.  I had been called over the weekend to come in to sub for a few days while she tended to the infection which now was huge bubbles of orange pus.  I was more than happy to help out and in class found she, as always, had still left very detailed and caring lesson plans for the next few days.  What surprised me though was mid-morning she herself appeared at the door. Why was she there? Surely she should be off that leg. She came in, smiling, walked slowly over  to her desk and retrieved from it some personal ID she needed for the hospital. At no time and I mean no time did she indicate to the kids that she was anything but the picture of health.   Days later when she did return and the kids planned a surprise party, we did tell that her leg had been ‘hurt’ and that she was getting better. They put in front of her ‘welcome back’ decorated chair also a low box, with a cushion on top, to elevate her leg.

I am in an elementary school class and again just recovering from a cold.  It seems to be a job-related vulnerability, and pretty logical when you consider how many colds kids get and how unlikely some are to use tissues reliably.  So there I am at the start of the morning, realizing that I have lost my voice. I feel perfectly fine but I am only able to speak in a stage whisper. The grade 2 kids find this fascinating and I ask them to be particularly quiet so they can hear me, and they are. One little boy asks me if I can’t just clear my throat. I told him I have tried that.

Most of the time I consider my problems are nobody’s business and as a professional I am not to show them. I have worked through a lot of sore throats, exhaustion and minor aches, as have all teachers and we never tell the students at all. They do not need to be burdened. This professionalism actually helps me ignore aging and a day teaching, though exhausting, is a day away from medical worry about little symptoms. In fact the mood of suppressing is pretty deep. One time I was walking around the room supervising as the kids wrote an exam and for some reason I was idly holding a small pencil sharpener. My fingers were rubbing it as my mind wandered and suddenly  I felt a gush of pain as I had just sliced through part of my finger with the sharp blade. I quietly moved to the teacher’s desk, and out of student view scrambled to find tissues and to wrap the gushing cut.

Another time I was talking to the students while standing near a table on wheels where we had just played an audio tape. My hands were resting near the electric connection and suddenly a bolt of electric charge shot through me. I barely missed a beat in what I was saying though I do recall I stepped back sharply.  I was fine, and did not announce what just happened but I heard one girl near me whisper “She just got shocked”.

Teachers are not supposed to have problems. They are there to solve problems. Subs in particular are supposed to be the ones you call on in crisis. Our private selves are to be suppressed so we can serve others and I get that. I even like it.  This past weekend a huge winter storm blanked the city and the Christmas party subs had scheduled for Friday evening might have a very very small turnout after all.  Roads were blocked with drifts and the snow ploughs were not able to keep up with the urgent calls. I was stuck in traffic a full hour just to go four blocks and I adjusted my window, changed the radio station several times, wondered frequently if I should just give up and turn back home, but hung in there in the faint hope the road might clear.  When I finally arrived at the party, after nearly two hours of travel to go only a few kilometers, very few subs had been able to get through. The caterer had not even made it.  But slowly over the next hour more and more of us poured in till eventually the room was full of about 70 of us, a great turnout and even the food finally arrived.  In the group were some new subs but mainly a lot of older ones, some in their sixties and even one lady who has just retired in her late seventies. These are the Trojans, and I realized that the very thing that got them through the blizzard is the character that makes them good subs. Dependable, patient, soft-spoken. Simply put, they can be counted on. It’s what they do.