flush

i am not a fan of potty humor, but that being said...

this morning, just before i headed out to teach in the one room schoolhouse, i got a voicemail from the youngest daughter,

'hi laura, it's k. um, our septic tank isn't working so please stop at the mcdonald's before you get here.'

click.

one of the best messages i've ever received.

cuttin' up

i got to the schoolhouse this past thursday and waved to j and his dad as i made my way up the stone path.

once inside, k asked if i saw the big ol' hog. and, of course, she was referring to the 'big ol' hog' j and his dad were presently butchering when i strolled along.

um, no. i did not see it.

somehow during class, i forgot about this activity going on mere feet away. but, no worries, i was quickly reminded of it when i stepped onto the porch to go inside the house for lunch, and there, right before my eyes, was a butchered hog. piles of fat, legs, and meat. right there in front of me. slabs and fat and pork. and bone. no head, though. or feet. just big ol' hunks o' hog.

we had soup that day for lunch. bean soup. very good.

school marm day 2

I cried last night.

I looked over the pages in the teacher's manual and tried to figure out how to break down the day and teach the kids about writing and grammar and be interesting and teach enough that would be an entire week's worth of work and give homework and know what i was talking about. but really, i have no idea.

teaching terrifies me. and last week and even leading up to today, i still road the magic coattails of this 'anne of green gables' idea. i loved telling people i taught in a one-room schoolhouse across the street from the amish. it seemed so strange and new and odd and old-fashioned that i never really acknowledged the reality of it...until last night. (the reality that i will never be miss stacey. i will never be anne. i am at best catherine brook, and really, i don't even know if i can live up to being 'an old gooseberry.')

i sat on my bed and cried. i stared at these books and pages and realized that i have no idea how to teach. i mean, really, i am rarely grammatically correct (the proof is in the pudding, and the pudding is this blog). i cried and wondered how i agreed to spend seven hours every thursday teaching and who knows how many hours through the week preparing for class. i still don't know how to put together a lesson plan, for pete's sake. and all this for very little (if any) money. i love this family so when i think about the lack of money, the ol' catholic poverty vow screeches from my insides that i should never turn down helping others. it's good, giving work. and i'm just a modern-day selfish scrooge mcduck who's after one thing - money. so how could i live with myself if i told this family that i couldn't do it?

so this morning, driving through the smaller and smaller towns, passing grain fields and silos, in my half consciousness, i wished to run off the road. i wished for a deer to dart out and careen into my car. i wished for an oncoming truck to cause me to fly into a ditch. i didn't mean to wish for great harm to myself or anyone else, i simply wished for a good excuse not to have to go through with today.

but luckily, my wishes weren't granted.

i pulled into the driveway and was once again greeted by randolph, the goose. i got out my books and purse and J came out of the house and told me i could go on into the schoolhouse. so i wrote words on the board: originality, active voice, etc. who knows. i got caught up in the way the chalk felt in my hand and i really wanted to stave off the beginning of class.

but class began and J, R, and K came in. it's funny to start a class with people i know. it seems so casual and we joke around and then finally, i'm the one in charge (yeah, me...crazy) and they sit at their desks and i ask how their homework went. they had to write an essay about a time when they learned from a mistake - or something like that. not sure. and as i talked to J and R about their essays, i asked K to read her book ('the lion, the witch and the wardrobe') and write down any sentence that she loved - any word that caught her eye. seriously, i have no idea what i'm doing, but last time she colored for the first hour of class.

J and R read their essays. R's was about being late to a fiddle contest and J wrote about plowing corn with his father (you get the picture). i asked them to pick out three sentences that showed off their own voice - three sentences that they were most proud of because of the language they used, the imagery, but that still sounded like them. and then i asked them to pick out three sentences that anyone could write - sentences that weren't particular and didn't have any interesting element. and i asked them to take the plain sentences and rewrite them to such a crazy, extreme over-dramatic version of it, it would be ridiculous. and they did. they wrote hilarious sentences. seriously, hilarious. and from those, i asked them to pick out a phrase, an image, a word that they could keep that would make the plain sentence a little more their own.

and then we had to go into the boring subject of colons and semi-colons and ellipses and parentheticals and shit that i really don't know about (again, point made clear by this very website).

while J and R did some exercises, i worked with K on the sentences she picked out. she's so smart and creative and goofy, but terrified of making a mistake. absolutely terrified. and when i sit beside her and she has to pause before she spells something, i can see her shake. i can see the tears almost spring to her eyes. but then she gets it. so, today, i introduced her to a new best friend - a dictionary. i told her to never be intimidated by a word she wanted to use, because her imagination simply ran a bit faster than her spelling - and pretty soon it would all come together.

of course, i have a great difficulty actually putting thoughts into words, especially when i'm teaching or relaying information, so what the kids probably heard all day was, 'you know, um, like when you write - um, cause, you know?'

[and at some point in class, R asked if i had ever seen the film 'high noon.' i replied that of course i'd seen the film because i love gary cooper and they all three stared at me in disbelief and R asked, 'you know who gary cooper is?' she's 13. it was a very strange backwards moment.]

but i think today was a good day. maybe. my stomach doesn't feel as horrible as it did with my anxiety last night and i felt a bit more in control.

let's see how the next week goes.

school marm day 1

i met with V, the mother of the kids, last week at a mcdonald's across from a technical college. she gave me the teacher manuals and we discussed how to best work with each child. then this past week i proceeded to go apeshit crazy trying to prepare for class.

i headed out at 8 this morning. i got turned around because i couldn't find the actual back road, but i still arrived fifteen minutes early. no one was around except for a goose in the driveway hovering around my car. i knocked on the door and K answered - she and her sister were still getting dressed. she told me i could go to the schoolhouse where V was, so i headed over (about twenty feet) and balanced on the planks above the mud, passed a bucket of dried, rotten apples with tons - tons - of butterflies flying over and landing on, and opened the wobbly door.

V was straightening up the room (this is a one room schoolhouse). i helped her, folded up the fabric and patterns that were about, and got my stuff together.

they have three school desks that face a small chalkboard on the wall between two huge portraits of washington and lincoln. the room is a pretty big size, but feels smaller because everything is packed in - a piano, three bookshelves, a church pew (where i sat to teach), a standup bass on it side (borrowed from a friend), maps of the us, a globe, a manual pencil sharpener that doesn't work so they had to bring in the other manual pencil sharpener from the house, books and books and books and extra chairs, and a radio with quiet classical music playing.

after getting some things put away and other things merely moved, it was time to start. it was just plain overwhelming and anxiety making and terrifying - maybe because V wanted to sit in and watch. but i love the kids so i tried my best to tell them about writing and english and all the rules and telling a story and finding your own voice. and hopefully i didn't sound crazy. and then we got down to work.

i started with the older two, R and J, and we reviewed capitalization and punctuation. this is where i feel like maybe i shouldn't be a teacher because when i looked over everything last night i thought that it was really dumb that they even have a chapter like this because, really, ain't it obvious, but then i remember that i'm not 12. so i read from the book and tried to use examples i thought of, but then read some more and just felt like i had no idea what i was talking about even though i did, but i didn't want to accidentally give them little hints that were completely wrong. but V was in the room when i had to remind the kids to always capitalize the Lord. )we talked about god at the mcdonald's and i've always known the family was religious and i'm fine with that and i'm fine with teaching them however the parents feel they should be taught as long as they are learning the grammatical rules and whatnot. and i grew up catholic and will always be catholic for the most part (it's my default religion), and i'm fine with christianity, but i have a lot of trouble saying things like 'god' and 'lord' and 'jesus' and making them sound like i'm not being ironic. but i think i did okay.)

after reviewing caps, i gave them some questions to go through. they went to work and i reviewed more of the book and K sat at her desk and drew a flower in her notebook. she's 9 and usually just soaks in what's going on with her brother and sister and then gets one on one time. i thought i had an hour and a half to get it all done, but then V kept coming in to tell me we had more time, so it turned out i had two and a half hours so i just kept babbling and trying to give them work and not ruin their brains. i realized that i need to parse out the day a bit better - give R and J some review exercises while i work with K and then go back to R and J. who knows. i don't know how the other marms do it.

and then they gave me lunch.

i told V about the crazy ass job thing going on and said i would try to figure something out, and i really hope i can. hopefully i'll be able to still get up there on a weekly basis and accomplish something with them.

post script: last week when i met with V she told me that she didn't know how much they could pay, if anything. i know they're poor. they live on a self-sustaining farm afterall, but this is such a rare and interesting opportunity and i love these kids, that i thought it would be worth it. and when i got in my car, folded up on my dash, was twenty dollars.