Another Chance

“Are you really going to?”  Carol asked me quietly as she handed me my slice of pizza.  We were sitting in her classroom over lunch, which we’d ordered for delivery from a Greek pizza place a few miles away.  It was definitely an indulgence:  thick like Chicago style pizza, loaded with cheese, thick crust and [...]

Games Kids Play

I was on a school bus with twenty or so of our magnet school students, leaning back on the seat and watching the snow fall outside. It was quiet.  The bus ride up to Flint had been loud and raucous, the students feeling their oats about having three days and two nights without parental supervision [...]

Land Of the Grown Ups

“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?”  My friend Carol and I were looking out at a sunset over the Mackinaw Bridge late that June. “Absolutely.  Almost makes the rest of it worth it.  Well, maybe.”  I chuckled and nodded as we both sat in a comfortable peace together on the ferry back to the mainland. Carol and [...]

Making a Tough Job Harder

I sat with Carol in her classroom that January, calculating grades.  The school district had called a snow day, but in our urban district, that meant that staff usually still had to report to our buildings.  I had dropped Z off at my sister’s house for a day of fun with his cousins and then [...]

Crazy Exists Everywhere

“Well, how’d it go?”  Carol poked her head in my classroom.  It was the end of our first day of school; she and I had carpooled into the city together.  She took in the disarray slowly, and walked in. “Well…” I started, looking around and trying to see what she saw, how she was interpreting [...]

Every Ending is A New Beginning

“Thanks so much!” I stood and accepted the award that Becky and I had received, “Best Team Teachers”. We were all assembled at long tables at a local restaurant celebrating our end of year luncheon with the staff of FR Elementary.   My usual cohorts were all assembled near me:  Michelle, my friend who planned on [...]

Opportunity

“Really?  I leaned in closer to Carol, a friend of my colleague Christine’s.  She too was a teacher in our large, urban school system and had taken to recently joining our small group for drinks on Friday afternoons.  It was that time of year in Michigan when you wore short sleeves one day and went [...]

Guest Speaker

“I thought it went really well,” I answered, looking across the table at Ray. Becky nodded and agreed, lifting her margarita for a toast.  “Totally.  I’ve never seen the kids so engaged.  I think they really couldn’t believe that you’d fought in a war.  To them, soldiers and war are something they hear about in [...]

Somehow More Bearable

“Who’s in?”  Becky and I were standing in the middle of the hallway that October, having walked the last of our students out to the dismissal area for parents and buses. I had thirty six students in my first grade class this year, a slight improvement over last year’s numbers.  Becky had moved her classroom [...]

Sixteen Versus Thirty Eight

“I can’t believe that’s all the kids you have in your classroom.”  I was standing in jaw dropping awe at my cousin’s classroom just outside of Washington D.C., in Virginia. After visiting the beach with my father’s family, I drove two hours south to visit my mother’s cousin in Virginia.  Amazingly, she was just finishing [...]