Roller-coaster Teaching Days

Lemme get the job. Lemme get the job. I'm not going to get the job. I'm not going to get the gig. I love this school. I hate this school. No, I really love the job. I can see myself teaching here. Maybe I'm intended to teach somewhere else?

These are the messages that have run through my head all year as I launched into the strange world of long-term and daily subbing... all in order to "ease" my transition back into the classroom full-time next year. Ha! Ease? More like jump into the fire like an idiot and hope I don't get too burned and pray, instead I'll leave the day as ON FIRE as I started (yes, that happens more often than not).

And sigh... I'm awfully old to be "aspiring". Perhaps not, though. We writers are always "aspiring". We write poems, workshop the death out of them, order them, re-order them, read them aloud, and pray they turn into books and then... submit them to contests in hopes of publication. I even had the audacity to write three YA novels in the past few years. With every "rejection" note I received in my efforts to garner an agent, I am one step closer to the big HIT.

I remind myself... if my "pickles" love my stories in the classroom, surely kids will love my words on the page, right? That is... if my words stand without my facial expressions, gestures and dramatic voice. Dare dream.

That is what I'm daring to do these days... dreaming. To teach in a school where I can actually dig in and make a difference. Establish myself as teacher and develop relationships that will help kids. Get paid to do this weird thing I lovelovelove... read, write, analyze literature. I mean... talk about books all day? Read kids' words? You've got to be kidding me. It's the greatest gig in the world... if you can get it.

My greatest joy? Sharing my FAVORITE books and poems with kids. "You've never read dot dot dot? You've never seen fill-in-the-blank-poet read? Ooooh! Let me show you! I can't wait to share with you!" And with today's technology... it's a click of the button and there he/she is! Reading aloud on the screen. I remember when we English teachers FOUGHT over the ONE book in the library with the recordings of the ACTUAL writers reading his/her words. Those days are long gone....

but the roller-coaster days of aspiring are not gone. I'm holding on tightly... screaming my head off in part-elation; part-fear.