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This is a continuation of my journal from my 2001-2002 school year.  Please read the previous posts to give this entry context.  

Friday - Pop!

I can measure my tiredness by how I drive and when I eat my chocolate cookie. I drove to work on automatic pilot, snapping out of my preoccupation to find myself crawling down Main Street, the old way to work, my route for eighteen years.  When I’m tired, my kinesthetic memory chooses this ingrained path.

By 8:30 a.m. I craved the sugar rush of my cookie. 

Fortunately, my student teacher taught second period on his own.  I went to the Annex.  Kim Kerns joined me at the worktable in the center of the big portable office building. “I really loved your book,” she said.  That was a good way to get my full attention.  She’s a nationally certified, but new (to us), reading teacher.  She may be willing to become our department chair when Jolly retires at the end of this year.

Kim continued to tell me what a murder mystery buff she is and how much she loved the word plays in One Tough Cookie.  I could feel myself glow like a hunk of radioactive matter.

She further went on to tell me that one of my third period students adored me.  She’d had her students write book reports recommending their book to someone, and he had recommended his book to me.

The warm glow stayed with me until sixth period when Amanda announced, “I want to get out of this class.”

“Why?” I asked.

“Because it’s boring.”

My usual comeback to that is, “You’re the class; I’m just the teacher.”

But I felt bad when Amanda said this.  Raymond had said the same thing, probably just the day before and it didn’t faze me. I imagine Raymond saying every class is boring.  Besides, when I gave him a look, he gave me a big dimpled smile and immediately started to retract.  “I don’t mean it like that . . . .” 

But Amanda’s face was flushed with high color.  Even such prosaic announcements are full of melodrama and flare.  

Diana turned.  “So,” she said, “you still learn.”

Lupe spun around.  “How can you say that?  This is my favorite class.”

Someone suggested I should put a minus on Amanda’s card.  I teased Amanda. “I think I will put a minus on your card.”  She shrugged.

“You’ve hurt Ms. Hansen’s feelings,” another student said.

She shrugged about that, too, but I could tell she felt bad.  She stayed quiet for the rest of the period. 

So much for the idea I’m adored.