One Amazing Experience: Week 1.
The best feeling is to have several amazing experiences from which to choose for this week. On Tuesday, I made sandwiches, and Marky and I went to the Natural History Museum to look at dinosaurs, skulls, and possible earthquake scenarios.
I also got to spend some time with lovely friends this week, which included homemade tofu tacos from Nicole – divine.
Unfortunately, some of the week’s amazingness was lost in being a touch sick. A little more than a touch, actually, but goodness to find a way, I almost made my entire amazing experience for the week be sleep. A reluctant insomniac, early to bed with actual sleep to follow is the single positive note of undertheweather symptoms.
One experience, though, beat them all, and as might become predictable, it happened in the classroom. There are a few teachers for whom I have nothing but the greatest respect and admiration. Teachers whose practices I try to emulate. One of them was my classroom next door neighbor last year. Don is a brilliant, kind, and artistic English teacher who cares deeply for his students and holds them to high standards. More than many teachers I run into, he does not like to leave his class in the hands of others, but due to some unfortunate family circumstances, he needed a couple days off, and I had the privilege of being trusted with his class. In his sixties, Don still sports the long hair of his youth and somehow mixes the bohemian and organized in his classroom strategies. He speaks with soft purpose, and leaves saying, “Peace,” but he means it is the truest sense of the word. At the end of the sub notes:
Not only was I so excited to work with his students because I knew the material was going to make for excellent discussion and challenge the kids (which it did – so awesome. We finished a writing assignment on “The Lottery” and read and discussed the feminist piece, “Survival Ship” – loved it, and the kids were both thoughtful and hilarious), but I also felt like I was able to help someone out who truly needed it, and that will always make for my most amazing experiences. Peace.
