Today at school, one thing made me laugh and one thing made me cry.
This is common during a school day, feeling your heart rise to the clouds and sink to the bottom of the sea.
Such is the life of a helper/teacher.
Here is the thing that made me laugh.
I was sitting at the lunch table with my students, eating my lunch - mac and cheese, raw baby carrots, a plumb and half of a bat shaped brownie. (You can tell I’m an elementary school teacher just by the lunch I eat, can’t you?)
One of my students looked up from his Mac and cheese with a serious look on his face.
“Mr. Barton,” he asked sincerely, “How do you think giraffes mate?”
I nearly choked on my bat shaped brownie and dropped a baby carrot into my mac and cheese.
Being a 4th grade teacher, I’m used to random questions.
This is the first time, however, I’ve been asked this one.
“Very carefully,” I answered matter-of-factly, and moved on to, ummm, less awkward topics.
And here is the thing that made me cry.
I was rocking in my rocking chair with my students around me on our reading rug, finishing the novel The Tiger Rising by Kate DiCamillo.
“With whom do you most identify in the story?”
I love to cast out this question among my students after we finish a great story, because I’m teaching them to put themselves into the shoes of the characters we meet, teaching them empathy.
One of my tough boys raised his hand.
I was surprised because he usually chooses to remain quiet and thoughtful during literary discussions.
“Sistine,” he answered.
“Oh yeah?” I continued, “Why’s that?”
He’s the kind of kid I expected to identify with the tiger in the story.
“Tiger, tiger, burning bright/
In the forests of the night/
What immortal hand or eye/
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?/
In what distant deeps or skies/
Burnt the fire of thine eyes?/
On what wings dare he aspire?”
says the poem in the book about the tiger.
It could easily be a poem about my student.
“I chose Sistine because her father made a mistake and she can’t see him, and my dad’s in jail and I can’t see him.”
Wow.
Life.
Life is real.
Being a teacher keeps me real, too.
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