Today at school, one thing made me laugh and one thing made me cry.
This is common during a school day, feeling your heart both 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, huh?)
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, finishing the novel The Tiger Rising by Kate DiCamillo.
“Who do you most identify with 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 our book talks.
“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.”
Dang.
Life.
Life is real.
Being a teacher keeps me real, too.
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