Writing "I am the Grown Up" 100 times on the Board

When I was a little kid, I remember flipping through The New Yorker and deciding that only ancient, horrible people must read a magazine with so many words and so few pictures. It was stifling.

And now, ok, I still don't read the poems, but I get most of the cartoons, and I chuckle - not aloud - but on the inside.

I've also broken myself of the habit of wiping my hands on my clothing - and a good thing too, now that I actually have to wear dress pants every day.

I even capitalize most of my e-mail messages - a dead giveaway.

But my impending adulthood hit me square in the face yesterday when I marched up to a door with a sign on it that read,
"Anyone caught opening this door will be suspended,"
and swung through it without a second thought.

I must be getting old.


My kids proved it to me last week, the first time I got up in front of the class.

"This is boring!"

"Why we gotta read this poem?"

"I hate this. It's stupid."

I was trying to teach the concept of "theme," a surprisingly difficult sell, and a much trickier concept to explain than one might think, the night before, when one is contemplating what an excellent instructor one will be - how many lives changed, careers in English jump-started, etc.

My cooperating teacher had to jump in with a rescue and explain that theme is not actually "the main idea," as many of the kids (and, Ok, I) had thought, but is actually something more akin to "the author's message."

At this point, I decided that I would never be a good teacher, and would, in fact, be a total failure, destined to cause irreparable academic and psychological damage to millions of innocent youngsters.

Thankfully, subsequent periods have gone much more smoothly.

In fact, I had just reached a nice plateau with my students - a happy place where everyone knew one anothers' names and favorite baseball teams - a place in which we shared out the New York Times in the morning and read independently from the Sports or Business sections, or from the classroom library, for the first twenty minutes of class.

I had even gotten up in front of the room more than a few times and managed not to totally destroy any young psyches.

Then, yesterday, my principal decided I should move to a math classroom.