Mighty, mighty Tigers.

Last Thursday two bees were in the classroom.

The windows were open to let out the stench of wet, rotting freshmen, and the screen has a tiny hole (or the screens were open, somehow) and two yellowjackets let themselves in, buzzed against the lights, flew in students faces, landed on folders--then landed on a student's head while she was talking to me, then proceeded to attack her as we both swatted, then landed on her mouth, then stung her bottom lip. She squeezed the bee between her fingers and removed him and then looked up at me with the biggest, wettest eyes--like a toddler who is deciding whether to cry after a big boom and waits for his parent's reaction to go through with the decision. I said, Oh my God, are you stung? and she nodded and I said, are you allergic? and I don't know if she really understood me because she's a Chinese exchange student and we have a hard time communicating in the first place. But I didn't remember seeing any bee allergies in student profiles, so I said, nurse! and the bell was about to ring, so we walked down together, her sprinting before me with her hands to her mouth and her eyes still big, me walking in big strides and full arm swings behind her.

So, welcome to America, student. Your lip was as big and thick as my thumb.

Well, I'd noticed some Burt Bees chapstick on her desk, so I have to wonder if it was some kind of sick revenge.

*

I have 80+ freshmen essays waiting for me at home, but I've put off the beloved blog for so long that I owe it to myself to take time for this today. I owe it to you, because I don't call you enough or email you enough, and I owe it to future-Jean, who probably should remember what the first two weeks of high school teaching were like all on her own. And now I just have so much to say that I don't even know how to say it all.

Students are students are students. I know all of their names, I know that 2nd hour is by far my favorite class and that they could be a group of honors students all just thrown together. We wrote creation myths and gave presentations last week, and one group was a parent-at-home shy of bringing in a live rabbit for their presentation. I was impressed. (I won't talk about the other classes.) 3rd hour is my least favorite, and I've kicked out two kids so far, and they're testing and trying me and showing me that my patience isn't nearly what I ever thought or claimed it to be. I'm trying to like them, really, but there is only so much I can do, I suppose. One student talks whenever he wants, whenever I'm trying to make a point. So do three others. I kept them after class one day and explained, very calmly: nobody thinks your funny. And I even wrote them a letter the next day summarizing the other key points in our conversation, but nothing changes. I've talked to parents about two of them. Nothing changes. They make me hate this. But first hour and fourth hour make me love it, so I suppose love is winning. And my seniors make me half love/ half hate this, so love is still winning.

One student wrote I hate people on his index card for the question "name something I should absolutely know about you" and then crossed it out to write I like hunting. One of the kicked-out students made farting noises with his mouth while I was reading to the class. The same student commented on my weight by suggesting a table would break when I sat on it. The same student referred to one of his classmates as such: Oh GOD I have to be in his group? He can't even read. He's dyslexic.

Another of the kicked-out students suggested to a female in the class: I'm going to slit your throat and when I called him over to discuss the comment, he said, what, it's okay, beause she's my friend.

These students, and I want to tell them this, are like scrawny little squirrels who like to fuck with traffic. I'm trying to drive this class, trying to get us to some point, and they keep darting out in front of my school bus, back and forth, over and again, trying to get us on a different path. Or to tip us over or drive us into a tree so we burst into poetic flames. I've knicked their tails a couple of times, but they just live for this danger. They only thing they can think to do is keep darting out in front of the bus. Either they don't like where we're going. Or maybe for some reason they feel they can't join us in the car. Or maybe they don't like that I'm a woman driver. Or maybe they're just fucking fourteen-year-old a-holes.

The classroom heat is killing me. Seven students have melted.

Every day I try to deal with the battle and balance of responsibility versus my job, versus the responsibility of my job. I carry the weight of all of these kids, and I lose sleep wondering if I'm doing enough, if I can do more, if they can do more, or I'm just assuming that they can. I think about the kids I've kicked out: is this helping them? Are they learning anything? If they're kicked out three times, they're kicked out of class officially, and then it seems as though I've failed them as Teacher. I'm just another person who told them that they couldn't do it, and I've made it harder. And what if they don't graduate because I kick them out and they just feel defeated? Then I think it doesn't matter at all, that my responsibility is to the kids who are there are who want to learn. But then I think that the kids who don't do well are the ones who don't want to learn, and then I think about my responsibility as an educator to make them want to learn, and then I think about the impossibility of time and then I think I'm lazy because I can't conquer this impossibility of time. I just carry this weight. Perhaps it's why I'm breaking tables.

I think so carefully before I say everything, and it's hard when I'm angry not to be condescending or sarcastic (the principal told me that he hates sarcasm because it can't be interpreted correctly--but I would argue that if sarcasm is misinterpreted that it would simply be taken as a compliment instead, right? If I said, Oh, yeah, I just love what you've done on this assignment (like on a half-assed assignment written in crayon) a student would think I was serious and he did a good job--and there can't be much harm in that. I have said, Oh, I'm sorry [student] am I interrupting your conversation to teach this class? And I felt guilty afterwords. I have said, you're annoying and I honestly don't know if that's something I should be saying to kids. The good things can stick with them forever. But the bad ones seem to always stick forever. They're turning me into a bitch. And I don't know how to not be sarcastic. I don't know how to not say, well, have a fun time working at Wal-Mart for the rest of your life. No, no, I'm sure it's a very rewarding career.

Last week I discovered that half of my seniors can't read. Do they not make you read aloud in school for practice anymore? Is that it? And, now I wonder, too: is it my responsibility to help them with this, to prepare them for whatever is coming? Can I blame the teachers who came before me, which is what I did when I taught in Mankato, as in: holy shit. What high school did these kids graduate from? Because here I am now, just pushing off the shock: how did these kids make it through middle school? Are there that many cracks for them to slip through? Should I be teaching grammar because they still don't get so much? No, I suppose I should be teaching Beowulf in three days, as is the time allowed in the curriculum.

God, the weight.

I've found an apartment in Hutchinson, and it's ideal. House-like, with a yard and tomato plants in the backyard and a clothesline and a screened porch in the front. A big kitchen, a walk-in closet, a washer and dryer. But what I'm most excited about is the nine-month lease, because my negative attitude has me excited to hopefully be out of this town in a year. I don't sound grateful for this job, for finding an ideal place, for a paycheck, for decent co-workers. But I am. Things could be a disaster, a lot worse, I say again and again, sometimes out loud on the long drive from Albertville. But every day I think of Rochester. At 3:03 I think of the bell ringing at Century, of my old office, of passing Ms. M. in the hallway and cracking a joke, of checking in with Mr. O., who'd remind me of a job well done before heading home to Elgin. And I still send random emails to Rochester folk, because they still seem to be the only ones who get it. Jokes to Ms. M., sharing something I've done in the classroom because if I say it to anybody here it will seem like I'm bragging, notes to Mr. O., saying, I was mean today. Also, can you send me [this assignment]? I can't tell if I can't cut the ties or I just need somebody to talk to. Or somebody to validate.

All of my memories are good, even though the time there was rough. This is how life works. I only remember the good about high school, about Winona, about Mankato, about Minneapolis, about Rochester. And I can only hope that after this year I'll only remember the good about Hutchinson. I'm a pessimisstic in real-time and an optimist in hindsight. It's an odd curse.

But maybe it was because I connected with the town, somehow, that I'd been in Rochester the summer before school, in class--it was like another college town for me, and for the same reasons I loved Winona and Mankato and felt like they were a home. Hutchinson right now is some small town in the middle of the state, that feels like an island. That feels claustrophobic (and I'm not even living their yet) and hazy and weird. I don't feel tied to it yet. The students for some reason don't seem to be enough. And yes, when I'm living there it will get better. I hope it will. Or it will just feel smaller.

I'm related to my future landlord. She's related to the last name, and we talked about where all of my family grew up--Royalton, Bowlus. She said, ask your dad about Irene, I remember her and some other one on crutches and dad said that Irene was Adolf's wife, his aunt, grandpa's sister-in-law, and Rosemary was Adolf's and Irene's daugther with crutches and cerebal palsy, and from what I can remember from a distant family reunion, a woman with one of the biggest smiles and softest facial features ever.

I'm scared about living alone, I'm scared of coming home to nothing, and I think part of the reason I'm staying in Albertville this extra week is so I can enjoy contact with people who aren't kids or work-related before I move to Hutchinson and am officially eaten by the work monster, keep working because I have nothing else to do or nowhere else to be or no one else to talk to. I'm not good at this.

And so, the decision now to stop writing, stop complaining. Oh, school. You are only two weeks in, it still feels like summer, I've given up on wearing heels after only two days, and I've kept up the impeccable organizational plan I've started. I guess that sums it up. I eat peanut butter and jelly everyday, I wonder how I'm going to do it every day, I hate meetings every day, I blame myself every day for everything gone wrong, even those things I have no control over, and especially the things that I do. Somebody should make a document, formally, that says: you can only work 50 hours a week. Or, you're only expected to do [this] much. Or, you really can't reach every, single student, and it's ridiculous to think you can. But the world of teaching expects me to while at the same time saying to me, you're really not that important.

Last week we read a Iroquios creation myth called "World on the Turtle's Back," and on the same day I passed a crushed turtle in the middle of County Road 37. The turtle was cartoon-huge, and it was, indeed, crushing to see his orange and green shell in pieces, his body below, his head and feet and tail splayed and flat to the road. I imagined the crunch from the truck that must have hit him, wondered how it couldn't have just moved out of the way--you'd think the turtle's slowness could've saved him--I imagined that maybe he hadn't been hit at all, that maybe it was just the weight of the world that pushed him down. In the myth, the world is planted on the turtle's back, and a woman and her daughter walk in circles around the seed of the earth until it grows and grows and grows. But maybe after carrying the weight of the world for so long, the turtle just finally just let it win. He needed to rest. He couldn't be expected to carry everyone's world forever, right?