School as of Yet

I have little, if any, qualifications to be a teacher, but here I am--scrambling to create a sufficient second grade classroom, thrown into basic yet unimaginably difficult curriculum, and racking my brain for recyclable classroom materials. My hands ache from sharpening old pencils in preparation and I wonder why I used to find it fun, as my children do now, to do this menial task. I wonder if they notice the cardboard boxes that I use as paper trays or the capless markers I tried to salvage. Neither seem to phase them. Perhaps the teacher before me had the privilege of 12” rulers, but I don’t think my kids mind a couple inches broken off. Who uses all twelve at once anyway? And long pencils are overrated. Small, sharpened-down pencils work well for little hands, right?

With blistered fingers, I pick up broken chalk leftover from last year and write, as vertically as possible (a challenge, I admit), “Miss Jaimie.” Since most cannot yet read, I don’t hold it against them that many call me Miss Amy instead. They’re loud for their size, and quite charismatic. Six days down and I feel that this will be a constant work in progress. I hope I’ll savor every moment of it. They deserve that much from me.

From them I get light. If I don’t smile they ask me why I’m sad, and I’m gratefully reminded of all I have to be thankful for. When they tell me they’re hurting, I say I’m sorry, and they’re satisfied to have even so little sympathy. When they innocently ask, “Miss Jaimie, why are you so beautiful?,” I smile and tell them they merely see me that way, and I believe they feel they’ve then accomplished something. When they fall, I pick them up, and when I’m down, they return the favor. I have the honor of receiving freshly plucked weeds daily. And I lack the heart to scold them for using a third of our glue when they present to me lined paper stuck together, complete with abstract stick figures.

I have thirteen non-stop lively, desk-dancing, pencil-drumming, creatively spoken students. And I believe I love them. Very much.