Saturday, October 21, 2006

Friday, Seventh Period

As I walked the short distance from my car to the side door of Kempner High School, the only thought in my tired, foggy head was “I hate this day. It hasn’t even started, and I hate it.” I didn’t want to walk through the doors. I remember feeling this way when I was the high school student, but now I am the high school teacher. I am the teacher, and I continue to feel trapped within the confines of the school doors.

My seventh period class doesn’t believe me when I note, “I want to go home too.” They don’t get it. I probably didn’t get it when I was in high school. I thought my teachers lived at school. They didn’t have a life or a history or a favorite television show. Well, maybe a few of them did, my favorite teachers. But the awful ones, the bitchy ones, the scary ones (all of whom I completely empathize with now), they never had lives. At least, I never imagined a life for them.

And this was a Friday, when the weekend is cheering me on, waiting to give me a pat on the back. Except, I had to take a five hour test this morning, this Saturday morning.

Once again becoming the student, I sat in the squeaky desk with my number two pencil, bubbling and writing to the best of my abilities. No, not to the best of my abilities, but to the best I could do on a Saturday morning, which was not even close to the best of my abilities. And now, I empathize with my students, my poor, sad students who sit in squeaky desks and bubble and write the best that they can do in the last period of the day.

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