Being Peter Pan

Sometimes I think my soul is too young to be a teacher.  It's too hard.  Too hard to stand on the sidewalk during playground duty when all I want to do is kick off my shoes and run through the field catching passes with the boys playing football or tuck in my shirt and hang upside down from the monkey bars with the little girls in their pigtails.  It's too hard to be fierce and stern and dare them to make a sound while I'm trying to teach them two digit subtraction when all I want to do is lead them in a rollicking singing dancing frolic. 

Oh, I know, teachers ought be firm and not smile until Christmas.  That's a lot of hogwash.  I have trouble not laughing at their ill-timed jokes in class.  They're too funny, too alive, too uninhibited.  I get nervous just thinking about someone walking into my classroom during snack time or dance party time.  There are children sitting quietly in their seats happily crunching away on their granola bars.  There are also children forming conga lines to a verb rap or hollering requests for "Oh, Say Can You See"  ("The Star Spangled Banner" - their favorite song).  Will the teacher or administrator or (heaven forbid) the superintendent understand that this is childhood happening?  That NeverLand exists for moments during the day in my classroom? 

 

I feel like Peter Pan with my Lost Boys (and girls), co-conspirators on a mission of adventure and discovery.  It is my job to teach them to be brave and bold and live lives of honor.  I must lead them to be lovers of poetry and investigators of physics and chemistry.  They ought to know that whether done in a team or alone, work is something accomplished with passionate creativity and excellence.  Whether they are now or not, they ought to leave my room as connoisseurs of literature, whether the Gettysburg Address or The Magician's Nephew.  If they look at Renoir and say Ren-oy-er, I will have failed.  

Sometimes, teachers get confused.  They get the idea that school should be a quiet place.  They think that the important thing is children doing what they're told.  They think that the AIMS or Stanford15 or whatever standardized test it is must be studied for.  Being a new teacher, other ideas are still alive in my memory.  Walking in a straight, quiet line is not a life skill.  When's the last time you had to do it?  Probably 5th grade, unless you've been in a chain gang recently.  What is the class you remember the most material from?  It is not likely the one where you sat silently listening to a teacher lecture (aka daydreamed about what's for lunch, unless you had class with Dr.Mrs. Sonheim, Motl or Wight).  The purpose of education is not passing tests, but understanding what it means to be human through history, geography, geometry, chemistry, music, art, literature and jump roping.  If students can artfully express themselves and carefully examine ideas, don't you think they'll survive that test, whatever it is? 

Sometimes I feel like I have no idea what I'm doing, no one's listening, and no one is interested in learning.  I want to cry and read Shakespeare and run down a grassy hill and climb trees instead of be a teacher.  I must have to crack down on them and be harsher.  I will never be a good teacher.  A good teacher would be more organized.  A good teacher would this and that.  After some moping and self-lecturing, I remember the difference between Peter Pan and Charlie Brown's teacher.  One has a young soul, and one does not.  You cannot teach children to fly and loathe being among the stars.

Muddling through the first year of being Miss Sunshine,

LMS