Long Mondays

Today I returned to the same middle school that I was at last Thursday... yes, the day of the jinx.

I guess I'm just experiencing a strange role reversal, since Fridays are supposed to be the tough days and Mondays are supposed to be the days where kids are docile and manageable. The first block of the day was fine (and they were fine last week as well), and since it was 9am, I expected so much. The next two blocks featured the grade 8's that drained my energy last week. Both blocks were dedicated to a major poster project, which only about half of them worked moderately well on. But, not in a mood to constantly harass students into working, I let them be as long as they weren't disrupting others or wreaking havoc. Although quite fatigued at the end of these two grade 8 blocks, I smiled on the rest of the day... I was told to... watch a movie.

In all reality, if a TOC is feeling uncertain about the day or simply tired and lazy, a movie at the end of class is the perfect end to a day.

Could a group of grade 9's handle that?

In a word... no.

They were throwing paper airplanes, texting their friends, kicking each other's chairs, poking each other, prodding one another, yelling things out, talking over the movie, and pretty much every other annoying, juvenile thing you can imagine. I like to think I'm patient... I cut kids slack and won't worry about the first offense or two. However, a few of them simply persisted in doing everything possible to be a nuisance. You'd think that watching about 80 minutes of Kirsten Dunst would be a treat for most kids. Could they deal with just sitting and watching? Ummm... no.

I blame some of it on the fact that the regular teacher has been sick for more than a week and he always expects to be back for the next class (which is part of the issue... telling kids that their regular teacher is going to be back next class is pretty normal... but when he doesn't come back and another sub walks in, they immediately have their backs raised). Another was that they thought they could push me without suffering any consequences. After a 15 minute earful after everyone else had left the room, I think the main contributors to the chaos clued in that this was not, in fact, the case.

Okay, enough ranting about my mediocre school day.

After getting done at school, I felt a headache lingering in the back of my brain, and didn't feel like going to the gym. I knew Kerrie was going to likely have a mediocre work day as well, so I thought it wouldn't be a big deal. When she got home, this was exactly the case. Still, since we didn't go to the gym on the weekend and my Friday workout was hampered by a sore knee (too much volleyball last Wendesday, I think), I decided to go regardless. I needed to blow off some of that pent up TOC frustration.

I'm glad I did. I got to listen to one of my favourite Counting Crows songs (it's actually a cover of a song written by a friend of Adam Duritz) called "Wiseblood" on the way to the gym and enjoyed a good cardio workout with some John Mayer and Amy Winehouse in K's IPod.

Just as I walked out the door, I felt the cold whiteness of the year's first real snow in town fall on my bare legs. It was peaceful, and relatively quiet, and tremendously beautiful.

Like always, the joy of some days is just buried among our every day stresses... it just takes two open eyes to notice from time to time.

T

Lyrics to "Wiseblood", performed by Counting Crows, written by Kurt Stevens...

I'm an outcast that no one can save anymore,
And the days of my youth are all long gone by.
I was the kind of boy the devil would offer a smoke or a drink to,
Or a ride downtown to some God-forsaken land.

One Sunday morning at dawn, you know they baptized my soul
But they held me down so long, Christ, I almost drowned.
I was the kind of boy who never learned to smile so I kicked and I screamed
'Til I tore myself loose from all these great big hands, yeah.

Wiseblood knows how to walk away the wind blows
And wiseblood hears grace whisper right behind.

My mama, she turned around and said,
"Little boy you'd better wake up 'cause you're walking dead."
She was the kind of girl who never touched a smoke or a drink,
And she smouldered like an empty church left to burn in the wind.