Newbie

by Jo Noelle

  I grab my pen and add “clean cupboards” and “organize cupboards” on this past Monday’s list. Check. Check. On the line for Tuesday, I write in “lessons” after the word “phonics”. Check. I also add “defrag the computer.” Check. “Get balls from lost and found” is added to Wednesday, along with “phonics practice pages.” Check. Check. I look back at the list. Now it shows what I’ve really accomplished.

  Next to Wednesday, I add “ask out Liam.” Check. “Grocery shopping.” Check. Since I also prepped two math lessons today, I place two check marks beside “math” on Monday’s list. Each check mark is a day of completed lessons. That’s better. I should do the same for phonics. So where I originally had one check mark for creating the lesson plans, I add four more check marks each for “phonics lessons” and “phonics practice pages.”

  Bright blue checkmarks dot the page. This is living with your glass half full.

  I work two more hours and have two more math lessons done. Realizing it takes me longer to prepare the math lessons than it does to teach them, I’m a little worried about being prepared to teach.

  __________________________________

  Subject: sooooo whatcha doin’?

  Thurs. Sept. 13, 20074:58 PM

  hi sophie,

  i’m just checking to see what you are up to? did you find the math book? are you

  and liam an item yet????

  :) beth

  __________________________________

  __________________________________

  Subject: Thank you, thank you!

  Thurs. Sept. 13, 20078:03 PM

  I’ve been working like crazy making lesson plans. Thank you so much for sharing your calendar with me. No, we aren’t an item, but the date Saturday was great and he’s coming over for dinner tomorrow. Hard to believe, but he’s more gorgeous up close.

  Miss you,

  Sophie

  __________________________________

  At lunchtime, I take a note to the office. Liam’s leaving just as I step in. He smiles deeply, and his hand brushes mine as we move beside each other. He whispers, “Seven.” My hand, arm and neck tingle.

  I rush home right after school today, vowing to move the remaining To-Do List items forward to Saturday. After all, I’ll have all day—makes sense. Mina is a miracle worker. She has everything for dinner prepped in little containers in the fridge, and brownies are cooling on the counter.

  Karli arrives as we’re hooking up the video game. “Bad news—we have to bow out of the dinner tonight. My date found us some extra practice time at the studio. He’s also my clogging partner. Anyway, we can have the studio time, but it’s during the party so we won’t be here. Sorry.”

  Mina and I both retreat to our sides of the house and we are back, looking fabulous, in the kitchen, waiting for our dates with fifteen minutes to spare. Stev arrives a couple of minutes later and Liam right at seven.

  Casual looks stunning on Liam, who’s wearing khaki board-shorts and a maroon polo. His legs are muscular, like he runs all day, which most days he does. Should I volunteer for recess duty?

  “What’s for dinner?’ Stev asks Mina. Maybe it wasn’t a great idea to double with an obviously together couple. Stev leans against the kitchen counter, Mina standing in front of him, her back against his chest.

  “Pizza, and you’re making it,” she says, looking over her shoulder at him, then stepping out of his arms. “Well, and you.” She points to Liam and starts pulling containers from the fridge and two pre-formed pizza crusts she bought from a restaurant.

  “May I take your order?” Liam turns to me and asks. We have to top the pizza in halves. He likes red sauce—I like white. He likes onion—I don’t. He wants mushrooms. No fungus for me. He likes pepperoni—yay! Something in common. He goes for black olives and I want green, along with spinach and roasted red peppers. Then we agree again on loads of cheese. We put the pizzas in the ovens and set a timer for twenty minutes. Mina makes garlic bread, wraps it in foil, and places it beside one of the pizzas while the rest of us work on the tossed salad.

  “Why don’t you two go pick out a game for us to play later?” Yes, Mina is dismissing us from the kitchen. “Don’t come back until you hear the timer” was definitely implied. Dutifully, Liam and I go to the living room and begin looking through games for the Wii. Then we sit back and chat until the timer rings.

  After dinner, we move to the living room for games. Mina and I have it planned. We will start out partnered with our boyfr…dates…and play some of the games we aren’t very good at. Then we’ll partner with each other and play boxing against them so we end as the winners.

  Our first game is baseball. Stev and Mina are awesome—well, so is Liam. Every time I swing the screen flashes, “You swung too early,” and the final word on my performance is “You Lose.” In fact, I see those words over and over in every game. My confidence is faltering by the time we start boxing.

  Stev and Liam move the controls with serious precision. Their animated characters look like they’re really boxing. Then it’s my turn to take on the winner—Liam. My style is more like wild abandon. Head, head, gut, head. Since I have no plan, there isn’t a predictable sequence to my method, and Liam has no defense. I swing at him madly, stepping closer and closer to the TV screen, wiping him out quickly. We’re laughing so hard our cheeks hurt, and we’re out of breath. I take on each person, up and down quickly. Victorious at last. This is fun and exhausting. My arms are really going to hurt tomorrow.

  Liam and I head out to the porch to watch a thunderstorm move through town. Wind wrenches leaves out of trees, pushing them across the yard and down the street. They tumble end over end and whirl in invisible eddies. As we sit on the Adirondack bench, cinching a quilt around us, lightning flashes in stark bolts and rain pelts the street and roof in a rhythm sounding like applause.

  “So why the career in teaching instead of boxing?”

  “Right now the question is just, why the career in teaching?” I tell Liam a shortened version of my last few months in real estate. “Thing is, I would have stayed in real estate. It’s more than a little intimidating to be in a classroom.”

  Liam scoots closer and tightens the quilt around us. “Really, why?” Our hands clasp beneath the blanket. His thumb caresses back and forth softly along mine.

  The tingle that causes on my skin runs in rhythms up and down my arm. “I have to be ready every day for whatever happens. And things happen.” I slide my eyes to his to see if he cringes at the confession. “I worry about my class, and that I don’t know enough to help them. One more thing—I think it matters if I like them. That sounds weird to say aloud, but I didn’t have long-term relationships in my last career. In fact, four to six weeks is about the tops for real estate sales, then I move on to the next deal.” I laugh a little. This is my chance to find out the mystery that brought Liam here. “I guess I have more than a few insecurities in this job. How did you come to Rio Grande Elementary?”

  “I’ve been working in the family business for a few years, but I wasn’t sure it was my thing. Last December, Mr. Chavez invited me to come over and see if the elementary school was a good fit, and I’ve stayed.”

  “And is it a good fit?”

  “I don’t know yet, but it’s fun to be around the kids. It’s something different every day. Right now, it’s good for me.”

  It’s good for me that it’s good for him. “So what was the family business?”

  “Hotels. Spas. Resorts. I’m really not into hospitality, though. I’d like to find something that interests me and go in a new direction. So I’m looking.”

  Maybe I could interest you, if you’re looking.

  September 15, 2007

  Newbie Blog:

  20 Hours a Week More

  Teaching school is great except for the lesson planning part, and the paycheck part, and the thirty-minute lunch part. The shocker is that it takes me as long to plan a lesson as it does to teach it. Stay with me here�
��I teach five-and-a-half hours a day, that’s how long I need for planning, too. And I just don’t have the time. I have an hour a day in my contract for planning, five hours a week. I guess it would be easier if this were my second year instead of my first, then I’d just have to adjust old plans to fit a new class, but making it up from scratch takes for-ev-er.

  This week, I used the five hours of contract prep time plus fourteen and an half more, and I only have half the lessons I need for a week. Yes, I’m going into my classroom again. Today. A Saturday. I’ll put in an extra twenty-five hours this week, making my wages per hour roughly equal to pathetic. In fact, I made more as a waitress my summer before college.

  I used to think teachers whined too much about wages. After all, didn’t they know the salary before they took the job? Yes. What they didn’t know about were the extra hours. So, I’ve changed my mind. Teachers should be paid more. A lot more.

  Something I’ve learned—buried deep inside the cupboards, hidden in boxes in the closet and shoved into drawers, the remains of every teacher who has ever had your room are with you still. Just clean out your room to meet them.

  __________________________________

  Subject: I’m So BORED

  Mon. September 17, 20074:13 PM

  hi sophie,

  i am soooooo bored! i don’t know if i can stand another day penned up here. how long has it been? oh 15 days! all i can think about are ways to escape and the lies i would tell afterward to justify it:

  •got lost on the way to the kitchen

  •emergency to help a friend

  •abducted by aliens

  :) beth

  __________________________________

  Throughout the day on Tuesday, I take pictures of Beth’s class sitting angelically in their classroom, eating in the lunchroom, running around at recess, and then lined up to go home. I attach them to an email for her.

  __________________________________

  Subject: Your class

  Tues. September 18, 20074:50 pm

  Beth,

  I thought these might cheer you up.

  Sophie

  __________________________________

  Although I worked another six hours last Saturday to prep lessons, I didn’t finish everything I needed. Today is the last day I have every lesson ready. I don’t have the reading lessons for the rest of this week, but all the other lessons are done. It takes a couple more hours after work to create them for tomorrow before I head home.

  On Wednesday and Thursday, I prep just enough for the next day’s lessons. My reading lessons for Friday don’t work out as I had planned, and we have half an hour with nothing to do before lunch. In desperation, I look around the room for a filler and see the stack of coloring pages Mrs. Hays delivered to me weeks ago. I feel like I’m cheating on a test as I pull them off the counter and choose two coloring pages and two worksheets for the students to do.

  This is why Mrs. Hays brought them to me—because she thought I couldn’t plan real lessons for my class. Because she thought I wasn’t well prepared for teaching. Because she thought I would fail the students and the school. With more than a little guilt, I hand them out anyway. Ellie peers up at me with what I swear is judgment and disappointment.

  There’s another lull in the afternoon, and I retreat to more coloring pages. This time, Ellie finishes the pages and approaches me. “I’ve been playing school most of my life, and this is not how it is supposed to go,” she says, putting the papers on my little table.

  She’s right. I’ve got to put in more time to make this better. I was hoping for Liam to ask me out again, but even if he did, I’d have to decline. I realize this is why I thought my student teaching experience was a failure. I felt overwhelmed by the time and emotion it takes to teach, and I chose a different career.

  I know my lessons haven’t been as good as I’ve hoped, but I make it through the week without a meltdown, putting in extra hours every night, and I’m working again tomorrow, another Saturday, to get my lessons ready for next week—especially Monday, my first observation and evaluation.

  __________________________________

  Subject: I’m FREE

  Fri. September 21, 20072:20 PM

  hey sophie,

  guess what? i’m free! the doctor cleared me to come back to work on monday. i have to take it easy—no moving furniture, picking up children, etc, etc, blah, blah. i know and i’ll be careful. i can hardly wait to be back. see you

  monday morning.

  :) Beth

  __________________________________

  __________________________________

  RE: I’m FREE

  Fri. Sept. 21, 20073:40 PM

  Yay! Your class will be so surprised and thrilled. See you soon.

  Sophie

  __________________________________

  September 22, 2007

  Newbie Blog:

  One Day at a Time

  This week has been harrrrd. I’m exhausted from putting in a lot of extra hours and I’m barely keeping up—well, not keeping up. The worst part is that yesterday, Hot Sub asked me if I’d like to go for a ride in the mountains and see the fall colors today, and I had to turn him down because I have to be prepared for my evaluation. No pulling out coloring pages and faking it in front of the principal. This job has the potential to take over my whole life and right now I don’t know what to do about that.

  Two things I’ve learned:

  1. School pictures don’t look any better when you’re an adult than when you were a child.

  2. Copiers can tell when you are stressed or in a hurry. Their performance is inversely proportional to your patience level. If you really, really need it, it really, really isn’t going to work. Given high need on your part, the copier is sure to malfunction, eat your master, crumple your copies into little fans, and smear a line of black ink across the page.

  I’ve already put in four hours, and I’m sure if I stay for one to two more I’ll have what I need for Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday of next week—but not Thursday or Friday. I stand to stretch. Hearing knocking on the window, I see Liam, smiling, and cross the room to let him in the recess door. He has a vase with branches of beautiful golden aspen leaves and spikes of evergreen limbs. He hands them to me and kisses my cheek. The cheek again. If I had anticipated that, I could have turned just enough to…

  Then he holds up a bag from a Chinese takeout. “Have you had lunch yet?”

  “No. And I’m starving.” There are lesson-planning materials spread over my desk, the little table and a few student desks. Official disaster. “We could go to the faculty room.”

  Reaching for my hand, he pulls me to the rug in the middle of my room. “Let’s just picnic.” We eat right from the boxes using chopsticks.

  He also has fortune cookies, which we crack and read aloud. His fortune says, “Happiness may be beside you.” Okay—I know immediately I’m reading way too much into that as my face warms. My cookie says, “Your hard work will be rewarded with a new perspective.” I want his fortune.

  “I guess you’re going back to hard work now—the fortune cookie has spoken.” He throws the containers into the bag and stands to leave, reaching for my hand. We walk across the room, still holding hands. This time, I know he’s going to kiss my cheek, so if I just turn…no, he’ll kiss my lips when he feels the way I feel. I can wait. Without dropping my hand, he pulls me into a hug and kisses my cheek. Yup—called it. Even that little kiss makes my stomach tumble and my face blush. Or it could have been how strong his arms were around me. Maybe I can wait.

  A couple of hours later, I can finally leave. The lessons look good, and the one for my evaluation is tight. I’m starting to get the hang of how to use Beth’s calendars for lesson planning, but it still takes so much time. Note to self: Lavish Beth with gifts for sharing her calendar with me.

  Rule for the week—do not answer the door at home at all. School fund-raiser starts today. I completely do not need wr
apping paper.

  Upon entering the front doors early on Monday morning, some moms from the parent organization are erecting a giant thermometer for totaling the fundraiser profits. This afternoon, I’ll distribute the sales packets to all the kids in the class so they can pester their parents, aunts, grandparents, neighbors, and anyone else they can talk into buying some.

  Beth leans through my threshold. “Came by to wish you luck on your observation today. You’ll do great. When is it?”

  “You’re back! Your kids are going to be nuts.” I rush to the door and hug her. “My evaluation is right after recess.”

  After welcoming my students, I let them know that Mr. Chavez will be visiting our class today. “He’s going to love being in our class and seeing your great work. Just keep working while he’s here.” Hint, hint. Keep working. Keep quiet.

  The morning speeds by, and right before recess, Mindi passes out cupcakes while we all sing a birthday song to her. A few minutes after recess, Mr. Chavez enters our classroom and sits at my desk with a clipboard. A few kids wave at him, then we finish reading a poem, and students begin choosing independent activities to work on. I call a few students to come sit with me at a small table near my desk. “Mark, Jason, Kyra, Ellie, and Sol.”