When You’re a Teacher

You think you’re going to reminisce about how you imparted all this great knowledge of Homeric similes, couplets, prepositions, rising action and political satire, but here’s what you actually end up remembering:

1. When April writes you her concerns: “Hi, sorry I’ve been skipping your class so much, but I can’t do all the side work that we’ve been doing, and I can’t deal with all the morons in the class.”
2. When Alex leaves a note on your desk: “In your face, ha ha I got my reading log done BEFORE you went on that field trip. HA!”
3. When you find a note someone passed in class that says: “I always thought Ms. Carleton was a guy cause of her voice!”
4. When you find another note someone passed in class that says: “Look at wat Ms. Carleton is wearing,” and you really wish you could remember what you were in fact wearing that day.
5. When a student turns in a final with the response:
Q: What 2 things can we learn from Romeo and Juliet?
A: 1. Love can come and go as it pleases.
2. Love can do weird things to the body.

6. When a student tells it like it is in his class notes:
The stages of life:
1) child/toddler
2) 5 to 9
3) 10/13
4) 14/18
5) 18/25
6) 25/32
7) 32 to your last days

7. When the classroom comment box tells you what they really think:

1. Less grammar notes
2. Less grammar notes because the first 45 min of this class make me HATE school
3. Your Hott
4. This is Ian and your cute

8. When you realize that today during second period Senior English you had armpit sweat visible on your t-shirt.

9. When you are asked to be the advisor of the Role-playing Game club, a surprise, as you have zero knowledge of role-playing. But you soon find the eavesdropping during club meetings is worth it:

Q: “Can I be chaotic evil?”
A: “No.”

“You don’t see anything but rats gnawing on corpses.”
“Yay for corpses!”

“I have a question: Can I fall out of a tree and land on a weasel?”

“I’m speaking Druidian.”
“Well, he doesn’t understand you.”

“I’m not going to play Magic either—it’s not my thing—too much pansy.”

“The funniest thing is when I took a badger out and it gnawed Jeff’s character’s face off.”

“What’s wrong with you? First you thought placenta was a food and now you don’t even know what 4:20 is.”

I recently submitted this to a zine to be published by the Independent Publishing Resource Center (IPRC), a great place for writers, teachers, and creators in Portland.