Clang Clang Clang Goes My Noggie!

My ears are ringing and I don't know who to blame.

Mother nature and her pollen-riddled skies?  Perhaps.  But then, it could just as easily be the din of my workplace.  Schools are really, really noisy places.

Combine the hallway chatter, the band-room oompahs, the gymnasium grunts and cheers, the classroom clutter, the lunchtime noshing and farting, and, before long,  you find yourself sucking your thumb and rocking in a corner, babbling "Calgon, take me away.  Calgon, take me away."

Teachers who also happen to be parents know that, by the time we pull in the garage at the end of a school day, we want to hear a whole bunch of nothing--not even the sweet burble of our own children's voices.

Sucks to be you, teacher's kid.  

Beyond all the maddening mandates, revised curriculum and continual reinvention that fill a school day, I think it's the noise and the constant, on-our-feet decision making that take the biggest toll.  Let's just say that, f I needed synapses to fire up the stove at night, we'd be eating cereal over the sink for nine months a year.  

I don't claim the corner on this market, of course.  I'm sure that many other professions are filled with constant decision making and improvisation.  But few have the clatter and teenaged clientele that we do.  And those realities make a difference in our ability to refuel between decisions.

Even the best-laid lesson plans fall victim to the endless barrage of baggage that students bring to school each day.  For the most part, most of us are making it up as we go, even if we've got something detailed and creative written in our lesson books.

I'm not complaining.  Not completely, at least.  This on-the-fly thinking is generally something I enjoy.  I like the puzzles, the pickles, the prognostication that come with teaching.  Added up together, it's just a bit wearing, that's all.

For some reason, I am reminded of this awesome, unnamed rock from my childhood that I keep in my school bag.  It has been worn smooth by both time and the granular magic of a long-ago rock tumbler.   Every so often, my fingers find the rock and, inevitably, massage its smooth surface.  It took a long time to get out its rough spots, time and sand and wind and water.

Considering all the elements that wear away at people who work in schools, I'm sometimes surprised that we aren't smoother, shinier, less rough around the edges.