Feeling: vindicated
Listening to: Humming "Stars" from Les Miz
Reading/Watching: Mansfield Park

After spending the majority of yesterday feeling like a self-conscious dumbass, I really needed today.

Teaching a middle-school reading class (I always get called for middle school; it's weird), I was warned on my way in the building that several of this teacher's classes can be "difficult." The teachers in the neighboring classrooms both offered to come in and help if I needed them, if the kids got out of hand, etc. It was beginning to make me nervous.

Then I got the kids in there. Typical hormonal pre-teens, except they were all so excited to see me. Asking hopefully if their usual teacher was "really, really sick," or injured, or had been fired, I began wondering what kind of gorgon they usually had.

But apparently, Nice Teacher = Kids Hate Sub. Mean Teacher = Kids Love Sub. They wanted to keep me, so I'm thinking their regular teacher is Cruella DeVil or something.

The kids were just so funky, so quirky. One boy walked in, all of eleven, sporting baby-gangsta wear, and gave me the head nod, "'Sup?" Without being able to catch myself, I was still looking over the role-call, and said, "Not much, 'sup witchoo?" And I swear, he's now my slave for life. When the class got rowdy, Mini-Cool-J was the one shouting "Quiet! Miss March is talking!!"

Another kid, bored after finishing his work, was tossing balled-up scrap paper at the trash can, and missing every time. I was watching him pointedly, eyebrows raised, waiting for him to notice that I was staring at him. He saw me watching him, ducked his head, and I glared and beckoned him over. "Come here."

The entire class "oooooh"ed, anticipating his doom, and he slunk over, already mumbling, "I'll pick it all up, I swear Miss, I will..."

"Just promise me one thing," I said quietly, once he got to my desk. "Never. Ever. Play basketball."

Watching the shock on his face become a grin was my favorite moment of the day. By the end of the day, the students were asking if I could come back Monday, stay all next week, take over the class for the rest of the year, etc etc. Middle schoolers are melodramatic and crazy and often inexplicable, but they crack me up. I'm beginning to think I might enjoy teaching in a junior high someday.

Especially since I got the most "difficult" class to sit and finish their standardized-reading practice in virtual silence. When the woman next door came to ask for one of the kids to come to her room to pick something up, she looked utterly shocked to see them all in their desks, heads bent, reading away.

I had a really, really good day.

...except for when I was talked into going to see Slither with mon coeur and the air force boys. Excepting the moments of Nathan Fillion wisecracks, I want those two hours of my life back. Seriously.

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