When I was first teaching, full of brilliant ideas, there’d be wild Friday afternoons when my seventh-graders were throwing ink, jousting with rulers and whining without end.
When I heard myself ordering a dinner companion to “Sit down and fold your hands,” I started to think about quitting.
I lasted three semesters, went to grad school, became a professor – and now am a totally confident veteran. I’ve taught the semicolon some 147 times; it’s still my favorite punctuation mark.
But end-of-semester can be bittersweet. I enjoy students’ quirks, but can’t see them face-to-face (Zoom). They can’t come up behind me at the grocery store, as they used to, demanding “Why did I get a B in the course? I worked so hard!”
Every class develops a particular character; sometimes you have a “bad class,” and you never know why. Mostly my students now think I’m a funny old fogey. I tell moldy jokes; I imitate Tina Turner; I tell ’em what I saw at the Spanish Armada.
I tell ’em it’s gonna be on the test.
I miss them already.
