1. Giselle #3
“Class, school is very important, and we should always try our best to stay awake and participate. After all, if you sleep, you could miss out on drawing clouds.” I paused to let them digest what I said so far.
Yes, my kids were bright, but they were kids, and sometimes they needed a minute to digest things.
Hell, sometimes I needed time to digest things, and I was an adult.
“But we do have to be practical and understand that you’re all growing girls and boys, so sometimes your body will randomly need a lot more rest and a lot more energy, no matter how responsible you are about bedtime and eating a good breakfast. When that happens, it’s okay to rest in my classroom, as long as it doesn’t become a habit. Does everyone understand?”
There were some nods all around, but a lot of the kids still seemed dubious.
I couldn’t blame them. They’d just gotten out of kindergarten and had no doubt gotten many lectures about how they would no longer have nap time.
Not on my watch. I had these kids through all of first grade, and I wanted to instill the idea that school was a safe place.
Would I have to talk to their next teacher to properly set expectations? Of course. But the kids were worth it.
“And I also want everyone to remember that if any of you need sleepy time instead of recess, my classroom is a safe place to snooze as long as I’m not on recess duty. I have blankets and pillows in my closet. Can everyone remember that for me?”
There was a much more confident wave of positive responses, and I smiled to myself. I gave Benny a warm smile, and he certainly seemed a bit less sheepish. Good. No student should feel embarrassed about nodding off once in a while.
It didn’t take long to finish a general overview of the clouds—they were only first-graders after all, so I didn’t make it complicated—and we moved into a watered-down version of how those different clouds affected rain and the general precipitation.
And yes, I made that watered-down joke out loud.
Unfortunately, my class just blinked at me instead of groaning.
Oh well, luckily, they would probably forget it in an hour or so.
One of the blessings of dealing with young ones.
“Miss Fischbacher?”
“Yes, Amanda?”
“All of these clouds are fun…” she said, and pride shot through me.
It was a small thing, but I truly believed that making lessons fun set a great foundation for their scholastic careers.
Sure, teachers always liked to believe they’d change the world, but when I saw their happy faces, it was hard not to think it.
“But sometimes… sometimes storms are kind…” Her eyes flicked around uncertainly, as if she was embarrassed about what she was going to say. “Kind of scary. ”
“Uh-huh!” Mickey added quickly, and even though it was another interruption, I was happy for it.
I loved children, but they had an uncanny knack for cruelty without even trying.
A flip of the coin, and ten of them could have chorused that they were never scared in a storm and that Amanda was the biggest weenie-face.
“Sometimes it’s so loud. Makes my head go boyyeeooonnnngggg , but in a bad way. ”
“My mom says it’s God moving his furniture!”
“My daddy says it’s Indra dancing with Indrani!”
“Thank you, Ravi, Angelica. And you’re both right. When we’re up against scary things, it helps to think of much happier things, or picture them in a new perspective. Do we all know what perspective is?”
Amanda’s hand shot up again. I was pleased as punch that even though she had originally asked the question because she was scared, she was still willing to add to the conversation.
“Yes, Amanda?”
“Perspective is kinda like… how someone sees something. It can be… Uhm, it can be real or in their mind?”
“If by real, you mean their physical perspective, you’re absolutely correct,” I said, grinning broadly.
Sure, we had a curriculum to stick to, but I loved when kids’ natural curiosity took us on a bit of a journey.
“Perspective, when broken down to its most basic form, is how someone views or interprets something. So, if storms are scary to you, sometimes the best way to make them not scary is to shift your perspective, as Ravi and Angelica have.”
“But what if you can’t?”
I looked towards the back of the room where the small voice came from, but it had been quiet enough that I wasn’t sure who had asked.
“What if you can’t what?” I asked gently, patiently. I was well aware that there could be no response at all, but thankfully, it was Addison, her face half-tucked behind a book.
Oh goodness, her asking had my brain pinging off in a dozen different directions about why she would ask.
God, it really made the whole idea of rolling up to her home with a baseball bat that much more appealing.
Maybe I was totally off base, but I was definitely on the lookout for any evidence to the feeling I had in my gut.
“What if you can’t change your perspective? What if you try, really, really hard, but you’re still scared?”
What a question.
What an awful, wonderful, brave question.
I was a kid once, and I liked to think I was fairly good at it, but even so, it was hard to remember what it was like to build my understanding of the world from base zero. They were experiencing so many things for the first time, and it was my job to make that journey as smooth as possible.
“Let’s talk about fear, shall we?” I said, going over to my desk and rolling my chair out so I could sit right at the front of the room.
“About being scared.” I paused to gaze at the young faces in front of me.
While I’d only been teaching them for less than half a year, I had come to love each and every one of them.
“I think we all know what fear is, and I think that all of us have been scared at one point or another. It doesn’t feel very good, but what if I told you that fear isn’t always bad?
” There was a murmur of disbelief, and I didn’t blame them.
I remembered the shadows in my room looking too much like toothy monsters, or the house shifting in the cold of night, making it feel like something evil was moving under my bed.
“You see, fear is important. It’s a warning system for danger, to let us know we need to be careful and alert. Without it, we could be in danger and not even know it.
“ However, what we have to remember is that it is only that: a warning. It means it’s time to examine and move forward carefully and with intention, or run away.
So, instead of letting it be this bad, awful thing we build up in our minds, we can appreciate it as another thing that makes us healthy and safe. ”
I was pleased by a series of nods, but there were still a few troubled faces. I was slightly surprised when Benny raised his hand, and I called on him quickly.
“But what do you do when you try all that, but it still feels bad? If you’re still scared?”
“Well, in that case, my dear, you do it scared.”
“Do it scared?”
I nodded. “If you have that awful feeling, you stop and observe the situation and find that it’s safe, but you still have that ickiness?
That’s okay. Just do it scared. Whether it’s taking a test. Trying something for the first time.
Trying to make a new friend, or trying out for a sport.
Just do it scared. It’s better to try even when you’re frightened than to never try at all. ”
“Do it scared,” Mickey repeated, and again, I didn’t correct him for interrupting.
“Do it scared,” I repeated before I gave them another pause.
I’d just dropped a pretty big concept on my class, and I didn’t want to move on from it too soon.
I wanted them to sit in the moment and wrap their minds around it.
Maybe most of them would forget it, but I liked to think that I’d planted a seed that would grow with them.
“Here’s what I’d like everyone to do. I’d like you to think about a time when you were scared but everything turned out okay, and I want you to write about it or draw me a picture of it.
And the next time you’re scared, you can think of what you wrote or drew and know that despite how frightening some things can be, you can come out the other side just fine.
Some side conversation is fine, but keep it to quiet-time voices, please. ”
They did exactly that, and I returned my chair to my desk so I could figure out when to finish our lesson.
We still had a bit of time post-afternoon recess, but honestly, I usually liked to spend that time with more hands-on or creative things, because man, the kids’ concentrations were often completely shot at that point.
At least I wasn’t on recess duty, so I could figure it out once my class was outside.
I made sure to line them up right on time, telling the kids to place their composition notebooks in the intake box on my desk for me to look at overnight.
Being a teacher was often a grueling experience, so I was grateful for the small breaks that came with it.
As everyone filed outside after one of the teachers’ aides came to chaperone them, Benny broke away and came to my desk.
I was about to tell him he needed to stick with the rest of the class, but the look on his face stopped me.
He was always a relatively serious kid, but this time, his expression was much more intense.
“I’m not tired because I’m growing.”
“You are growing, Benny. I know it might not feel like it, but?—”
“No, Miss Fischbacher, I’m not tired because I’m growing, I’m tired because I keep having nightmares. Bad nightmares. You knew so much about being scared. Do you know what to do about nightmares?”
Oh, dear .
I was touched, I really was. I wanted my lessons to go beyond the classroom, and Benny asking me for help with possible night terrors was proof that I was doing so.
“Well, it’s different for everyone, but there’s lots of things you can do.
If you have a plushie that really comforts you, you can cuddle with that.
Or a pet. You can try reading a calming book—even a comic book if you like those.
You can ask a grownup to tell you a story or watch a happy show.
Anything that can take your mind off it.
Don’t be discouraged if it takes you a little bit to find what works for you, it’ll be worth it. ”
An uncertain smile spread across his face, and he gave me a resolute nod. “Okay, I’ll try those.”
“Sounds like a plan. Now, how about I walk you to recess?”
“I’d like that, ma’am.”