Thoughts on Thirty

Thirty was so strange for me. I've reall

y had to come to terms with the fact that I am now a walking and talking adult. --C.S. Lewis

Today is my last day in my twenties.  Lots of people have had all sorts of helpful things to say about turning thirty lately.  I’ve heard everything from “Well, the alternative is being dead, so I’d be okay with turning thirty,” to “I bet Jesus wasn’t stressed about turning thirty” (to which I responded “So 33 is the year I need to worry about?”) to even just a simple question, “How are you feeling about it?”

Honestly, I feel pretty great.  Tomorrow I’m going to spend the day with people I love who I’ve chosen to be my family, and Sunday after I’m going to spend the day with the family I was blessed to be given from the very beginning.   Life looks pretty different than it did at twenty-five—and that’s a really good thing.

My twenty-fifth birthday was not a banner moment for me, for several reasons.   I’ve talked to several people who have a birthday like this—people don’t make a point of celebrating with you, and in general you don’t feel loved.  It’s not so much that people don’t love you, it’s that for some reason your birthday goes almost unnoticed by most people.  And let’s be honest, that kind of sucks, even though intellectually you know that people do in fact care about you, it seems like they might not.  I have a distinct memory of having only spent the day with my parents and some crying being involved.

But the more important part of what happened that year was that I made a list of things that I didn’t have in my life which I wanted to have.  Things like friends who weren’t teachers, to be more actively involved in my community, to feel good about my body, to have a Master’s Degree.   I found that list the other day in an old notebook and I realized that without actively looking at that list, I had accomplished almost all of the things I’d written down.

It’s funny when people ask me about how I feel leaving my twenties behind I have a sense that one thing they’re asking me is how I feel about still being single and turning 30. Getting married is one of those things that’s supposed to happen while you’re in your twenties.   Certainly when I was 22 and leaving Grove City and about 70% of the people I knew were already engaged to be married, I thought that by the time I was 30, I too would be married.  And I’m not.  And I feel pretty great about that part of turning 30 too.   Because the thing is, when I look back at my twenties, especially the last five years since that awful 25^th birthday, there isn’t a time that I would trade.  There isn’t a roommate I would trade in order to have lived with a husband instead.  I wouldn’t give back my tumultuous fourth year teaching where I understood exactly what I was made of and how weak others around me were.  I wouldn’t give back the classes I took for two years or the Master’s Degree I earned, or the friends I’ve made in northern Virginia.   

But there’s something more.  The story of my life, the story of anyone’s life, is not about how many things I’ve checked off of a to-do list.  It’s not about listing things out and saying that I’ve done enough to feel good about thirty.  It’s about moments and about people and about trying to live the life I’m called to live.   Deciding to commit the entire rest of my life to another person is a huge deal and I’m so grateful that I didn’t do that at 22 or even 27 because I’m not the same person I was then.  I’ve learned too much about myself, about the lies I was believing at 25 and even 27 to go back to the person I was at 22.  Or to think that the person who would’ve been right for me at 22 would be right for the almost 30 year old I am today.

And one last thing—I’ve also come to realize that if I wanted to be discontent with where my life was at 30, I could be.  Even if I was married.  If I was married I could be discontent about not having kids.  Or not having enough kids.  Or having too many kids.  Or not having a Master’s.  Or with having or not having a job.  There’s always something I could find to be discontent about if I wanted to, but instead deciding to be content and secure in the knowledge that I’m exactly where Jesus wants me to be right now is so much easier.  It’s a lot less stressful that I can stop worrying about life and just live it.  When I can focus on loving on the people I’ve been given and enjoying them loving on me. 

Are there things I want to do in my thirties—absolutely.  I might even make a list of thirty things I want to do.  But if they aren’t things that happen for any reason, I’m going to try to realize that it’s because God has something better for me that I never would’ve even dreamed of putting on my list.  And I’m good with God’s plan over mine at 29 or 30.  Hopefully even at 35 or 40.  

Got It. You're That One.

“All students can learn.” –Christopher Morley

You know that student.  You’ve had them in class beside you, you’ve been one, you’ve taught them.  They come in a many different forms—the student who sleeps through class, even though his eyes are open. The student who just can’t manage to not get suspended.  The one who refuses to try.  The one who just doesn’t care. 

This year mine is a girl, but some years that student is a boy.  Some years I’ve had more than one, but I’ve always had at least one.  That student who I want to succeed so badly, who I want to teach something meaningful to, and, who, for some reason, just won’t learn.  That student that you bring home with you in your heart, who makes you wonder, “What am I going to do?”

This year, she’s the student who so desperately needs attention of any kind, whose main goal is to distract, who is adamant I do not understand her.  

She is not totally wrong.  I don’t understand what it’s like to grow up in a single parent home.  I don’t know what it’s like to live with barely enough money to survive or to feel like you’re not smart enough to have anybody think you could possibly have the right answer. 

But she is not totally right either, because I know her well enough after two weeks to see beyond the behavior.  But the reason that I can’t leave her at school some days, why I can’t always just turn it off and worry about her tomorrow is because I don’t know how to treat the root cause of her behavior.  What’s even worse is that I doubt I’d be able to even if I tried.

I sit in my house, thinking about the situation with her, thinking about her ridiculousness, about her outbursts, her defiance, and her excuses, and I just don’t know.  I don’t know how to help her, I don’t know how to fix her, I don’t know how to make her learn. 

That’s what it comes down to in the end.  She is that student that I want to learn in my class almost more than all the other students, because I believe that learning, that education, that knowledge, could actually change her life.  And she is the one for whom I just can’t seem to figure out how to do that.

This isn’t a story of how by loving her and accepting her I’ve come to change her life.  I’ve known her for two weeks and mostly in the moment she drives me crazy.  I was sort of excited for the rest of my students today when I thought she was absent.  Instead she was just ten minutes tardy to my fifty-minute class.    This is the story of me and of so many teachers who have just looked at a kid and thought, “I just don’t know.”

What really makes me just shake my head is that I’m sure she has no idea how much I think about and wonder what I should do about this whole thing.  If you asked her, I’m sure she’d say either, “Ms. Short hates me,” or “I hate Ms. Short,” depending on her mood and how much of my frustration seeped into my voice during class.  Obviously I don’t hate her, and I doubt she actually hates me.  Honestly, it’s tough to come in and love someone who wants you to grow and change and stretch and expand your mind.  Especially when you’re 13.  In fact, as I remember it, most people sort of hate themselves and lots of other people at 13.  It’s kind of a terrible age. 

I want this to have an answer, a resolution, a neat hopeful ending about the power of a teacher to change a life.  And one thing I’ve learned is that resolutions are never as neat as they are in books.  Even good books.  Right now the answer is I don’t know.  The only resolution is that I’m going to teach her again tomorrow, and the hope is that she’ll remember something from what I taught her today.   

First Day Feelings

"Well, obviously, she's feeling very sad, because of Cedric dying.  Then I expect she's feeling confused because she liked Cedric and now she likes Harry, and she can't work out who she likes best. Then she'll be feeling guilty...and she'll be worrying about what everyone else might say...Oh, and she's afraid she's going to be thrown off the Ravenclaw Quidditch team because she's been flying so poorly." 

A slight stunned silence greeted the end of this speech, then Ron said, "One person can't feel all that at once, they'd explode." 

"Just because you have the emotional range of a teaspoon doesn't mean we all have," said Hermione. --Harry Potter and Order of the Phoenix, on Cho Chang and Ron's emotions. 

Teaching is all I’ve ever known as a real, adult-life job, so in some ways I’m ready for the school year to start.  The rhythms of the school year—summer break, beginning a new year, Thanksgiving, Winter, and Spring Breaks, projects and tests, planning and grading—all feel as normal to me as they did when I was in middle school myself.  But at the same time I feel nervous, underprepared, and in general overwhelmed by what’s starting tomorrow.

I don’t have quite as many intense emotions swirling around as Cho did, but there is an awful lot going on in the back of my mind as I make final preparations like seating charts, wall posters, and outfit choices.  I’m excited to actually meet my kids, I’m interested to see what it’s like teaching middle school, I’m ready to get back into the swing of things and to have the halls filled with kids (schools are strangely too big and empty when teachers are there but students are not). I’m also intimidated by the idea that I’m teaching for Fairfax County Public Schools which has Very Definite Expectations for student success, and I’m uncertain about teaching in a “barbell” school—one which has a substantial amount of upper class kids, and a substantial amount of lower class kids, but without many middle class kids at all—and how that dynamic will play into the year.  I’m seriously underwhelmed about the fact that my students will all have to take not only a reading SOL but also a writing SOL in the spring—something I’ve never had to deal with so directly. 

In the back of my mind—you could say all of the above is swirling around the middle—are two more intense things: 1. I believe I’ve been called into this profession, and that calling was not a way of being set up to fail, and 2. It’s feels like a very long time since I’ve done this.   Number 1 I need to just focus on, relax in.  But it’s number 2 that I can’t seem to fully shut out.  

In reality, it’s only been two years since I was teaching, but it was a vastly different situation.   By the time I left Shenandoah County I had been teaching ninth grade for five years and knew the curriculum and the type of population I would be getting—knew it like the back of my hand.  Eighth grade? I haven’t done that since I was in Big Spring Middle School in 1999.

One of the advantages to teaching for FCPS is the vast amount of resources and support available to teachers—my department already has an awful lot on the calendar for me, ready to go, to tell me what to teach.  There’s still a good amount of freedom—I get to choose what books/stories/poems I use to teach the concept, but I know that on Thursday, I’m going to teach author’s purpose (totally doable in like an hour, right?).  Part of this greatly relieves the anxiety I feel about not knowing this curriculum very well, but part of me wonders how I will feel about it next year.  When I came to ShenCo, I had some help from other teachers, but in some ways I felt (and we all felt in our own specific grade level I think) like I was re-inventing the wheel.  And that sucked for the first semester I taught (which is the only reason I taught the really awful book Summer of My German Soldier).  But then every semester after that, it was great.  Yeah, I had worked really hard to reinvent that wheel, but now the one that I was pushing uphill everyday? It was my wheel.  It was designed exactly the way I wanted it and while I was continuing to hone it and smooth it out and strength it, it was something I had really made.  Here, I’m being given the wheel, mostly formed, which right at the moment feels pretty helpful, but I can’t help but wonder what it will be like—if it will in fact feel like—I’m pushing someone else’s wheel up the hill each day. (I guess in truth, all of us are really just refining the wheel the state puts out anyway.  Also, I think I need to not use the word “wheel” in the post anymore.)

I hope going back to teaching is like riding a bike—I can handle it taking a few minutes before I feel really in the swing of things.  And I know that once I’m in that classroom and I’ve met my kids, I will probably realize the same thing that I realized last year in the elementary school:  Kids are just kids.  They come from different places, they have different challenges, and they are taught different things at different ages.  But all of those differences don’t take away the fact that kids are all basically the same. 

It just might be a long day from now until the end of school tomorrow for me, working through all the different things I feel before (hopefully!) coming to that sort of realization.   In the meantime, I’m remembering that I am a teacher.  It’s part of who I am, and tomorrow I will officially be one again—and that’s pretty exciting.  One more emotion to add to the list.  

Days on the Beach. Not Spent Sunbathing

“Venice Beach in a combination of the tacky, the mindless, the ironic, and the novel.”

Venice Beach day!

One of the benefits of unexpectedly making friends at CTY was having someone to go out on adventures with on our free days.   One of the things I didn’t even realize I wanted to do was to go down to Venice Beach.  It was my first Southern California beach and even without any comparison to the other beaches nearby I knew Venice was a beach with a distinct personality.   I took a bus with Elicia, Andi and Jennifer and then walked about a mile until we came upon the stretch of sand while annoying clouds rolled in across the early sunshine.  The boardwalk reminded me in some ways of the town where the cruise ships dock in St. Maarten.  There wasn’t anything really new and shiny and Americanized about it.  Instead, it was a stretch of blacktop with vendors in permanent looking fronts on one side and temporary tents along the other.  There was an array of options—jewelry, clothing, scarves, coffee, funnel cakes, and every five steps or so medical marijuana stores.  The Doctor is In signs read or The Green Doctor, Accepting New Patients with a telling green leaf across the awning and on the glass.  Along the side closer to the beach were sand castle sculptors, tarot card readers, henna artists, and street performers. 

Henna tattoo! 

People of every kind walked along on the chilly day and we spent hours perusing, and buying, the different wares.  I got my first ever henna tattoo at Jennifer’s encouragement and Elicia’s willingness to do it too. 

Manhattan Beach volleyball courts

            The next weekend we biked on the beach down part of the bike path that ran almost 25 miles from Santa Monica to Torrence Beach.  The trip confirmed what I already knew as we headed south from the middle part near the Marina del Ray to Dockweiler Beach—where RVs and campers seemed to flock-- and headed on to Manhattan Beach and its Pier.  Pre-set-up beach volleyball courts were everywhere and sports abounded on the beach.  A week after that day Mom and I visited Santa Monica Beach and Pier, north of Venice Beach, and saw the personality there—part carnival, part upper crust which was totally different from Venice.  At least until we half-snuck onto a classy rooftop bar with vertical fire stations and great (expensive) drinks and filled with dressed up people.  We looked like we had spent the day meandering on the windy breach.  Because we had. But somehow they let us onto the rooftop. We looked down the beach towards the lights and saw the Ferris Wheel of Santa Monica’s pier in the not-so-distant stretch down the beach.

Santa Monica Pier

            I was on Santa Monica’s pier two weeks later when a car purposely plowed into people crowding the Venice Beach Boardwalk, killing one and injuring dozens.  It’s not as though Venice is my hometown beach.  But I had just been there, and since we walked the entire boardwalk I had been in the exact spot where the driver had gone into the crowd.  In the exact spot just two weeks earlier.  The pier I was standing on on Saturday, August 3 was less than five miles away.  (In case you didn’t know anything about this, here’s the link about it: http://www.cnn.com/2013/08/03/us/california-venice-beach-crash ).

            I loved that day walking along Venice and I wouldn’t trade it.  But I knew its personality a bit, and so it felt more like a classmate hurting instead of just some person you’ve vaguely heard of but never met.  Maybe I’m personifying the beach too much, but it was my first Southern California beach experience with newly forged friends, and one of my favorite days of the CTY summertime.  So it hurt just a little bit to read about the death of a person I’ve never met because it happened on a beach I had met. 

The Hollywood Tour

Strip away the phony tinsel of Hollywood and you'll find the real tinsel underneath. --Oscar Levant 

One's destination is never a place, but a new way of seeing things.  --Henry Miller

Hollywood from a distance, through the smog

       I hadn’t always dreamed of seeing Hollywood.  It wasn’t my place of golden dreams and star-studded fantasy.  But at the same time it seemed a shame to be this close—to be living less than 20 miles from the Hollywood sign, the Walk of Fame, and the hand and footprints—and to never see it.  But LA’s public transit system is notoriously bad and would’ve involved an awful lot of time on a bus in order to see the reality in the land of illusions.  So I’m not sure I would’ve gone on my own, but it turned out that I didn’t have to, thanks to Mark Bell.

            Mark is on the Introduction to Robotics instructors at CTY and lives in the Los Angeles area.  He has several advanced degrees in science and engineering and has worked for both private corporations and public schools and now teaches at an exclusive LA private school.  He also loves Hollywood.  He adores it.  He is one of the rarest of men—a local, an insider in the movie industry who has not become disillusioned by the reality of the big screen.  He sees both the grit and the charm and allows the charm of the place to win and spill out from him as he talks about the wonder of it.  He is, in other words, the ideal tour guide.

            In addition to working in science and education, Mark’s other profession, his hobby, his true passion perhaps, is acting.  Since he lives locally he has tried his hand in both stage production—he once played the merchant in The Merchant of Venice—and in small roles on screen.  When I say small roles, I mean he’s been an extra, without lines or a name or credit, but he’s appeared in 24, The West Wing, several commercials, and House.  He has a future son-in-law who makes movie creatures including those for Avatar and other big-budget films. 

Andi and I on Rodeo Drive

            The middle-aged, tall, lanky man drove us easily through Beverly Hills and found a parking spot right on Rodeo Drive.  We stopped to take pictures and he tucked in his blue-button down shirt which had been worn by Hugh Laurie on the set of House and which Mark had bought at a sale later.  We continued on and he got us, as advertised, a Mark Bell Parking Spot right on Hollywood Boulevard—mostly because everyone else was afraid it wasn’t really a spot, but after reading the sign three times Mark was assured it was a legal parking spot and that we wouldn’t be ticketed or towed (and we weren’t).

            He walked us to Grauman’s Chinese Theater with the hand and footprints were and took a picture of me pointing to Emma Watson’s wand print (which somehow isn’t in the picture).  Mark showed us the Dolby Theater where the Red Carpet and statues of Oscar would appear once a year, and tried to tempt us into the McDonald’s across Hollywood Boulevard.

Chinese Theater

            “I mean, every time I go in there, I see someone get arrested,” he told us for the third time as he ran a hand through his longish graying hair.  “Although it hasn’t happened for the last three times, so I’m probably overselling it,” he admitted.  He took us down the path where stars recounted the crazy ways they’d broken into Hollywood—a path which ended with a ceramic bed and a tile that read, “How some of us got here,” beside it.  Mark drove past stars’ homes we couldn’t see behind hedges which effectively (and rightfully) protected Madonna, Faith Hill, and others from our gaze.  He took us down the Sunset Strip and past UCLA’s campus. 

            Throughout it all, Mark talked.  In the absence of questions, Mark answered the ones he wished we would’ve asked.  He told us Central Casting—which would cost each of us about 25 bucks—was the best place to get work as an extra.  He told us we, as young people, would likely face great competition from many aspiring stars, but the market wasn’t too flooded with –in his words—old guys.  He told us about getting fitted in full military uniform—that of a colonel—for a part on The West Wing they didn’t end up using him for.  He told us about his greatest acting regret—not buying out The Merchant of Venice the night of the 79^th Academy Awards in early 2007.  He had been offered an opportunity to wear the costume of Prince Charles as a sort of living mannequin since The Queen was nominated for an Oscar in Costume Design.  But instead Mark had to place The Merchant.  Did I mention he was The Merchant in a community production of The Merchant of Venice?

Imagine this floor red--and Mark
as a Prince Charles mannequin.

            Mark told us about the history of the places we were seeing like the El Capitan Theater—recently purchased by Disney, and the Hollywood and Highland complex—recently built and mostly for tourists.  He told us everything we could want to know and more as we stood slightly dazed by the bright lights, costumed movie character replicas—Jack Sparrow on a certain corner was always Mark’s choice for most realistic.  

Momma on Rodeo Drive

Everyone told me that Hollywood isn’t what they had expected, and they were right.  Honestly, it reminded me an awful lot of Time Square’s smaller, slightly grubbier, younger brother.  For special occasions it could shine its shoes and look good for the cameras, but on a day-to-day basis no locals would ever be there.  Except for Mark.  This was the reason that Andi and I had come—she made the point that going somewhere with a person who really loves a place, who knows it inside and out, is the only way to see something.  I have to agree.   Except for Mark, my perception of the place might be that flat, simple judgment, but his love of it gave it a sparkle, a shine, and a gossamer layer that made it look slightly better in different angles as I stood beneath the bright neon lights. 

            I took Mom there, at her request, one week later, and I took her to almost the exact same places that Mark took us.  The only differences were that we caught a glimpse of LL Cool J on Rodeo Drive and, since it was day time, we could see the Hollywood sign which isn’t illuminated at night. But I’m not sure I captured the sparkle like Mark did.  Actually, since I knew I never could, I didn’t really try.  The Mark Bell Tour is the one you wish you could have gone on.  It’s a tour I wish I could give.

Do you see the Hollywood sign? 

            I don’t just wish I could give a Mark Bell tour of Hollywood, but of anywhere—to love a place enough to just have stories pouring out of me about every aspect of the place.  The past, the present, the crime and the glitz of somewhere.  I’m a pretty good tour guide of a lot of places, but I don’t have my one spot that I could give you the Meghan Short Tour.  I guess I’m trying to give you that tour of my recent trip, and I’m going to do my best, but I’m also going to give this disclaimer: just as the pictures won’t do any of the places justice, neither will my stories.  But words are really all I have, so I’m going to do the best I can.  Welcome aboard this West Coast Tour. 

On Airports--Waiting to Head Home

Waiting game at LAX.

All human life can be found at the airport. --David Walliams

There’s something charming about airports.  Not charming in the way that our hostels were charming or an outdoor movie in DC is charming.  But there is something about airports.  In some ways they’re the great equalizer—it doesn’t matter if you’re a well-known celebrity, if you’re flying first class or got the lowest rate of economy possible—if your flight is delayed, it’s delayed.  You have to take off your shoes at security.  You have to go to the gate they want you to go to and have to board when you’re supposed to board.

Airports bring out strong emotions in us all—stress that we won’t make our flight, fear of the plane crashing, boredom that we’re stuck waiting, excitement in our destination.  I’ve been at airports ridiculously early in the past several months and it’s interesting to see them wake up around me.  I got to Reagan just before 4 am four weeks ago and was checked in by 4:15.  I made my way down towards security there and stood in line.  The woman in front of me sighed and told the anxious older man beside both of us that security at this airport doesn’t open until 4:30am.  He could not settle though.  He walked up and down the line, asked every official looking person he saw what was happening and decided there must be another security checkpoint somewhere that he was missing. 

            “This is Mickey Mouse security,” he said at least a half dozen times in his impatience.  He paced up and down the line and I wished he could understand that the movements by official TSA people were moving towards opening.

            I also wished I could tell him this was the security option.  Reagan is not a large airport—it’s not an international airport, it’s the smaller DC option.  Dulles is a much larger, though farther from my house, and lately, more expensive, option.  But my anxious friend would not admit defeat and changed from worrying about the Mickey Mouse security to saying, “Something is wrong.  This feels wrong,” as he resumed his pacing up the line that didn’t move.  “I’m telling you, this feels wrong,” he claimed to no one in particular on his return.

            There was nothing wrong—TSA was about two minutes behind schedule and looking ready to open any second.  But, I was worried about him—I had a feeling they would flag him at security if he couldn’t just stand in line.

            By contrast, LAX is the largest airport I’ve ever been to.  Almost everything about it is open 24 hours a day and when I dropped Mom off at the US Airways gate around 5:30am, we got stuck in some traffic.  The great thing about checking in via phone the night before was that it saved me quite a bit of time standing in line this morning.  Each airline also has its own security area, so I barely waited in line for that stage at all.  That was vastly preferable to any other airport check in process I’ve ever had. 

            The food options in LAX left something to be desired though. I wanted Starbucks, partly because I wanted the LA mug that I now had room for in my backpack. (My suitcase only weighed 45.5 pounds! Whoo hoo!) But in the entire LAX complex, there’s only one Starbucks not under construction.  And that one is in Terminal 1-probably a mile walk from my location in Terminal 7.

            So Peet’s Coffee, without a mug, it was, but I poked around, looking for some pizza that I could get for lunch since I’d been craving it the last few days.  Nothing.  It looked like a sandwich was the only thing I could perhaps grab.  The Charlotte airport where Mom and Dad and I got stuck recently was much better.  Vastly better.

            But those were options were the same for me and for Jennifer Aniston—if she happened to come through LAX on United Airlines.  We’re all in this airport because we’re trying to get somewhere—often times somewhere we’re excited about going.  When I got to LA in July I was waiting for an unknown shuttle driver and I saw two couples embrace in a way that defied gravity and oxygen needs.  I knew I wouldn’t have this kind of greeting waiting for me.  I did give my Mom a huge hug when she got here last week and I picked her up at the airport.  When Meg picks me up today I suspect there will be a lot of joy and excitement—though the kind that doesn’t involve saliva or tongues. 

            We’re all at the airport because we’re trying to get somewhere.  Or because we’ve gotten where we need to go.  Usually there’s a lot of good feeling connected with it, though sometimes it’s for a less pleasant reason.  But everywhere you look in airports, there’s emotion.  Today’s for me is eagerness—it’s time to be home.  

Shifting Back to Real Life

Those who know, do.  Those that understand, teach. --Aristotle 

My heroes, reading their hard work!

You haven’t really lived until you’ve danced with 12 year olds to “Gangham Style,” many of whom are Korean, and not only know all the words, but also know what all the words mean.

It was the last dance of the session, the last night of CTY, and unlike the first dance where I just watched, this time I went out on the grassy dance floor and jumped around to “Call Me Maybe.” It was a telling moment, trying to convince eleven year olds to dance awkwardly rather than stand around awkwardly.  I’ve never danced with my students before, but then they also aren’t usually allowed to call me Meghan, a privilege which my CTY kids have enjoyed for three weeks.

I’m not Ms. Short here—I teach in shorts most days, eat lunch with all the kids, and don’t try to be a strong discipline force with them.  But I’m certainly also not Meghan, not really.  I’m still their teacher.

The same way that the dance was one of the strangest things ever—it included a moment where we tried to figure out how to dance to “I’ll Make a Man Out of You,” from Mulan. (It was also the moment I realized that I’ve gotten used to making up motions to songs for kids in MetrOrange on Sunday mornings.)  The dance was a bunch of twenty and thirty-somethings bopping around and being a little crazy and trying to convince the kids to be just as crazy.

The whole experience of CTY has been a little crazy.  It’s 11 year olds I’ve been discussing Sir Gawain with and talking about deep messages in fairy tales.  Senior high level material and analysis, essay writing, all coming out of fifth and sixth graders.  They’ve also said things like, “When we were younger, we might’ve thought life was like a Disney movie, but now we’re old enough to know how the world really works.” Andi—the best TA I could’ve asked for—have watched them try to their hand at flirting a little bit in the last week—pushing and teasing each other the way only middle schoolers do.   But they also cried, “Eeeewwww” anytime a film clip we showed—cartoon or real live action—included kissing.  We did almost a semester’s worth of material, a semester of bonding and socializing and crammed it into only three weeks. 

And now it’s over, when it barely seems to have begun.  It’s been an intense three weeks—seven hours of teaching the same kids for fifteen days.  It should’ve been long enough to identify my teacher persona—somewhere in between the Ms. Short I am at the public school and the Meg I am the rest of the time.  So maybe Meghan is the middle ground—maybe Meghan is who I was to those kids and that sort of solves any issue I’m kind having.  And it’s not as though this whole thing is keeping me up at night, but at this point my teacher persona is something I’m usually pretty comfortable with and sure about.  There was a moment though last Thursday night that I realized it had slid away a little bit.  Maybe while I was doing the Macarena with the kids or dancing and singing to “If You Wanna Be My Lover,” and trying to encourage them to do the same. 

No matter who I was to them for those three weeks they’re on their way home now.  I hope some of them will finish their hero stories and send them to me, once we’ve all gone back to real life where kids mostly just know Ms. Short.