I feel kind of like I'm in a TV show, and new actors are being called in to replace some of the main characters.  I remember when they did that on Bewitched and Roseanne.  I remember my mom watching Days of Our Lives when I was growing up; there were a number of times when the actors were temporarily or permanently replaced.  And now it's happening in real life.

A year ago, Mr. Culbertson left the classroom for retirement.  He had taught for 30 years (side-by-side with me for 25).  Next year, Mrs. Mouton has opted to remain in the district's virtual teaching program, and Mrs. Stagner is moving into a literacy specialist position within the school.  With the need for four teachers in the fourth grade, that means we had to find three qualified candidates to round out our fourth grade team.

It's a lot more complicated than changing a tire.  We needed competent people who can learn quickly and adapt to their new situations.  We needed the best new teachers for our students.  We needed people who could work with their team members and add to the culture of Cecil Floyd.

A year ago, we hired Miss Graham.  As a new teacher, Graham has been an excellent choice.  She is conscious of teaching standards as well as techniques to deal with behaviors.

Last week, Miss Graham and I joined the principal and assistant principal to meet and interview potential new fourth grade teachers.  I will abstain from introducing them yet, but I think the two ladies who met our requirements will help effectively fill out our team.  We are hopeful concerning the direction that two more first-year teachers offer us.  It's going to be whole new world in Cecil Floyd's fourth grade, and I am excited about the possibilities we may find ourselves headed!

By that, I mean there are other topics about which we could talk.  There is more happening in our classroom that has nothing to do with any of this.  I don't remember if I have ever really written about it at all this school year; if I have, it has been mostly in passing.  But I know it's a major topic in the news - schools and the shutdown.

Now, after teaching in person for almost the whole school year, I can say that it has been a terrific year for me.  I don't want to diminish all of the things that have happened in my life, but educationally speaking, our class has really been a source of inspiration.  I introduce my class to a teacher as the best, and the kids seem to agree.

What initiated this tirade?  The latest issue of School & Community from the Missouri State Teachers Association is usually the source of a wide variety of articles that can help its educator-members, but in the last year, the magazine has decided that we need more of the same - more articles that begin with the obvious:  "This year has been different."  Consider:

• Page 4, Connected (president's article):  "Before COVID-19..."
• Page 5, 2021 MSTA Education Policy Priorities:  "Missouri educational professionals have worked tirelessly throughout the COVID-19 pandemic..."
• Page. 6, Are You Working or on Leave?:  "Plenty of schools now have AMI days..."
• Page 7, A Note from the Editor:  "I hope...all school employees will be fully vaccinated against COVID-19..."
• Pages 8-11, The Importance of Reading:  "Depression and anxiety over Covid have completely drained my energy..."
• Pages 14-15, Take Care of Yourself to Finish Strong:  "It's hard to believe how much education and educators were forced to change this past year..."
• Pages 16-17, How Virtual Teaching Changed my Teaching Career:  "Who would have thought that during my 33rd year of teaching I would be...teaching vitually..."
• Pages 20-21, Students Learn to Master Life Skills During Pandemic:  "...I received a message from a non-teacher friend who said, "kids have lost a solid year of development."...
• Pages 22-23, Finding Purpose in Retirement:  "Times are stressful with COVID in the world..."
• Pages 24-25, AMI Days and the Specials Team:  "As schools are learning to continuously adapt to various teaching strategies due to the pandemic..."
• Page 31, comic:  "It was really weird being taught from home..."
• Page 36-37, Putting Things Back in the "Normal Sequence"...:  "After a year like the one we are wrapping up..."
• Page 42, Win-Win:  MSTA's Leadership Conference is Going HYBRID!:  "If you're not ready for in-person attendance..."
• Page 43, Training for New Professionals:  "If conditions require social distancing..."
• Page 47, Distance Learning in 1956:  Teaching by Telephone:  "As article in the April 1956 School & Community discusses school-to-home teaching devices."
• Back Cover, A Note from Bunker Hill:  "After a crazy last year..."

I ask again, "Are you as tired of it as I am?"  Is there a way to write an article without sticking in a conditional statement about difficulties everyone has faced in 2020/1?  It occurs to me that the media would help our trauma-informed teaching by trying harder not to saturate citizens, teachers, families, and kids with non-stop comments about something that adds to trauma.  We do not ignore the issues at hand, but I would prefer moderation.

​I remember it distinctly.  My parents, in reference to their involvement in the church's Vacation School, expressed their distaste for calling the participants kids.  Kids are baby goats, you understand, and it is degrading to refer to children by such a derogatory term.

I get it.  I was a child myself.  To think that children could be labeled by the same name as a baby goat!  Just imagine.  Didn't those people understand that goats are noisy, filthy creatures that chew on everything in sight?

On second thought, that actually kind of explains things, doesn't it?

But now they've gone too far!  They're no longer calling children kids; now they're calling them kiddos.  And it doesn't make sense.  Why add the extra syllable?  It certainly doesn't save time to call them that, so I suspect that people are just trying to be cute...or should I say cutesy?

How do things like this spread?  My own children's teachers, from kindergarten to sixth grade, call them kiddos, and don't think I'm not tracking it.  How long will it last?  Into junior high?  High school?

I guess it could be more worser:  they could be calling them kiddies instead.

But again, I ask you, Why?  Why add the extra o?  Do we do that to other words?  We don't call them childos or boyos and girlos, do we?  Of course not.  Kiddos sounds more like a breakfast cereal of which mothers would disapprove.  Kid-Os cereal would most definitely have bits of chocolate and marshmallows.

You see, that's what we do to these students.  We give them sugar instead of vitamins.  I would much rather their own answers to me be robust and full of lasting energy, not empty fat.  Just think about it.  Words mean something, and if we're just saying it out of habit and to be silly and cute, that alone is good reason for cutting it out of our vocabulary.  How can we show more respect to our students?

At the same time, I hear teachers in videos calling their prodigies young scholars instead.  Honestly, I'd rather hear kiddo than young scholar.  It's not sugary, but it does seem forced.  Fake.  And it's sure to get some behind-the-back razzing from students.  Others refer to their four- and five-year-olds as kinders and ​littles, which is more than a little cutesy for my taste.

While we're at it, won't you please stop referring to your husbands as hubs on the Facebook.

What do you call your children?  Have you given it conscious thought?  Or do you do so strictly out of habit? 

​I didn't want to do it, but I had to have that tooth removed.  It had been bothering me for a few weeks, and it was time to take care of it for good.

It's that wisdom tooth.  You know the one.  The one on the left, farthest back.  Only the second one I've ever had removed.  But the first one was different; I was unconscious for the procedure.  It was easy.  This one should have been similar, but the sedative (or what I thought was to be a sedative) had zero effect on me.  Zilch.  And the procedure was, let's say, unpleasant.

The experience in the dentist's chair was not the favorite thing I've ever done in my life.  As the doctor did whatever he needed to do to extract the wisdom tooth, my own hands were clenched into fists in front of my chest, and my legs contracted up in a concertedly uncomfortable position.  It took all I had to keep from yelling out in pain and discomfort as the dentist told me, "You're doin' great."

But I started thinking, as I am inclined to do, that my denticular amputation has similarities with teaching.  Yeah, I know what you're thinking...but it's not the hydrocodone speaking.  Hear me out.

• One bad apple can ruin the whole basket.  ​A week after my extraction, I still have a great deal of pain.  My energy level has drained with a lack of sleep and the constant thoughts of pain as I continue to pop ibuprofen every four to six hours.  It amazes me that such a small, localized area of my body can affect the rest so profoundly.  And the same is true in the classroom.  It is equally astounding how much one student or one action from a student can affect the rest of the classroom.  When it happens, I see other students rolling their eyes in frustration.  Some even clench their fists from time to time because of the "pain" that one student causes for the student body.  They do a number of things in self defense.  Just as I responded to the dentist's pressure, students may respond physically.  Others contract and suppress the discomfort that is caused by one unruly student.

Combine these things with the seasonal allergies and sinus pressure, and we might imagine a classroom with multiple disruptive pupils.  To put it lightly, I have been physically miserable for at least a week.  After four days, I returned to the dentist's office for a review of my condition.  I expressed to him my sensitivity and discomfort, to which he responded that everything looked to be healing nicely.  He then broke me the news that it could take 21 days to completely heal and up to a full year before the bone fills in.

• Expecting to dread something is worse than the true results.  As I thought about having this pain for 21 days, I wondered how miserable I would be after two more weeks of piercing pain in my jaw.  I know it takes time to heal, but I felt like this was going to do me in.  In the classroom, one disruptive student can be a "pain" to deal with in a classroom, if the teacher fails to see the student's potential to change and improve, the teacher can doom himself for the entire school year.  For a fact, it drains the energy levels to the level of a teacher burning out or breaking down.  That type of negativity can be avoided with a new mindset.

I'm thankful, in this occasion, that I have a student-teacher to fill in some of the gaps while my physical pain is radiated to the rest of my body.  I would have missed more days if it weren't for some breaks from the classroom. 

• In space, nobody can hear you scream.  Consider the teacher who doesn't have a support system to fall back on.  Consider the agony s/he may be experiencing, all because s/he doesn't want to leave the classroom to somebody else.  Teachers tend to work in a vacuum.  Of course, I often value my own vacuum, where I am free to do what I want to do, but at the same time, I need contact with people who can answer my questions, help me solve my struggles, and bring me back up from my lows.

Finally, I am thankful that the doctor told me my tooth hole (as Junie B. Jones calls it) will heal.  We tend to be impatient when we are awaiting improvement.  We do not want to wait it out.

• Patience is a virtue.  We want that kid to behave better, to improve academically, but we are often unwilling to put in the time it takes to heal.  It's not a magic show:  those improvements don't always happen before your very eyes.  And it doesn't happen without effort from both the teacher and the student.  Again, it is a mindset.  With my molar, I have already failed this test of my mindset; I have felt like this pain will never leave.  Can you imagine a teacher convinced that nothing she does will ever have a positive effect on a child?  I pray, first, that I can always look at students with the idea that s/he is hopeless, and second, that I can possess the patience to make it happen.

 

• No pain, no gain.  Don't forget that effort piece.  We hear all the time that there is no silver bullet or magic words that solve your educational woes as an educator.  As cliché as those things may sound, they are true.  As an educator with woes of my own, I understand that I need to keep an open mind, that I need to make mistakes, and that I need to find solutions rather than whine about the problems.  My response to the pain I feel in my tooth hole is analogous to this.  Yes, I have done my share of whining, but I have also expressed to people that the pain is a sign that I am still alive.

In my post-operative visit, the doctor said I was healing on schedule.  Thanks, Doc, but it still hurts.  Then he gave me a new directive:  rinse often with salt water.

• Be the salt of the earth.  I had already started rinsing with salt water, because I know that salt has antiseptic qualities.  The doctor explained that using salt water would keep the "surgical" area cleaner and help it heal properly.  Any individual in our class community can also be like the salt.  Just as one student can negatively affect the dynamic of an entire classroom, a student or a teacher can influence the entire system for the better, as well.  We, like the salt, can add flavor to the conversation and preserve the positive family atmosphere we strive to maintain.  Any student - even one that seems unlikely - can be that kid who leads a classroom into greatness.

I think we all know that tooth extraction is really not the same thing as teaching fourth graders in Southwest Missouri.  But then again...if I'm doing the same job as a dentist, shouldn't my paycheck be a little bit larger?

You heard it here, folks.  Those are the words of the parent of a former student to describe me in a nomination for the 2021 Golden Apple Awards, presented by the Joplin Area Chamber of Commerce.  A student currently in the eighth grade nominated me for the award this year, and in spite of being ineligible for winning, I was still invited to the reception for nominees on Tuesday.

"Best elementary teacher in the four-state area", however, is not the phrase that strikes me as the most meaningful.  Really what I like to hear is that section of this parent's more detailed description of what she claims I did for her son four years ago.  What I really like to see is the child's words thanking me for helping him when he was at his "lowest point" and had "behavior issues".  This is not a letter from the gifted student, the alert student, or the "teacher's pet"; these are the words of a struggler - a kid who hated school and had virtually given up on himself.

Teacher, it's not always about raising test scores.  It is so much more than grades and ticking boxes next to the state standards.  More times than not, we need to be inspiring our students to be better citizens, motivating them to pursue success and happiness, and allowing them a smidgen of freedom to be themselves and find their strengths and interests.  Quite often, I see my peers working very, very hard to complete data tables and diagnose specific weaknesses in each individual student for every standard, drilling down on deficiencies rather than capitalizing on the positives.

That's how I see the end of the year.  While I've been in this position several times before, I always want to do more,

     Teach bigger,

          Go out with a bang,

               Make a lasting impression -

                    You get the idea.

Enacting the plan, however, can be an entirely different prospect:

     Getting the materials together,

          Finding the time,

              Mustering the patience.

It can all get to be a little much:

     the dream,

          the vision,

               the reality.

Of course, this year is especially challenging.  Students have to wear masks, stay in their table groups, and avoid interacting with other teams.

Anyway, I'm thinking about merging all of these large projects to do them all at once.  It will be a bold move, but if we can pull it off, it will also be something for the record books.

     I don't know if it can be done,

          most wouldn't attempt it,

               and maybe I am crazy.

I don't even know if I can organize it effectively, but I'd sure like to try.  While others would keep everything simple, and contained in a short time period in a single day - make a little STEM activity as a reward for positive behavior, this guy would like for his class to always be positive and rewarding.  Now that the weekend is here, the dream is growing,

     developing,

          festering.

There is no shortage of calendar selections, but you won't have to think twice when the new school year begins.  In an unprecedented move, our school has decided to release its own calendar for the 2021/2022 school year.  "The Men of Cecil Floyd" promises to be a bestseller!  Principal Chris Bozarth is excited to be able to display his current cadre of male teachers, custodians, and paraprofessionals in the 12-month special edition. "I think we're going to sell out and have to order a second printing," said Bozarth in an interview with the press, yesterday.

An anonymous fourth grade teacher acknowledged, "Some of the guys were apprehensive at first, but we're totally on board now.  I mean, if firefighters and dancers can do a calendar, why shouldn't we?"  The veteran teacher also announced that he will be the cover and the August-featured model, with August being the first month in the school-year-based publication.  Mr. Bandy, Mr. Danner, Mr. Trueblood were not available for comment.  Naturally, Coach Sharp has opted out of the project altogether.

Kris Garrett, assistant principal also let it slip that the December page will feature most of the men - two principals, four teachers, a couple of paraprofessionals (including the incomparable, Mr. White), the building engineer, and a couple of the custodians.  "Mr. Stewart [previous assistant principal] wanted to be a part of the project, but we had to remain pure to the project," said Garrett.  "Sadly, he's in the Royal Heights [elementary school] family now, and though he has a place in our hearts, we just couldn't include him.  We're in talks with his lawyers, as well as [recently retired teacher] Mr. Culberton's, about some other ideas they might be a part of, but I'm not allowed to disclose any information about that until we have signatures on a contract."

All of the men are currently conditioning with a strict exercise and diet regimen.  "We have just a couple of months to work out in the summer.  I would say the men are going to bulk up, but some are already bulkier than others," Bozarth said with a chuckle.  "I'm not worried about it at all though.  My guys always step up to serve the school. This being a fundraiser for the school, I'm certain they're all going to look buff."

"And if that doesn't do the trick, there's always airbrushing," laughed Garrett.  "We're going to get this one right. We're professionals.  This is going to put our school on the map, and it's going to make Joplin Schools the envy of Southwest Missouri."

Asked if this would be an annual fundraiser, Bozarth was cautiously optimistic that it could happen.  "Who knows what the calendar will lead to?" he wondered.  "If it's successful, we could license all kinds of merch.  Of course, there's a fourth grade teacher down there who's is still banking on getting his own reality show.  Worse ideas than this have taken off like crazy, so we're just going to ride the wave wherever it takes us.

Superintendent Moss also could not be reached directly, though her office released the following statement:

Calendars will be available for presale on this site.  The price is anticipated to be $20 for one, or two for $50. Autographed copies will also be offered at a special signing event in the summer.

This reporter will be first in line...that is, of course, unless this turns out to be some kind of cruel April Fools hoax, which of course it is.