Wine, but no corkscrew

Decided to come home from school and drink wine only to realize I do not own a corkscrew. Such is life.

Napped. Longer than I intended, which is always the case.

Sucked into mindless TV, while restructuring my language arts block for school.

Trying to keep myself from fretting about next school year. I wrote a little story a few years ago, when I honestly thought my teaching career was never going to come to fruition.

"The Envelope"

Josephine Alberta Ashcroft the envelope indicates. As she fidgets down the hallway into her classroom she attempts to forget this particular piece of mail. She secures the newest versions of the teacher catalogs on their respective shelves, tosses the junk in the trash can and grasps for a feeling of normalcy. Deep down Josie realizes this envelope does not contain good news, happy news, or even just the run of the mill casual-type news. Josie understands this envelope means bad business, simply from the way her full name is neatly typed in Cooper Black font across the front. Cooper Black is the favored font of the board office secretary, who likes the antique look, “kinda like a typewriter, “she always claims.  Josie is going to ignore, ignore, ignore the whole ordeal. She is going to pretend that the envelope was lost in the mailroom shuffle and force those board office tightwads come and remove her from her classroom. She pictures the situation in her mind as she slumps in her rotating teacher’s desk chair. The class would be studying fractions, or perhaps decimals, as those lessons come near the end of the school year. The students would be collaborating in centers with their pieces of plastic pie and in would burst the board office police in full-on teacher takeout attire. Their black shoes, black pants, black dress shirt, black coat and black tie would be reminiscent of Tommy Lee Jones in Men in Black. They would sling the door wide open, pepper the room with gumballs to pacify the classroom criers and wrap her in bubble wrap. Bubble wrap to protect her from the lashing and flailing around that will immediate commence post gumball explosion.

Josie is back to the envelope now, staring at the roundness of the text. She holds it up to the window near her neat and tidy desk secretly wanting to see the pink hue just to solidify her fears. In teaching, pink represents the thought your “services are no longer needed”, you have been “set out to pasture”, you are “gone with the wind”. For PINK SLIPS, in education, are the communication tool utilized to announce such news.  Teachers fear the color pink worse than young boys. Don’t dare stick faculty meeting notes on pink copier paper or even bake sale menus, because pink is not friendly. Pink is the devil. And now Josie is seeing pink. Her eyes have glossed over with a pink vignette, thereby staining her entire line of sight.

She catches her head and rests it in her lap to think – to obtain a clearer comprehension than the one she is currently clutching. What felony has she committed to disserve this punishment? After all, Mrs. Peterman down the hall has reinstituted the midday nap this year, which is understandable considering she is 92.7 years old teaching 31 first graders. Mr. Brent in fifth grade decided it was time for his students to learn an anatomy lesson when he stripped down to his underwear on the playground to remove a bumble bee in his pant leg. Simultaneously, he also constructed a rather creative vocabulary mini-lesson at the same time. This lesson proved most motivational for his students, since the new vocabulary words are often heard screamed across the cafeteria. Even Mrs. Sanderson would be a better candidate than Josie, who decided to rebel against the ideological conformity of grades and give each of her students a “C” to represent the mediocrity that is our society. But Josie? There is absolutely no way her actions, her teaching has warranted this envelope. Jose Ashcroft greets her students at the classroom threshold each and every day with a giant, Barney-sized hug. She references each child by name and praises them ecstatically when they respond correctly. Moreover, Josie treats her students with respect, repeating “I mean, they are people, too, you know,” when colleagues befuddle their pupils.

However, there is the secret. The secret Josie has buried deep within her chest since the first day of her first year teaching. Reader… Josephine Alberta Ashcroft refuses to teach to the test. The test being the high stakes, make or break it, no holds bar, either you rock or stink test. Conversely, Josie Ashcroft teaches to her students, their needs, their interests, their strengths, their weaknesses. She actually writes two sets of lesson plans per week, one which she submits to her principal and the other steers the course for her students. This secret has yet to be discovered, at least she assumes. But perhaps, the cat is out of the bag. Perhaps the cat is running around rampant up and down the hallways of Josie’s elementary school, meowing that Josie is a test-hater. But the only inclination Josie has inferring the cat is truly out happens to be the pink-ish, antique-ish envelope crumpled between her fingers.

The longer Josie Ashcroft glares at this envelope, the more she realizes two things - the first being that her fellow teachers truly suck and the second that she is master among the rest. I bet Brent, Sanderson and Peterman are jealous of my youthful wisdom and charisma with my students. I know they have thrown me under the bus, Josie reiterates to herself. Instantly, as if brought on by a clock (or the fact she must pick her class up from art), Josie feels an intense rush inside her soul to end this debacle. She now must detain those preconceived terrors of pink and pastures beaten into her head by tenured teachers. Compelled to find the courage within herself, Josie Ashcroft must face the demons and rise-up or at least crawl away. So in her abrupt rush of confidence and denial, Josie tears open the envelope, crosses her fingers and reads…”Josephine Alberta Ashcroft you owe the lunchroom $3.42. Please pay this amount by next Tuesday.” Josie would like to recant her previous maliciousness toward her fellow teachers; they all truly do the best they can under the extreme conditions in their school.  Plus, the new lunch lady must have made the cafeteria copies this week, she should have known better than to use pink. Isn’t there a sign in the copy room saying that? If not, there certainly should be.