The Importance of Imagination

My desk chair creaked as I leaned back to observe the damage.  I counted seven paper airplanes actually stuck in my ceiling, foam letters in a pile near the closet they magically fell out of, and something is whipping around in the radiator.  Hopefully it doesn’t catch fire. 

I sip my coffee in the cacophony of disarray that is my classroom as I reevaluate my day:

During my first period, one of my retained students was asked about “The Old Days.” 

“Keith, what was it like last year?  Was Mrs. Miller the same?  I heard she was meaner.” An inquiring mind wanted to know.

“Yeah, she was cool.”  Was the brilliant answer this second-time-around eighth grader could muster.

“I heard that Mrs. Miller yelled at you a lot last year.”  This inquiring mind….well at least she was inquiring.

“She didn’t yell at me.” Keith began and then paused as he thought of a clever comeback, “We were communicating.”

I believe that comeback came about better than he thought it would.

Second period boasts one of my pride and joys, who suffers from mild Random Outburst Syndrome.  Three months after we concluded the short story “Flowers for Algernon,” he proceeds to randomly yell out “Algernon!” as if trying to gather his followers of the Order of Algernon to one place.  I don’t know what’s worse: that he still does it, or that his classmates still laugh at it.

Anyway, third was relatively uneventful.  I determined they want something.  I will have to puzzle over this some more to figure out what it is they are trying to get.

And then there is fourth period.

In college, they teach us teacher students to be open-minded, and try divergent lesson planning and dynamic seating arrangements.  To facilitate discussion of the novel The Time Machine, I placed all thirty of my desks in a circle.  Now, between side conversations about the previous year, random callings of Algernon!, this actually worked quite well.  But, like I said, then there was fourth period.

As per usual, I stood at the door greeting my students (another pearl of wisdom I picked up in college.)  In the background I hear the following conversation:

“Dude!  Do you know what this looks like?”  A fairly harmless statement when taken out of context, so I dismiss it.

“YEAH!  A UFC CAGE!” No context this could be in at school is good, so I whip around…

…Just in time to see Troy put Bobby into a rear naked choke.

So, as my fourth period leaves for the day, Kerri who witnessed UFC 8th Grade asks me, “Miss, why you still a teacher?”  Such perfect English, I almost want to correct her, but she’s out the door before I can even answer her.

Yet, this is what I sit here and ponder.  Yelling equals communication, Algernon may well be code for something inappropriate, and now I have to write two referrals for a fake fight in the fake UFC ring that I put up in my own classroom. 

Why am I still a teacher?  Because Albert Einstein said imagination is more important that knowledge.  I hope to God he’s right.