When the Cat is Away...

I took yesterday off. I was fighting a cold all weekend that has now subsided, I had EPICs class at Seton Hall all weekend, and I had a 1/2 foot high pile of papers to grade. I fought off the cold and all but finished the grading - a successful day to say the least.

I came to school on Sunday afternoon to lay out my lesson plans for the three classes that would miss me. I had a nice little handout on the supposed/postulated Phoenician discovery of America some 1,300 years before the Vikings were in Newfoundland. Quite the interesting piece to say the least. The students had to complete a handout with questions that slowly increased in difficulty as they approached the end of the worksheet with the primary things I'm looking for being Reading Comprehension and then eventually higher order thinking skills (i.e. get information from the handout, get information from the text, combine the two ideas and come up with an analysis). It might have been asking a lot of a few of them, but if I'm to teach these kids how to do it, I need to make them do it. Sink or swim and all that as my mother used to say.

One of my classes were far too rowdy and out of control according to the substitute's notes. So, today's critical thinking quote was, "When the cat is away, the mice will play." Everyone got the meaning immediately. And the class that misbehaved even confessed. I did not have to punish them TOO severely (meaning I didn't take away a drop grade, I just denied them yesterday's tally point). But I did give them a lesson in moral development and what it means to behave just because an authority is not around.

I suspect some of them got it, but then again, I can't be certain that I've taught my students anything from day to day. If they leave me at the end of the year more conscientious of themselves, better able to think, more capable human beings... if they leave me better for having known me, then I will know that I have succeeded. But unlike other jobs, I'm quickly coming to realize that the "mission accomplished" moments for teachers are few and far between -- and I'm beginning to wonder if they ever come. I can only hope that the students I see day in and day out benefit from having known me, from having been in my classroom.

Because if watching them STILL chew gum (I had five more scraping gum today) and watching them STILL talk in the stairwell and listening to them talk about me when they think I can't hear them and watching them just not do their homework is the only consolation I ever have, I don't know that I'll be able to do this the rest of my life. Leonardo and Monet at least could step back and admire their masterpieces once they had finished them. I may never know that I've created masterpieces assuming that I even do.

Goodness, I hope I do. I desperately hope I do.