Postcards from the Funny Farm

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This is a short anecdote. I told it to my mother-in-law and she suggested I blog it . . . so here goes, for Kathy’s sake:

The other day I had a migraine at work. I’m a 3rd grade public school teacher in California, and migraines are not 100% conducive to working with 30 kids. Nonetheless, I walked through my morning in the usual way being surprisingly effective, I primly thought, at getting my lessons across to my students despite the nagging headache. Then math time came . . .

Moving into the math lesson, I knew we had to be on page 50. I could also tell the group was a little boisterous that day and likely would not hear me the first time when I announced the page number. (It’s uncanny how they seem to get that way when and only when you are either feeling sick or have a headache, which luckily for me is not that often).

Anyway, to ensure that I wouldn’t have to repeat myself a second or even third time, because one hates to do that when ones head hurts, I wrote in RED PEN on the whiteboard: “TURN TO PAGE 50.” Then I said, “Class, let’s turn in our math books to page 50.” Then I heard the flurry of some students turning to page 50 getting ready for the lesson. It was at that point that one of my future astronauts (at least that’s what I keep telling myself) said to me in the most purely innocent way: “Teacher, what page?”

Working with kids, bottomless patience is a crucial tool of the trade sometimes.